Today we had our weekly Tuesday morning meeting at CRESA, complete with coffee, OJ, and an assortment of breakfast foods. Besides the obvious benefit of a free breakfast, which i could always use, these weekly meetings have proven to be a a great learning experience. Each meeting serves as an opportunity for me, a beginner in the real estate business, to soak up knowledge like a spunge. I try to take in everything i possibly can as the executives of the company talk about market trends, rents, and current deals that are happening. I am here at CRESA to learn and these meetings are like a free class.
I encourage all who are interns or are looking to be interns to try and be apart of these weekly meetings. Most companies have these meetings, as it is important to group together and get an overview of what is going on within. If it is possible for you to sit in on a meeting, take the opportunity, it may be intimidating, but you want to learn from the people with the most experience. When i was interviewing over Christmas break to find a summer internship one of the Executives i met with, at a company that will remain nameless, told me that, "90% of what you learn is through experience." The older members of a company have this knowledge & experience, these are the people you want to learn from and talk to. Now this doesn't mean stray from the younger proffesionals who will obviously serve as future contacts or friends, but use the time you are there wisely, as it is only a summer internship.
As for me i've been here 7 weeks now, and so far it is going very well.
Until next time...

Why I Chose CRESA Partners

Deciding where to do an internship can be a difficult process. You dont want to be in an environment where you aren't learning and just being treated as a coffee person or a stapler. The things i looked for when i was searching for a summer internship were that i was going to be able to work on some interesting projects throughout the summer. I wanted to be working hands on and having multiple tasks. I wanted to work with people who were the best in the industry at what they do, i wanted to learn from the experienced proffesionals.
I ended up choosing CRESA over a few other options, that i will not name, because they offered everything i needed. The company has grown exponentially over the past few years and is emerging as one of the best pure tenant representation & corporate service firms in the country. The company is on the rise and why not work for the company that is doing things right. In addition, the people i am working with have an average of over 20 yrs in the industry and that is what CRESA prides itself on. They understand the real estate market and work together to provide a highly integrated service to all their clients. I wanted to work for people with experience and CRESA has a lot of it.
So far the internship has been great. It has been very informative. I have had the chance to work with multiple people in the firm and have been given numerous tasks that have provided a great hands-on experience to the real estate industry.
I will keep updating on how my internship here goes as finding the right internship can prove to be a difficult process.

Harlem Tour

Hey,

On Friday i went around with one of my bosses and previews space around Harlem. It was a gorgeous day out and it was definately nice to get out of the office for a while. That handsome young fellow pictured on the right is me, with my hard hat on. One of the building we went to preview was still under construction so in order to walk around we had to put on a hard hat. I'll tell you what i could get used to wearing one of those. I was thinking about wearing one to the office today, but i dont think that would go over to well with some people there. Oh well...

So far this internship has proven to be very informative and a great learning experience. My bosses have been great about bringing me around to meet clients and see space, so i have been able to get a lot of first hand experience, something that most interns are never able to get. I havent gotten coffee for anybody except myself so, even though i am just the intern i get treated pretty well by everybody.

As for this past weekend it turned out to be somewhat stressful. Saturday night, on my cab ride home back to grand central to catch the last train out i left my cell phone in the cab. Luckily, when i used my friends phone to call mine the cab driver picked it up and returned it to my brother down in gramercy park. No he made my brother give him $20, but atleast he was good enough to bring it back.

So until next time...

Its been about a week since my last post so i thought it was time to start writing again. Everything has been going well around the office. The usual grunt work of an intern, but i have also been out a lot this week previewing space and canvasing different locations which has been a lot of fun.

On Tuesday I attended a talk on the Sarbanes-Oxley Laws held by the Manhattan Institute which was good but a little boring. I found my self searching for caffeine after about an hour or so. But i will tell you the lunch was great. And a glass of wine at lunch has never hurt anybody.

Last night i was out with my brother and father at a restaurant called the Salmon River, which is on 3 East 40th, proved to be a good choice. After making the reservation i was a little nervous as my boos informed me it wasn't in Zagat's, but if you like a good piece of fish and varying seafoods i would recommend it.

Hope all is going well and until next time, be good.

Web 2.0 Summit

Hey again,

This morning i was at the Web 2.0 Summit held at Fordham Univeristy Law School. Now the term Web 2.0 has been tossed around and finding an exact meaning seems to be difficult. After listening to a panel of speakers i concluded that "Web 2.0" refered to using the web as a platform. The web started with the boom of the dot.com's which later died out. Now the web has made a second surge, hence the term "Web 2.0" With sites like Facebook, Google, and YouTube the web has revolutionized social networking. One cool statistic i learned today was that at any time 12% of time spent online is on MySpace.com.

There were two keynote speakers, but the one who intrigued me most was Shawn Gold, who is the Senior VP of marketing and content at MySpace. He gave a brief over view of MySpace and how it works and then spoke about how MySpace markets itself and its users. There is a new route for marketing and it has become rather integrated. The old route went from the Brand which would use Advertising and PR to plug into the Media which would in turn bring an Audience. Now the whole route has become intertwined. Since i am helping implement a new marketing program here at Cresa it was very intriguing to see how a company like MySpace markets itself and its clients.

The whole technology world is rather new to me, but i am getting more and more interested so we will see where this all takes me. For now i will continue with my amateur blogging status.

Till next time....

1st Post Ever

I have been working at Cresa for a little over two weeks now. Everything has been going real well. I am currently helping the company implement a new marketing campaign as they are trying to appeal to new industry verticals.
I have also being been going out with two of the brokers as they work on previewing and showing space to clients.
Tomorrow night i am actually going to a NYSIA (New York Software Industry Association) event to learn more about blogging, so hopefully this blog will be a lot better as this is my first blog and first ever post. So i have essentially just popped my blogging cherry.
Well i probably should get back to work as i ended up arriving 3 hours late today due to complications. Take care and hopefully my posts will be more exciting as the summer continues.