Student Engagement

Grosvenor Americas/UBC Sauder School of Business Summer Internship and Mentor Program in Real Estate

Overview and Objectives

The Grosvenor Summer Internship in Real Estate program initiated by Professor Tsur Somerville has been under the auspices of the UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate since 2001. The primary objective of the program is to provide professional experience and mentoring for select Sauder School of Business students the summer following their third year interested in a career in real estate. The program provides select third year undergraduates a paid position over the summer at the firms in real estate appraisal, asset management, commercial brokerage, consulting, development, finance, investment, or marketing. Students acquire valuable professional experience and build mentor networks. Sponsoring organizations gain access to the best and brightest students in an internationally renowned educational program. Through this program, the Sauder School builds bridges between education and training and strengthens the links between the Faculty and the professional community.

Activities

The full-time internship should run for three to four months over the period May to August. When circumstances and the relationship between student and sponsor are conducive to it, this engagement has often continued with part-time work once the school year begins. Sponsoring organizations are asked to provide full-time paid summer employment for the student. It is fundamental to the program that the sponsor provides mentoring to the student, introducing the intern to the organization’s role in the real estate industry. The objective is to be more than a summer job program. Ideally, the internship would involve a specific project that allows the students to see how aspects of their studies get applied in the industry. As part of their third-year program students study the basics of pro-forma analysis, appraisal, real estate markets, and urban land economics.

Admissions

Admission to the program is through a multi-step process. First, students who have taken or are currently enrolled in COMM307 Real Estate Investment are encouraged to apply. From the applicants, a pool of potential candidates is selected based on their transcripts, resumes, and personal statements. From this pool, the most promising internship candidates are selected based on personal interviews. A selection of these top students is offered to each sponsor. Both the sponsor and the student must be agreeable for the internship to occur. The process is intended as a vetting procedure to deliver motivated, capable, high-caliber candidates to sponsors.

Structure and Administration

The program is currently administered by the Hari B. Varshney Business Career Centre at UBC Sauder School of Business with support from the UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate. Further information is available from Ms. Jane Arthurs, Assoc. Director of Business Development at the Business Career Centre (604-822-3127, Jane.Arthurs@sauder.ubc.ca) and Professor Tsur Somerville (604-822-8343, tsur.somerville@sauder.ubc.ca).

The Sauder School is extremely grateful to Grosvenor Americas for providing financial support to administer this program.

Each year groups of Sauder real estate students are selected to participate in two international student real estate competitions: the Cornell International Real Estate Case Competition in the fall and the NAIOP Pacific Northwest Real Estate Challenge (REC) in the spring.  For the Cornell competition, the student team works with alumni industry professionals for five months to prepare for the 5-day case analysis event. Students in the NAIOP REC work over two and a half months to prepare a detailed development proposal for an actual site. They are guided by industry experts in this process. The Centre is very grateful for the financial support of our competition sponsors, the QuadReal Property Group for Cornell and Henderson Development (Canada) for NAIOP.  Without their support the students would not have these incredible learning opportunities. 

Recent Case Competitions participated by UBC Sauder Students in Real Estate:

March 2023
NAIOP Pacific Northwest Real Estate Challenge
Affordable housing site in Seattle’s U-District
UBC Sauder team finished in 1st place
Team members: Jeffrey Cheng, Pranoy Debnath, Sena Gao, Jarnail Parmar, Habiib Soofi, and Jimmy Tse

November 2022
Cornell International Real Estate Case Competition
UBC Sauder team finished in 3rd place
Team members: Ashvin Bilga, Vasko Bjeljac, Nolan Lu, Lin Shen, Amrit Sidhu, and Jimmy Tse

May 2022
ICSC/Cornell Retail Real Estate Case Competition
UBC Sauder team finished in 1st place
Team members: Taeyeon Lee, Ben Rener, Amrit Sidhu, and Habib Soofi

March 2022
NAIOP Pacific Northwest Real Estate Challenge
Unico site at former Longacres Racetrack
UBC Sauder team finished in 1st place
Team members: Michael Araki-Young, Stephanie Huang, Reigan Lee, Alan Lui, Madeline Rainer, and Amrit Sidhu

November 2021
Cornell International Real Estate Case Competition
UBC Sauder team finished in 1st place
Team members: Harry Fan, Reigan Lee, Jarnail Parmar, Madeline Rainer, and Habiib Soofi

March 2021
NAIOP Pacific Northwest Real Estate Challenge
Life sciences research site near Lake Union, Seattle.
UBC Sauder team finished in 1st place
Team members: Harry Fan, Spencer Graling, Evan Kim, Jared Lazar, and Claire MacDonald

November 2020
Cornell International Real Estate Case Competition
UBC Sauder team finished in 2nd place

November 2019
2019 UBC Sauder International Real Estate Case Competition
UBC Robson Square, Vancouver BC Canada

March 2019
NAIOP Pacific Northwest Real Estate Challenge
Site in Belltown, Seattle.
10 Sauder 4th year undergraduate students participated with the support by Henderson Development (Canada) Ltd.

March 2019
Undergraduate Real Estate Case Competition - sponsored by University of Guelph in Toronto Site in Toronto
6 Sauder 4th and 3rd year undergraduate students competed.

November 2018
Cornell International Real Estate Case Competition
6 Sauder 4th year undergrads competed with the support by QuadReal Property Group.

Bentall Kennedy supports the COMM307 Real Estate Investment final project, providing site data, information, and site visits to create a more real world experience of commercial asset valuation for the students for their final class investment analysis project.

Brook Pooni Associates supports the C408 Real Estate Development final project, providing site data, information so the students for their development proposal are working with realistic data.