Zachary Tran, WH ’27, San Jose, CA
This summer I had the opportunity to work at Realty Operations Group in Jersey City, New Jersey. I was eager to start this internship to extend my studies as Real Estate concentration in Wharton with a summer of hands-on real-world experiences that I could carry into the start of my career. As a Property Management intern, I was tasked with handling and streamlining new Resident move-in experiences in five luxury apartment buildings.
As the internship progressed, I was consistently tasked with projects that allowed me to problem solve in increasingly difficult ways. A key takeaway from this particular experience for me was that a building, in many ways, is far more complicated than any financial model I may build in my courses. Between boilers, elevators, residents, and staff, the opportunity for a problem to arise and a cog in the system to break happened each day. I was thankful to shadow many team members at Realty Operations, who through their work experience and through a summer filled with operational puzzles, mentored and showed myself and the other interns what it took to understand and upkeep a portfolio with over 3500 units and thousands more tenants.
An extreme but memorable instance of a problem was the balcony renovations done on a particular apartment building. Over the summer, despite never expecting to do so, I learned more about balconies than I could have imagined. I also learned what it took to manage a massive renovation project and how management works with engineers and contractors to complete such projects.
Overall, this internship was positive in various ways. Most importantly for me, this internship truly provided a unique opportunity for learning. As someone who treasures being a student first, this summer allowed me to learn lessons that may never be replicated in my coursework and to build a network of strong, intelligent, and hardworking people already in the real estate industry. I have no qualms about this summer, and I feel empowered to continue my career in real estate and my degree in real estate for the next two years and far beyond.
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2025 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here
