Archive of the Undergraduate Real Estate Scholars, the student real estate organization at the University of Houston's C.T. Bauer College of Business (2014–2026). Pages are preserved as they were published; the organization is no longer active and this site is not affiliated with the University of Houston.

Commercial Real Estate Internships

Guide · by the uhures.com archive editors · updated 2026-10-07

Checked in October 2026. Program details, dates, and pay change every recruiting cycle, so confirm each posting on the firm's own careers page before you apply.

Commercial real estate internships are paid, usually summer, work placements at brokerage, investment, development, or property management firms, where a student supports analysts and brokers on real work like underwriting deals, abstracting leases, and building market research. This guide explains what these internships actually involve, what they pay, when to apply, and where to find them, including ten programs that opened or ran in 2026.

URES was the student real estate organization at the University of Houston's Bauer College of Business, and internships were the main way its members moved from workshops into the industry. The archive's Industry Placements page lists the firms where members reported internships and jobs.html">Industry Placements page. You can see how membership worked on the Membership page.

What does a commercial real estate intern do?

A commercial real estate intern supports the analysts and brokers who move deals, and the day-to-day work is concrete. Across the job postings we reviewed, interns prepare market research, abstract leases, assemble rent rolls and comparable-property tables, help underwrite acquisitions, and build financial models in Microsoft Excel and ARGUS Enterprise. At a brokerage like Marcus & Millichap, interns work on Broker Opinion of Values (BOVs) and offering memorandums. At CBRE's property management track, the work is tenant relations, client reporting, budgeting, property inspections, and lease abstraction. The common thread is analysis, not coffee runs.

What you actually touch depends on the track. An analyst intern underwriting a deal is doing something very different from a marketing intern scheduling property events, even inside the same firm, so read the division before you apply.

What is the usual salary for a commercial real estate internship?

According to NACE (2025), the average bachelor's-degree intern across all industries earned $23.04 per hour. Commercial real estate sits on both sides of that number depending on city and role. Glassdoor data from 2026 lists CRE internship postings with employer-provided compensation from about $15 to $27 an hour. a 2026 JPMorgan Chase Commercial Real Estate Summer Analyst listing on Prosple shows $38.46 an hour, Cushman & Wakefield lists $21.25 to $25 an hour, and Marcus & Millichap lists $20 to $25 an hour.

Most CRE internships are paid hourly, which matters because it signals the firm is investing in you rather than asking for free labor. Pay also scales with job location and division: New York and San Francisco lead, and capital markets or investment roles pay more than property management.

How do I break into commercial real estate?

The entry path is the same whether your target is brokerage, lending, or development, and we wrote a full walkthrough in our guide on how to get into commercial real estate. The short version: pick a major in finance, accounting, economics, or real estate, join a student real estate organization, learn Excel and ARGUS Enterprise, and apply in the fall before the summer you want to work. For a deeper look at the analyst track specifically, see our guide on what a real estate analyst does.

Are unpaid internships a red flag?

Usually, yes, for a for-profit firm. The U.S. Department of Labor uses a seven-factor "primary beneficiary test" to decide whether an unpaid intern is really an employee who is owed minimum wage. If the internship gives the company more benefit than it gives you, or if you are doing the work of a paid employee, it fails the test. The major CRE programs in this guide are all paid. You will still see unpaid, commission-only "intern" roles in residential brokerage, and that is a different thing from a CRE internship at a corporate firm.

The main internship tracks

Commercial real estate splits into a few distinct roles, and the internship you choose decides the skills you leave with. Programs target a mix of undergraduate students, graduate students, and MBA candidates. Here is how the tracks compare.

Track	What interns do	Firms that hire this track
Brokerage and leasing	Market research, comps, BOVs, offering memorandums, client outreach	Marcus & Millichap, Transwestern, Cushman & Wakefield
Capital markets / acquisitions	Underwriting, valuation, financial modeling, due diligence	JPMorgan Chase, JLL, Cushman & Wakefield
Real estate development	Pro forma updates, budgeting, feasibility, deal economics	Hines, Transwestern
Property / asset management	Tenant relations, reporting, budgeting, inspections, lease abstraction	CBRE, Greystar, Transwestern
REIT / multifamily	Portfolio analysis, investment research, accounting	Camden Property Trust, Greystar

Analyst internships and marketing internships are not interchangeable, even at the same firm. The former needs Excel and financial modeling; the latter needs social media and event coordination. Confirm the division in the posting.

Verified 2026 internship programs

These eight programs were checked against official career pages or dated postings in 2025 and 2026; pay is shown only where a dated posting listed it. They are a starting list, not a live job board, and several have already closed for this cycle.

Firm	Track / division	Locations	Pay (where listed)
JPMorgan Chase	CRE Summer Analyst (Real Estate Banking, Community Development Banking, Agency Lending)	Per the posting open at application time	Not listed on the official page
CBRE	Capital Markets, Sales & Brokerage, Finance, Property Management, Investment Management	Multiple U.S. offices	Not listed
JLL	Capital Markets (Summer and Fall 2026)	Los Angeles, San Francisco	Not listed
Hines	Skyline Scholars, REDI (undergrad and MBA)	Multiple U.S. and global offices	Not listed
Cushman & Wakefield	Leasing, Capital Markets, Research, Valuation & Advisory	New York, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, others	$21.25-$25/hr (Summer 2027 posting)
Marcus & Millichap	Investment Brokerage	Las Vegas, Denver, Salt Lake City, Irvine, others	$20-$25/hr
Transwestern	Brokerage, Property Management, Investments / Development	Houston, Dallas, Austin, Chicago, others	Not listed
Greystar	Property Management, Property Accounting, Analytics	Multiple U.S. markets	$18-$22/hr (Property Management, Summer 2026)

Full program links are listed under Sources at the end of this page. Note that CBRE Investment Management stated it is not hiring U.S. interns or analysts for 2027, so check the parent CBRE careers hub for the active U.S. programs.

When to apply: the recruiting timeline

Commercial real estate recruiting runs almost a year ahead, and the firms in this guide open summer internship applications between August and October the year before. Hines opens its REDI undergrad program on August 1 and closes it October 3. Greystar opens applications in the fall for a program that starts the following June.

Treat the fall of your junior year as the deadline that matters. Each program sets its own application deadline, and pay and job location differ by office, so start early and apply to several firms rather than one.

Firms that hired URES members

The archive's Industry Placements page lists the firms where URES members reported internships and jobs while the organization was active, from 2014 through 2026. The list includes CBRE, JLL, Hines, Cushman & Wakefield, Greystar, Brookfield, Camden Property Trust, and Greystone, among others. Several of these firms appear in the verified program table above, which is one reason the archive kept the page as a reference. Camden Property Trust, for example, is a Houston-based multifamily REIT with roughly 1,600 employees that operated 168 properties as of August 2026.

If you are a current student, URES is no longer active, so treat that page as history and go straight to the firms' own careers pages, your university career center, and Handshake. The archive also points students toward local networking, which is covered in the guide linked above.

"I think my almost biggest mistake was trying to quit commercial real estate. I was eight and a half months in, and I walked in to quit."Ken Ashley, Executive Director at Cushman & Wakefield, author of The Prescription

An internship is how you test the field before committing, because the first months in commercial real estate are hard for everyone.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a real estate license to intern?

No, for analyst, capital markets, development, and property management roles. A license matters only if the internship is on the sales side of brokerage, and even there, firms like Marcus & Millichap list a real estate major, minor, or club membership as the requirement, not a license.

Can I intern with no prior real estate experience?

Yes. Most postings list prior experience as preferred, not required. Coursework in real estate, finance, or accounting, plus Excel, is what closes the gap.

Can an internship convert to full-time?

Often. JPMorgan Chase says high-performing summer analysts may receive offers of continued employment, and Cushman & Wakefield runs its CEO Leadership Development Program as a path toward a full-time rotation. Treat the internship as an extended interview.