Paid internships are hard to come by for students still in school, and Buddy Steele knows it. “Not many students are fortunate enough to get a paid internship while in school, and I’m now one of the lucky ones,” he says.
Steele, a senior pursuing a BA in Architecture with a minor in Real Estate Property Management, landed an eight-week summer position at Lincoln Property Company with help from Academic Director Michael Havlik.
Real work, right away
His biggest assignment was the 2027 operating budget for the PacWest Tower. Steele reached out to nearly 100 vendors who service and maintain the building and collected their rate quotes for the coming year. When a vendor couldn’t give him a number, he went back through historical charges and past rent increases and made his best estimate. He also helped with accounting and day-to-day operations.
For his final project, he pulled together the building’s July reports and presented his analysis of its performance, with the Lincoln team acting as the property’s owners. “I got to dive deep into these different reports and learn what their purpose is and what all of the data meant,” he says. “I learned so much about commercial properties and how they work.”
Beyond the office
Steele also shadowed Lincoln’s project managers, helping oversee tenant improvement projects and studying permit sets and floor plans. He toured several of the company’s properties, including the Wells Fargo Tower, Terminal 1, The Ritz-Carlton, the Historic Bank Block Building, the Tigard Triangle, Milwaukie Marketplace, and learned how each one operates, particularly on the engineering side. The team even set up an informal sit-down with a local architect so he could hear about that career firsthand.
“I could tell that they really went out of their way to give me as much exposure as possible, and I really appreciated that,” Steele says. “They certainly did not treat me as just a lowly intern.”
The people
Ask him what he’ll remember most, and it isn’t the budget. “Everyone that I worked with at Lincoln was so kind, generous, and helpful,” he says. “I made really valuable friendships there, and I’m going to miss them.” On his last day, the team took him to lunch, and a group got together for drinks after work.
What’s next
The summer has changed how Steele thinks about his future. “This opportunity was so fun and insightful that I would now consider a career in commercial property management,” he says, “and I would certainly vouch for Lincoln and their character.”