I just started my internship at a real estate company in October. I have been lucky enough to get to watch people at work and see how they use technology. In doing so I found how the technology is related to the business and the way it is run and the way things are different today than they were back in the day.
November 3
David Attaway is the map guy at our office. He is by far the most technologically advanced person. He is using Arc GIS which is a very new program. It is a mapping software that allows him to move to any location in the US and find out different statistics, facts, and other information on a certain locations and areas. He can literally point to a location, and ask to say I want to get a demographic report of everything that is within a 3 mile radius. For example, he did a map of the Denver area for the grocery chain Sprouts. We know that sprouts likes 3 mile area demographics with over $85,00 in average household income and a college graduate percentage of 45%. So with this technology, he makes a map that puts a tack on all the locations have these demographics, thus making them good sites for us to build a Sprouts on. With this we are able to not only decide what we think is a good deal, but we can also show Sprouts that we know what they want. We are thinking like we are Sprouts. In the past to find information like this you would have to go through many different databases of information, but now you can just click away and it gives you this information.
November 11
Austin Sheen is the finance guy at the office. He uses excel on a constant basis. One of the most important things in our business is seeing if a deal is a good deal or a loser. Austin uses excel by having a standard excel page set up with 3 different tabs that include the budget, pro-forma, and the one pager. All of the different items are linked together. Austin has to take the budget numbers that he gets from the construction guys, and put them down in the construction tab. Then those numbers are transferred to the pro-forma. Then at the bottom of this page there are some soft costs that are estimated, but then there are also soft costs that are calculated by the numbers above them. For example the commissions on the sheet are a factor of the annual rent but it moves every 5 years because of bumps. Also this sheet calculates at the bottom the total price of the project and the cap rate which is a huge determining factor. One the one pager all the financing comes together as it shows how everything stacks up and if the deal makes money or loses money at a particular cap rate. This decides if we can do the deal or not, and maybe if we need to change one or two things in the current numbers.
November 20
One thing when buying pieces of land, you have to know what the rights are on that land. Looking up deed restrictions used to be, and still is a big pain. The difference now is that you can look them up online because they have been PDF’ed into the respective websites. It used to be that you would have to go all the way to the county clerk house, which would be time consuming when we are doing deals out of town.
November 25
Black Berry is the new thing obviously. Everyone at work has one that is synced through the internet to our server at the office. This is a really good tool for letting everyone stay connected to their internet especially since many of the people around the office are out of the office getting work done. Also though, it is a big problem when they aren’t working. The server for the blackberry’s went down and all hell broke loose. We had to have the tech guy in fixing everything and for 90 minutes everyone was freaking out.
December 5
Wireless internet is definitely a blessing because you don’t have to have wires all over the place to connect. In our office everything is synced up through these wireless servers. The problem is that with many offices that when the connection is lost for whatever reason, then you are really in trouble. I was trying to get out of work on a Friday but I couldn’t print out or save anything when my internet went down. I had everything done ready to print but I couldn’t get it sent to the printer and I couldn’t just close my computer off because I needed to save to the server. The problem is when something goes array, it makes things very difficult.
- How do you envision yourself using technology in your professional life?
I have no doubt that I will be using technology to the fulest for the rest of my professional life. It is so imporatant that you are able to be on top of what is the new technology so that you don’t get beat out by the youngsters.
- What obstacles do you foresee and how can you overcome them?
I definitely need to learn how to use the keyboard shut cuts more often as well as figure out how the internet works. When we have problem with the technology, instead of just knowing there is a problem, I need to figure out how to fix it.
- What skills do you have and what other skills will you need to accomplish this?
I honestly have no idea about getting the internet hooked up other than the network key login. My point is that if work is going to run off of that compter, it would be in the best interest to be able to fix a problem that we have later?
- How will you continue to utilize your blog in your personal and professional life?
I think that the blog is a great tool to use in order to help commuicate, especially on a certain basis of time. It allows people to stay current but not expexct ot have to respond at any ime soon.
- How will you teach others about the use of technology in their personal and professional life?
I think that it will be important to hand down everything that I learn so that others can learn. I will teach others that if we want to be the best and ahead we have to use technology to keep up.
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