From the Field

Keep up with UW Stout coop education and internship experiences.

Unexpected Commission

So last week our office was experiencing a little bit of a hectic rush. I was just casually sitting at my desk doing some work through our CRM program and all of a sudden I was asked if I could do a tour. I happily agreed to do it, however […]

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Bus Tour

Yesterday, various Bigos employees and myself boarded a bus and went around touring some of the other properties Bigos owned. It was interesting to see all the different layouts and amenities of other properties. It was like going on a showing but with a whole crew of property managers/leasing agents […]

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Office Cleanup

This week has been extremely slow for me so I have been asking my coworkers if they have anything for me to do to keep myself busy. I talked the special services manager and he had some cleaning around the office that he had been meaning to get to but […]

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Oaks Hiawatha Station

I spent the last four days working at a property over in Hiawatha, while the manager was gone on vacation. It is always nice to get out of the home office and get out onsite.

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Corporate Leases

Signed my first corporate lease today and boy was it for some huge money. They signed a lease for 3 months that was close to double what a 12 month lease term was. That should boost our revenue this quarter by a ton. It’s honestly like having another unit to […]

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The Final Stretch

As the last week in my internship my boss is making sure I have the opportunity to learn everything I can. Today we’re going through some deposit accounting that needs to be done to return security deposits for people that moved out last week. We go through the units and […]

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Made My First Commission!

As an interning leasing agent we are allowed to receive Commission on apartments we rent to people. At my previous property I had leased an apartment to somebody during my last week there and just received notice that I will be receiving commission for what I did. It’s a great […]

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Capital Improvements

Last week I had to attend a meeting on how Bigos goes about remodeling their apartments and facilities. It covered how they go about the process and some of the things that they keep in mind during the renovation process. It was interesting to hear how the design team goes […]

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Tutorials

A couple of weeks ago we had a constructive brain storming activity with most of the employees in the northern branch. A lot of the criticism was towards our hours system called blueforce. It is a difficult program to operate but with a little playing around it becomes fairly easy. […]

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Phone Screening

Last week I had to phone screen over 30 applicants for our open positions. I called using my cell phone in a different room so I could hear the conversation. I left voicemails for 80% of the people I called and left them my desk phone to call back. By […]

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Cost Plus Billing

Last week I had the pleasure of joining the accounting team for Cost Plus Billing. I put together countless pages of billing for each manager to confirm the costs accrued throughout the month. At the end of the week I had to scan each packet to the manager so they […]

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Boiling Point

The tensions between our day manager and the staff at International Plaza finally boiled over at the end of last week. A new manager at the building has been hovering over our manager for the last couple of days and it caused her to break down. She was in tears […]

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Hines Proposal

Still no word on if we won the Hines bid for the properties of Wells Fargo Center, Mayo Clinic Square, Galleria, 50 South Sixth, International Plaza, U.S. Bank Plaza but It from the projects I worked on last week, it sounds like they want to switch to a flat fee […]

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Maintenance Program

Last week I found out that we have no preventative maintenance program in our company. I found this to be very odd because we use so many different types of equipment that require maintenance. I have been producing a simple preventative maintenance guide for our managers to use to reduce […]

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