Property Operations Assistant Internship

by Inga Markevich

I performed my internship at the main office of Mercy Housing California.

During my internship I was assisting one of the Area Directors of Property Operations, Ms. Judy Shepard-Hall.

My daily responsibilities were:

Ø  Checking the voice messages and reporting to my supervisor if she was not in the office.

Ø  Checking and allocating the incoming mail between the property managers by scanning and e-mailing.

Ø  Sorting and filing documentation by properties in alphabetical order.

Once a week I was responsible for checking the status of weekly payments and approving payables through the company’s online system.

Also I performed different tasks such as:

ü  Working in Excel and preparing budget documentation for the properties. Mostly, I was transferring information from one document to another, following the instructions and standard format of the document.

ü  Updating information about personnel and providing it to the Department of Human Resources.

Most of the time I was working on preparing various documents for one of the new Mercy properties that will be opened by the end of this year. I updated the management plan, the resident selection criteria document, the lease agreement, and created a project description document for this property. This part of my internship was very challenging but interesting because I had to deal with lots of unfamiliar information and look for details about the project on the Internet and Mercy’s website. 

I had a chance to visit the construction area of this property and attended a power point presentation presented by the project architect. That was a very interesting experience and my first time at a construction area.

In addition, at my internship I attended a couple of business meetings with my supervisor. This allowed me to meet many people and feel the real work atmosphere of a large company.

Overall, I can say that I really enjoyed my internship at Mercy Housing California. I have learned a lot about the company and the whole process of developing and operating affordable housing for particular segments of the population. Plus, I gained good office experience in a wide non-profit organization. Even though my supervisor is a very busy person, and sometimes it was very hard for me to reach her, my internship at Mercy Housing California was a pleasant, challenging, and very knowledgeable experience.