Team Feature 
What a commercial real estate internship in Vancouver looks like when the city becomes part of the classroom.
This summer, Ryan Derbawka joined Floorspace for his first internship, while Charlie Lugsdin returned for his third.
Ryan was getting his first real exposure to commercial real estate. Charlie was already thinking seriously about a career in brokerage and spending more time alongside brokers and clients.
For both of them, the summer meant getting out into the market, contributing to research and market intelligence, and seeing more of what goes into advising clients.
For Ryan, it also changed the way he looked at Vancouver.
Walking downtown with friends, the streets were familiar — he had grown up here. But the buildings had stopped blending into the background. He started noticing who worked where, what was available and why one company might choose one building over another.
After a summer of walking buildings, he was simply seeing things he hadn’t before.
200 Buildings Later
Ryan spent the summer getting to know Vancouver building by building.
He spent a lot of time out in the city, moving through Downtown, Yaletown and the Broadway Corridor, walking office buildings and learning the market one address at a time.
The questions started as a simple checklist:
- Who’s in the building?
- What space is available?
- What condition is the building in?
- What are tenants paying?
- What’s changing?
- Why would one company choose this building over another?
At first, it was a lot of information. Ryan says it was probably around the tenth day of walking buildings that things started to click naturally.
After that, the details stopped sitting separately.
A rent number meant more once he had actually been inside the building. A tenant move meant more once he understood what else was nearby. The market started to feel less like a spreadsheet and more like something happening around him in real time.
By the end of the summer, he had walked more than 200 buildings across the Lower Mainland.
More important than the number was what came with it.He started recognizing buildings from a distance. He knew which ones had changed. He understood why certain addresses carried more weight than others.
That knowledge also contributes to Floorspace’s broader market intelligence, helping keep the information behind our brokerage work and FLO, our proprietary technology platform, grounded in what is actually happening in the market.
Three Summers In
Charlie was coming back with two summers of experience behind him. That familiarity meant he could spend less time figuring out how things worked and more time getting closer to the part of the business he was actually interested in: brokerage.
He joined more client meetings and property tours, helped prepare materials, and spent time listening to conversations between brokers, tenants and landlords. Along the way, he started picking up on the nuances of the business:
- How people framed a question
- What clients cared about that never showed up in a spreadsheet
- When a building that looked good on paper didn’t feel right in person
- How much of the job came down to judgment, timing and relationships
With Ryan joining for his first summer, Charlie also found himself on the other side of the learning curve once in a while.
He found himself able to answer questions and provide context that he wouldn’t have been able to two summers earlier. It was a small shift, but a good measure of how much had changed since his first summer at Floorspace.
Then, at the end of the summer, came his real estate exam.
Everyone knew he was nervous, and everyone was waiting for the result. After several refreshes of the page, the message finally came through: 91%.
After three summers getting progressively closer to brokerage, it was a fitting way to finish this one — and another step toward the career he has been working toward.
Two Views of the Market
One project brought Ryan and Charlie’s summers together: Floorspace Signals, our biweekly LinkedIn series.
Every two weeks, we share a handful of stories we’re paying attention to across commercial real estate, business and workplace strategy in Vancouver. Ryan and Charlie helped identify potential stories, research the details and think through why they mattered.
For Charlie, it was another way to stay connected to what was happening across the market beyond the assignments directly in front of him.
For Ryan, it complemented what he was learning out in the city. The buildings gave him one view of the market; Signals gave him another.
Charlie was increasingly seeing the market through the lens of brokerage and client conversations. Ryan was learning it building by building. By the end of the summer, both had a much better sense of how the pieces fit together.
The View from August
When Ryan was asked what he would miss most, he didn’t mention the buildings or the data. He said the conversations in the office.
Charlie’s answer was similar: the team.
Ryan came in expecting plenty of Excel and data entry. He left with a much stronger understanding of how the market worked and a clearer sense that real estate was something he wanted to keep pursuing.
Charlie came back already knowing where he wanted to go. He left with more time around brokers and clients, more responsibility than the summer before, and a 91% real estate exam result behind him.
The city had not changed between May and August. They were simply seeing more of it.
