Sometimes the best opportunities are the ones you never planned for. For me, one of those opportunities was my student internship in property advisory.
When I first began my university journey, I imagined a career in commerce through a very narrow lens. Think financial planning, commercial banking, investment analysis, and corporate finance. Property was never a part of that picture. Not because it wasn’t interesting or I had already ruled it out, but because it had simply never crossed my mind. After all, what does property have to do with a commerce degree?
My first-year university self would have told you plain and simple. “Very little. One relates to selling houses, the other is all about numbers”.
But as it turns out, and as I’ve come to learn, my answer would now be “Quite a lot”.
If there’s one thing my internship has taught me, it’s just how much commerce and property go hand in hand, and that property advisory is the career pathway I never knew existed.
Why Property Advisory?
If you’re anything like me, when you hear the words property, your mind instantly turns to real estate and selling houses. But as I’ve come to learn, property encompasses much more than that.
Property advisory is a key part of the property industry, but it is also one that many commerce students may not immediately know exists. Property advisory is about helping clients make considered decisions about the spaces they occupy, invest in or manage. It can encompass a broad range of services, including identifying and analysing different portfolio or property options, advising on a new project or identifying opportunities to make better use of existing assets. The work spans different commercial markets and draws on a mix of market research, financial thinking, strategy and problem-solving.
Property advisory encourages you to think bigger. Not just about property as a physical asset, but about the broader role it plays.
Property advisory is ultimately about making informed decisions. You acquire the data, work through it, and use your findings to reach a conclusion. And a commerce degree just so happens to be the perfect toolkit for making those decisions.
The Commerce degree toolkit
Throughout my internship, I have found many similarities between the terminology and concepts used in property and those I have encountered throughout my commerce degree. One of the clearest examples is the law of supply and demand.
Commerce students will instantly recall the cross-shaped graphs that graced their economics class lecture slides and notebooks. As demand increases, prices rise; as supply increases, prices fall. In property, this same foundational theory becomes something much more tangible and practical. It appears in office spaces and warehouses, dictates core market metrics and ultimately drives tenant and landlord decisions.
We clearly see this relationship through several market metrics.
The metric of vacancy refers to the proportion of space within a market that is unoccupied and available for lease. When vacancy is high, there is more space available than tenants are willing or able to occupy. Through a commerce lens, this translates to high supply and low demand. When vacancy is high, we see rents decrease, landlords offering incentives to stimulate demand, and the market ultimately shifting to an environment that gives tenants greater choice and negotiating power. When vacancy is low, the opposite occurs, creating an environment of low supply and high demand. We see a landlord favoured market, in which prices increase, landlord incentives diminish, and space becomes competitive.
Absorption further illustrates the supply and demand narrative. It measures the change in occupied space over a period of time by comparing how much space tenants have moved into with how much space has been vacated. Positive absorption means more space is being occupied than returned to the market, signalling stronger tenant demand. Negative absorption means more space is being handed back than taken up, often pointing to softer demand or changing occupier needs.
These metrics reflect the forces of supply and demand and, when considered alongside other market factors, help shape the state of the market.
Through combining concepts from my commerce degree, such as the law of supply and demand, with skills in data analysis, critical thinking, and financial evaluation, I have had the opportunity to apply my learnings in ways that I never thought were possible. When I now encounter market data, I don’t look at it with confusion and ponder what it means. I think back to my commerce foundations, apply the theory and use it to piece together the story of what’s happening in the market. That is, I use my commerce degree toolkit.
The takeaway
I have found my commerce degree to be an extremely useful and versatile foundation for my career, opening doors to a range of career paths like investment analysis, commercial banking, financial planning, or even corporate finance. But it has also introduced me to opportunities I had never previously considered, including like property advisory.
Property advisory is exciting, challenging and yet deeply rewarding because it brings together many of the skills commerce students already spend years developing: analysis, problem-solving, critical thinking and decision-making. Whether it is helping a client find the right office, supporting a procurement process, or shaping a long-term property strategy, the work is practical, tangible and grounded in real outcomes.
For commerce students looking to challenge themselves and apply their degree in a way they may not have previously considered, property advisory is a career path worth exploring.
After all, sometimes the best opportunities are the ones you never planned for.