Samantha and Naiomi are two of the three dedicated real estate trainees that started their traineeship at Brodies in 2016. Mary Ellen has already written a blog about this traineeship, which you can read here, and this post aims to highlight the wide range of work and transactions that you may be involved in in the Real Estate department by comparing Samantha and Naiomi's first seats in two different teams; Samantha's in Land and Rural Business and Naiomi's in Commercial Property.
You may understandably be asking 'two seats in the same department, won't you just be doing the same things for both seats?' Our answer is not at all! You would be surprised at the varied work that we have been involved in in our respective seats.
Naiomi
I have recently completed my first seat in Commercial Property. Transactions in this team mainly relate to the sale/purchase or lease of shops and shopping centres, industrial units and offices. Most of the transactions that I was involved in related to commercial leasing. This allowed me to develop my drafting skills and I drafted documents such as leases, lease assignation, rent reviews and contracts. I also gained a lot of experience with the registration of documents, property searches and the Registers of Scotland.
I was involved in some larger transactions which entailed working with a number of departments across Brodies such as Banking, Construction and Commercial. This helped me to gain some insight into these departments and prompted me to apply to Banking for my second seat, which I am currently in.
Being a part of larger transactions was a great experience and I was given a lot of responsibility when managing high volumes of documents. It was great to feel like an important part of a transaction, especially on completion!
Even within the commercial property teams, there are a wide range of transactions that you may be asked to get involved in- other teams primarily focus on purchases and sales, for example.
Samantha
The Land and Rural Business team at Brodies is involved in transactions across many areas, including farming, forestry, plot sales, rural housing and estates. Spending my first seat in this team has allowed me to experience work across these areas. I was involved in a variety of different transactions within each area and drafted documents from dispositions and deeds of servitude to tenancy agreements and forestry offers.
I was also able to examine the title of several older properties which gave me the opportunity to really put my Diploma conveyancing skills to the test!
Being involved in work across different areas was great as no two days were the same and it meant I was constantly learning. Trainees at Brodies spend 8 months in each seat and this allowed me to see several transactions through from start to finish; there is always a great sense of achievement seeing what you have been working on to completion. I also had the opportunity to work alongside other departments such as Corporate and Personal & Family.
Like Naiomi, I have had a great deal of experience with registering documents and the Registers of Scotland which has given me a good head start with my second seat in Commercial Property - I'm looking forward to seeing a different side of Real Estate.
Conclusion
Doing a dedicated real estate traineeship is a great way to gain a variety of skills (e.g. drafting skills and problem-solving) and to experience different aspects of real estate. Although there were many differences between our seats there were also a lot of similarities.
In both seats, the required core skills were the same, for example, organisation and attention to detail, and we were both exposed to early responsibility. However, it was interesting for us to discover how different our experiences were and the different transactions and work that we were a part of.
We discovered that while Commercial Property often involves newer properties which are land registered, Land and Rural Business is more likely to require digging out old deeds for properties still on the Sasine Register.
For anyone who has an interest in real estate, we would both highly recommend the dedicated traineeship and would encourage you to get in touch if you want to find out more.
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