Mike Dunn Forms New Brokerage

Dunn, whose new offices are downtown, formerly served as EVP and regional sales manager of the Charles Dunn Co., which his father and his uncle, Joseph and Richard Dunn, sold about 10 years ago to current Charles Dunn Chairman Walter Conn.

Dunn, who is a 20-year veteran of the commercial real estate industry, tells GlobeSt.com that leaving the Charles Dunn company was "very difficult" and that he never considered going to a competing brokerage firm. If he had decided to return to transaction work without starting his own business, "I would have stayed with Charles Dunn," he says.

After eight years in brokerage management, Dunn had decided that he wanted to make a change, he explains, and he was looking at a number of options. "I wanted to get back into transaction work, and staying with Charles Dunn was a very viable option, but I decided that I wanted to do something on my own," he says.

Dunn had been in his management post at Charles Dunn since 1997. The Charles Dunn Co. this week named Joe Faulkner, executive managing director, as its new regional manager to succeed Mike Dunn. Faulkner is a 25-year industry veteran whose career has included posts with some of L.A.'s leading brokerage firms and who also ran his own firm, the Faulkner Co., in the 1980s.

Mike Dunn says that he "had a great experience on the management side," but wanted to get back into servicing clients full time. "The Charles Dunn Co. is having a great year, and I figured it would be better to make this transition with the company in a strong position financially," he says. "It was the right time."Dunn says his new company will provide "comprehensive brokerage and advisory services to owners and users of business real estate. It will draw on his background in investment sales, land sales, site selection and landlord and tenant representation.

Dunn's clients have ranged from individual investors and boutique law firms to the Los Angeles Unified School District and the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles. Some of the work he will be doing at his new company will involve the Dunn family's own real estate portfolio, and he will offer property management services for his clients through his cousin Matthew's Conway Real Estate Services.

Dunn's family has deep roots in the Southern California real estate community. His great-grandfather, Albert C. Martin Sr., was a prominent early 20th-century Los Angeles architect; his grandfather, Charles J. Dunn, founded the Charles Dunn Co. His father and his uncle Richard built Charles Dunn into a leading brokerage and real estate services firm before selling out to the current ownership.