Lee & Associates Launches Investment Group

Lee ISG will provide all of the Lee offices with research, financial analysis and strategic services and facilitate referrals between the buy and sell side of transactions.As for why the 35-office brokerage firm is starting the investment sales group at a time when sour news and dour outlooks dominate the news, Benton says that changing market conditions have prompted many experienced brokers to question their current situations, and those are the types of brokers that Lee typically recruits. "In summary, recruiting is much easier than it might be in a stronger market," Benton says.

Another factor in Lee's decision is that changing market conditions are going to produce new types of transactions, and Lee wants to be ready to execute them, such as troubled loans, REOs and other types of transactions. "Somebody has to deal with that, and the winners in a market like this will be those who are flexible enough to change their business model to accommodate and adjust to the new market conditions," Benton says.

The new group will place Lee in a better position when the market eventually turns around, Benton adds. "This is a great time to build. We will have a great base and will be ready whenever the market turns," he says. Lee ISG is also expected to help the company retain leasing assignments that it might otherwise lose when property owners give investment sales assignments to other brokerages and the eventual buyer brings in a different brokerage for the leasing assignment, he points out.

[IMGCAP(2)]In addition to Benton, the new Lee group includes Matt Sullivan, a 25-year industry veteran who was responsible for forming the Private Client Advisory Group at Colliers International, who joins Lee ISG as founding principal and managing director; and Stephen F. Peters, a former Wall Street bond trader with extensive experience in capital markets at several of the street's largest firms, who joins as a principal.

Lee ISG will focus on all product types including office, industrial, retail and multifamily properties and will provide "a central base of operations from which to launch national and regional transactional strategies," according to a prepared statement quoting Phil Royster, who joined Lee in July as president of strategic growth to oversee the firm's expansion, including the formation of Lee ISG. Lee ISG will enable the firm to capitalize on the firm's strong leadership position in the middle market and increase the company's presence in the institutional investment market, Royster says.

Benton tells GlobeSt.com that the intent of the new investment group is to focus initially on California and to expand into other parts of the country next year, but he adds that Lee is already closing investment transactions throughout the country. The Downtown ISG office will probably grow to no more than about 10 or 12 brokers but will network with investment sales specialists in the other offices of the Lee organization, in which the offices all operate autonomously and are broker-owned. "Our plan is to work with the alliances that are already in place in the existing Lee offices," Benton says.

Mike Tingus, president of Lee & Associates-LA North/Ventura Inc., who was instrumental in establishing Lee ISG within the Lee platform, says that the new group will bring a "nimble, entrepreneurial approach" to investment sales at a time when changing market conditions require such an approach more than ever.With the opening of the Downtown ISG office, Lee & Associates grows to 35 offices nationwide. In the last six months, the firm has added offices in Palm Desert and Santa Barbara, CA and Boise, ID. In addition to California and Idaho, the 29-year-old firm has offices in Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Texas and Wisconsin.