Lee & Associates

Lee & Associates is a commercial real estate firm structured so that each office is owned and operated by the real estate professionals working in it, who hold shares in the company. The first office opened in Orange County, California in 1979, and the company's reach now extends across the United States and Canada.

Each office offers the services its market needs, drawn from commercial brokerage, property management, valuation, asset management and finance. The wider platform adds a Capital Advisory Group for debt and equity financing, construction and project management, contract and vendor management, engineering and building operations, lease compliance and administration, supply chain and logistics, and a practice for nonprofit, education and faith-based clients.

Governance runs bottom-up rather than top-down: each office has its own President who makes recommendations to the Board of Directors and Advisory Board, which work with the CEO and corporate team. On the management side the firm states that its accounting procedures are Sarbanes-Oxley compliant, that it runs MRI X and Yardi with PayScan and AvidXchange for invoice processing, and that monthly reporting packages include budget-to-actual variance analysis, rent rolls, aging detail, balance sheet and depreciation schedules and bank reconciliations. It publishes quarterly economic and North America market reports.

Because every office is separately owned, the depth of specialty, the fee terms and the service experience vary by market. The company's own growth list runs from Irvine, California in 1979 to Gainesville, Florida in 2026, so the right question is which local office covers the asset and market in question, and who there has traded that product type.