After purchasing a former bank near Dallas North Tollway and Belt Line Road earlier this month, brokerage firm Lee & Associates will move into the new office around the end of the year as it bulks up its office tenant rep division.
While many brokerage firms are relocating to amenity-rich office in denser submarkets, Lee & Associates purposely chose to acquire in a suburban location with surface parking. “We see a lot of competitors going to Uptown or Frisco, and other companies are deciding the same thing. We decided the best long-term play for us is to be right in the middle so we can be close to clients on either end [of the Tollway],” Lee & Associates Co-Managing Principal Trey Fricke says.
The interior of the 12,478-square-foot office at 14950 Quorum Dr. in Dallas will be demolished, in part, and remodeled by Entos Design. It plans to move in by the end of the year or early 2019. The office sits on 1.9 acres and has the capacity to turn an additional 8,000 square feet into usable office space. “We just started an office tenant rep division with plans to expand that, so this expansion ability gives us room to grow,” Lee & Associates Managing Principal Ken Wesson says. Currently, the DFW office of Lee & Associates has two brokers focusing in office tenant rep, and is looking to “grow organically.” In total, the DFW office has about 25 brokers, predominantly focused on industrial real estate.
Lee & Associates also allowed senior agents to invest in the new office. “We got a good response from that,” Fricke says. “All the partners who wanted to invest did and we raised our goal of equity within about a day or two of sending out the memo.” Additional terms of the deal were not disclosed. As of Jan. 1, 2018, the site has both a market and appraised value of $3,962,290, according to the Dallas County Appraisal District.
