March 24, 2021 - The Southern California-grown real estate firm Lee & Associates is opening a new satellite office in Nashville, Tennessee, that specializes in industrial properties, office stock, investment and land brokerage.

The company, based in Los Angeles, has been actively planting offices in growing Southern cities for the past three years. Lee & Associates' arrival, and the areas of commercial real estate it is focusing on, show Nashville's growing clout as a logistics and warehousing hub.

"[Nashville] has been on our strategic expansion roadmap and allows us to continue growing our presence in the Southeast," Lee & Associates CEO Jeffrey Rinkov said in a statement. "The first-class support provided by our Atlanta office will allow us to aggressively recruit seasoned agents in the market."

As a metropolitan statistical area, the Nashville region ranks 36th in population, but it is the seventh-most active industrial construction market in the United States, according to CoStar analytics. The pace of industrial development in Nashville, which got a big boost from investments by e-retail giant Amazon, is comparable to much larger cities such as Dallas-Forth Worth, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix and Philadelphia.

That fact has not been lost on the real estate firm.

The branch will be led by William Sisk, a Nashville native who is transferring from Lee & Associates' Los Angeles offices. He specializes in industrial sales and leasing, along with industrial land assemblages. He will be joined by two associates: Brett Wallach, a former professional baseball player for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs and Miami Marlins, and Chad Matthews, a recent graduate of the University of Arizona.

A specific location for the office was not disclosed. The company said that during the initial start-up period, the Nashville office is expected to be supported by colleagues at Lee & Associates' Atlanta location.

Over the past three years, Lee & Associates has opened nine new offices, counting the Nashville location, and five are in the south. Recent additions include Naples, Florida; Boston, Massachusetts; Toronto, Canada; Washington, D.C.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Raleigh, North Carolina; Miami, Florida; and Spartanburg, South Carolina.