Vilma Chau

Partner and Senior Vice President

Lee & Associates

Claim to Fame: Top supermarket broker

Few real estate brokers like to specialize in narrow sectors because it tends to limit their production. But that usually isn’t a problem when the sector is supermarkets, which have been consolidating at a blistering pace in Southern California.

As a commercial broker for Lee & Associates in the City of Industry, Vilma Chau helps key clients like Ralphs Grocery Co. unload excess real estate assets. In a dizzying series of deals, Ralphs’ parent acquired a number of local chains, including Hughes, before itself being swallowed up by Kroeger Co. The result was a good deal of excess stores that had to be sold off.

Chau often finds that ethnic supermarkets can replace the big chains. She helped Latino retailer Maxi Foods take over a 27,000-square-foot former Alpha Beta in Riverside and leased a 40,000-square-foot site that once housed Ralphs to Super Foods Asian supermarket in Garden Grove.

“I sort of fell into this and it’s worked out well for me,” said the native of Hong Kong. “Whether this would have been a niche in the 1980s is questionable.”

Prior to real estate, Chau oversaw the finances of operations like Conroy’s Inc., Wham-O Inc. and Johnston Pump Co. But she didn’t find the work terribly fulfilling.

“I was ready for something else. In accounting, you don’t talk to people very much and you have to be very exact,” Chau said. “With real estate, you still have the paperwork, but you also build great relationships, and I felt my personality was suited for that.”

Armed with a commercial broker’s license, she left Conroy’s in 1990 and worked independently for four years. She then signed on with Grubb & Ellis, where in 1995 she was the top retail producer in her district. At the time, she was on the only women broker in the office.

She joined Lee & Associates in 1996 and over the past three years has become one of L.A.’s top retail brokers, concluding sale and lease transactions involving more than 500,000 square feet of real estate in Long Beach, Anaheim, Torrance, Garden Grove, Arcadia and El Toro.

“She’s a complete broker and she’ll handle all my problems,” said Don Wolsey, manager of leasing for Ralphs. “Whether she works to get my liquor license processed or works with the landlords to obtain consent forms for subletting the premises, we can rely on her to help move along escrow.”

Nola L. Sarkisian