Broker Leaves the Family Firm to Set Up His Own Shop

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Michael Dunn started working at a real estate brokerage as an obligation, but it became his profession of choice.


“I felt compelled to take a look at it after graduation because of the family’s involvement and also because I wouldn’t want to look back after 20 years and regret not having tried it,” said Dunn, the founder and president of Dunn Property Group, a new firm providing brokerage and advisory services to owners and tenants of business real estate.


Dunn was a ski instructor for a year before he joined Charles Dunn, his grandfather’s commercial real estate firm, in 1987. Moving through a variety of positions, Dunn was most recently executive vice president and regional sales manager for the company, dealing mostly in brokerage management.


His new venture, an independent firm where he’s the sole practitioner with about a dozen clients, allows him to get back into brokerage transactions and work directly with clients, which has been his goal for a while. He plans to begin building a staff soon.


“I have thought about it for years and it is going to be an entirely different experience,” Dunn said.


Dunn said he intends to focus on commercial and industrial real estate areas due to the experience he’s accrued during his 20 years in the sector. He specializes in investment sales and leasing, land selection and landlord and tenant representation.


He will be drawing on the relations he’s built over the years. His client base includes individual investors, boutique law firms, the Los Angeles Unified School District and the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles.


Dunn is a sixth-generation Californian whose family has been involved in the real estate business for decades. He graduated in 1985 from Gonzaga University with a degree in business administration.


Dunn lives in Pasadena with his wife, Kelly, whom he met at a wedding of two Gonzaga alums a few years after he graduated. They have three children, ages 12, 10 and 8.

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