Meet our Four on Friday guest and medical real estate guru, Lee Eastwood, CCIM. Lee has worked with Atlanta’s largest healthcare providers including Emory Healthcare, Grady Health System, Kaiser Permanente, Northside Hospital System, Saint Joseph’s Hospital and many of the area’s medical and dental practices. In 2004, she founded Eastwood Real Estate Services, a commercial real estate firm specializing in medical and dental transactions. A past CREW Atlanta president and co-founder of CREW Leadership, Lee recently won the national Career Advancement Award from Crew Network. CREW is also where Lee met her business partner, Christine Gorham, CCIM and legal counsel, Hartman Simons’ Lori Kilberg. Lee, thanks for sharing more information about your firm and some interesting medical real estate trends! (Check back next week for a Four on Friday with Lee’s partner in crime Christine Gorham!)
HS: Eastwood Real Estate Services is a boutique firm focused in medical real estate. How did you get into this niche?
LE: I used to work on the landlord side of leasing office space for a number of large development firms. In 1989, I leased 30,000 square feet to Kaiser Permanente for the company’s first Atlanta clinic. Through the transaction, I started to learn the unique challenges related to medical real estate. At this point I was hooked. I worked at Cousins Properties doing leasing and marketing for their medical building portfolio before I started Eastwood Real Estate Services. (Pictured below: Lee & Christine discussing medical office space with a client)
HS: How has a struggling office market affected your business?
LE: It has drastically increased our business. Some of the larger firms along with owners have referred medical clients and/or listings to us because of our expertise in the medical arena.
HS: How has CREW helped you and your firm?
LE: Even though we are a boutique firm, CREW helps us meet other women in the industry and provides us with a wide range of resources. There are so many different types of jobs and careers in the commercial real estate industry and CREW has representation from most areas. For example, we don’t have engineers or architects on our staff, but CREW allows us to tap into a lot of these resources without having them on our payroll.
HS: When you are not working, what keeps you busy?
LE: My grandson. He inspires me everyday. Even though he has Cystic Fibrosis, he recently received his black belt and is one of the youngest black belts at his academy.