National real estate firm Lincoln Property Co. says it is now Southern California's largest third-party property management firm after acquiring an Orange County business with hundreds of office and industrial properties in the region.
The firm has purchased Brea-based Unire Real Estate Group via a "strategic investment" that adds more than 300 properties with 700 tenants to its growing management portfolio. Unire’s president and leadership team will remain in place and become investors in the new business, while founder and CEO Mark Harryman will step away from day-to-day operations but stay on as an adviser.
The deal vaults Lincoln past 110 million square feet under management in the region, including commercial properties ranging the spectrum of product types from the bustling Los Angeles ports to the suburban sprawl of Orange County, with another 500,000 square feet in San Diego.
Lincoln, based in Dallas, has developed projects totaling 150 million square feet across the U.S. and manages some 560 million additional square feet on behalf of institutional investors, making it one of the largest third-party property managers in the country.
Lincoln Property Co. has been working in recent years to consolidate Southern California’s fragmented property management sector through a series of acquisitions.
In 2023, the firm acquired RiverRock Real Estate Group, another Orange County-based operator with 50 million square feet under management. That move brought in founder John Combs as a key executive. The firm says it’s focused on scaling in core industrial and office markets with high long-term demand.
Southern California’s industrial and office markets remain under stress, with vacancy rates still elevated and owners under pressure to maximize tenant retention, according to CoStar research. At the same time, institutional owners are increasingly outsourcing management as they cut internal operating costs.
Lincoln’s latest investment aims to better position the firm to win a greater share of that demand, especially among logistics-driven portfolios connected to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, according to Chief Strategy Officer Ali Daubert.
Lincoln has signaled it’s not leaving expansion mode anytime soon.
“We are hyper-focused on investing in likeminded companies that enable us to scale in strategic markets where we have a strong foothold, and in sectors that have solid fundamentals,” Daubert said in a statement.