Our history

Building since 1978.

Transwestern began as a Houston development company founded by Robert Duncan. Nearly five decades later, we're still privately held, still family-led, and still building — a firm grown deliberately, one team and one market at a time.

Where it started

A development shop with a services soul.

Robert Duncan founded Transwestern in Houston in 1978 as a real estate development company. When the recession of the late 1980s reshaped the industry, the firm did what it has done ever since: adapted. Transwestern rebuilt itself as a services business, then spent the next three decades expanding across the West, Southwest, Midwest and East — organically and through partnerships with respected local firms.

Today Robert serves as Chairman, working alongside seasoned leadership teams — and his sons, who serve as principals on Transwestern's Board of Directors. That continuity is rare in this industry, and it shapes how we work: long-term relationships over short-term wins.

Milestones

Five decades in the making.

Click a year, use your arrow keys, or swipe

Joining us through an acquisition?

Then you should know: you're not the exception here — you're the tradition. Carey Winston, Richards Barry Joyce, Epic Realty, MB Real Estate — some of the best chapters of our story started as someone else's. We joined forces with your firm because of what your team built, and our job now is to give that work a bigger platform, not to sand it down. Bring your clients, your instincts, and your way of doing things. That's what we bought into.

The platform you just joined

Three companies, one outcome.

Transwestern Real Estate Services

Agency leasing, tenant advisory, asset services, capital markets and research — adding value for investors, owners and occupiers across every major property type.

$9B+

Transwestern Development

Logistics, multifamily, healthcare, life sciences, mixed-use and office projects — with more than $9 billion in projects delivered or in progress since 2012.

$8B+

Transwestern Investments

A real estate investment adviser executing thematic investment opportunities for institutional clients — more than $8 billion sourced across 26 markets to date.

History is the part we've already written. Culture is the part you're joining.