Scout Real Estate, a new Spokane real estate agency, has opened downtown, says owner and managing broker Brian Bean.

The agency occupies 800 square feet of office space on the main floor of a historic three-story building at 101 S. Stevens, where it hopes to complete tenant improvements this month.

Bean says the boutique brokerage will focus on deals involving residential properties that clients want to remodel or flip.

“We also have some standard residential clients and a couple of commercial deals as well,” he says.

Bean says Scout Real Estate has two other employees—his wife, Janet, and marketing and operations director Melissa Cash.

“Five other agents will be joining us over the next couple of months,” he says. “We’re not looking to be a big real estate brokerage.”

Bean says the office setting is in a 119-year-old building at the southeast corner of Stevens Street and First Avenue that has been vacant for years.

“I saw that and thought it was a great ground zero for Scout Real Estate,” he says. “I think the industry is changing, and we don’t need a ton of space.”

Bean, who’s a lawyer, has been a licensed real estate broker for more than two years, having developed an affinity for real estate while handling related cases in his father’s law firm, Charles Bean & Associates PLLC, of Coeur d’Alene, and later as corporate counsel for Ecova Inc.

“At Ecova, I got my start managing tenant improvements and buildouts,” he says. “It was more fun than being an attorney.”