About Us

Founded in 1960, Cushman & Wakefield ChaneyBrooks is a leading commercial real estate firm serving Hawaiʻi, Guam, the continental United States, and markets throughout the Pacific. For more than six decades, we have helped property owners, investors, occupiers, and businesses navigate real estate opportunities through deep market knowledge, trusted relationships, and an enduring commitment to the communities we serve.

As a Cushman & Wakefield Alliance member, we connect clients to one of the world's leading commercial real estate services firms, with approximately 52,000 employees across nearly 400 offices in 60 countries. Through this partnership, we bring global research, market intelligence, technology, and industry best practices to the local level – combining institutional capabilities with the responsiveness, relationships, and spirit of aloha that define Cushman & Wakefield ChaneyBrooks.

Together, our local expertise and global reach allow us to provide integrated commercial real estate services across brokerage, leasing, capital markets, valuation, property management, cross-border transactions, and advisory. That same culture earned us a spot on Hawaii Business Magazine's 2026 list of Hawaiʻi's Best Places to Work — a reflection of the same values we bring to every client relationship.

Cushman & Wakefield ChaneyBrooks traces its roots to Aaron McKinney Chaney, part-Hawaiian and a Certified Property Manager who rose from the Bank of Hawaiʻi mailroom to Vice President of Cooke Trust Company before venturing out on his own in the early 1960s to open Aaron M. Chaney, Inc. The timing was no accident: Hawaiʻi's adoption of the Horizontal Property Regime, the territory's first condominium law, opened long-term financing to individual units and touched off a wave of new commercial and residential development. Wendell F. Brooks, Jr. — second from right — a young broker renting a one-room office down the hall for $35 a month, was invited to join the firm as it grew, and when Aaron later asked him back as an equal partner, Wendell settled the matter of the company's name himself, insisting on Chaney Brooks & Company over the alternative. Under their partnership, the firm became Oʻahu's largest independent property management company and one of its top three commercial brokerages, weathering recessions, the arrival of the personal computer, and a changing industry along the way.

The company has continued to evolve since, passing through new ownership and eventually entering into its present-day relationship with the global real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. Today, as Cushman & Wakefield ChaneyBrooks, it carries that history forward under the leadership of Steve Sombrero, Joe Haas, and Helen Chong — a firm still shaped by the resourcefulness and long view of the people who started it.