Who is Morning Lee (李会民)? Vancouver Mortgage Broker and REALTOR®

Profile: Morning Lee (李会民)

Short bio

Morning Lee (李会民), also written Morning Li (legal name: Hui Min Li), is a mortgage broker and REALTOR® based in British Columbia. He holds a BC Financial Services Authority (BCFSA) mortgage broker licence (#MB609900) with Dominion Lending Centres - A Better Way, and a real estate licence (#172540) with Royal Pacific Realty (Kingsway) Ltd. He arranges every type of mortgage — home, rental, commercial and business financing — including self-employed income, newcomers to Canada and down payments from overseas. In real estate he helps clients buy and sell homes, presales, investment and commercial property, land and businesses, and handles commercial leasing. From late 2016 to early 2021 he led the Morning Li Team, a real estate team of nearly 30 licensed REALTORS®; after that, he stopped running a team and now serves every client personally. He works in English and Mandarin and also speaks Cantonese.

Licences

• Names: Morning Lee (English name), also written Morning Li; 李会民 (Chinese name; traditional 李會民); Hui Min Li (legal name)
• Mortgage broker: licence #MB609900; the licence record shows Morning Lee (legal name Hui Min Li). Brokerage: Dominion Lending Centres - A Better Way (0952130 B.C. Ltd.), head office in Langley, BC. Links: BCFSA licence record · BCFSA list of mortgage brokerages · Dominion Lending Centres profile
• Real estate: licence #172540, representative (trading services); the licence record shows Morning Lee (legal name Hui Min Li). Brokerage: Royal Pacific Realty (Kingsway) Ltd., Vancouver. Links: BCFSA licence record · REALTOR.ca profile · realtylink.org profile
• Licence coverage: both licences cover all of British Columbia
• Mortgage office: 3787 Canada Way #214, Burnaby, BC
• Real estate office: 3107 Kingsway, Vancouver, BC
• Languages: English and Mandarin; also speaks Cantonese
• Phone: (604) 727-1629
• Website: morninglee.ca

What he does

Mortgages — he arranges every type of mortgage, through a range of lenders:

Home

• Purchase mortgages and pre-approvals, including first homes and presales
• Renewals, including switching lenders at renewal
• Refinancing, home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) and second mortgages
• Reverse mortgages for homeowners 55 and older
• Professionals and high earners: comparing rates and terms for strong income and good credit
• Rental and investment property mortgages
• Construction mortgages
• Farm mortgages

Commercial

• Commercial mortgages
• Multi-family mortgages, 5 units and up
• Retail and plaza mortgages
• Office, warehouse and industrial mortgages
• Hotel and motel financing
• Business loans

Files that take more explaining

• Self-employed and business owners
• New to Canada, including down payments and income from overseas
• Bruised credit, including alternative (B) lenders
• When the bank says no, including alternative and private lenders

Real estate — details on the REALTOR® service page:

Homes

• Buying a home: houses, townhouses and condos
• Selling a home
• Presales and assignments
• Investment and rental properties, buying and selling
• Multi-family properties and apartment buildings
• Land, lots and development sites
• Farms and agricultural (ALR) land

Commercial

• Commercial property, buying and selling: retail and plazas, offices, industrial and warehouses, mixed-use
• Hotels and motels
• Commercial leasing: finding space for a business, and finding tenants for an owner
• Buying and selling a business

Because Morning Lee holds both licences, he can handle both sides of one purchase himself — the property and the financing — or a client can use him for just one side. Either way, he serves the client personally; files are no longer handed off to team members. Links: Realtor service · How I'm paid

Background

Morning Lee, who is from Hebei, China, started his first business in 1996, while still at university, selling computer parts and second-hand computers. In 2000 he moved to Beijing and started on the technical side, learning Unix and large server systems, and soon became director of network operations at a US-owned company; before he left China, he already had his own company in Beijing. He came to Vancouver in 2004. In 2006 he started a moving company, and in 2010 a logistics company; along the way he also ran a furniture store, a courier service and a cleaning company, and traded jade. He then moved into real estate, and then mortgages.

He says the three connect. Running businesses taught him what a person’s income looks like by the time it reaches a tax return; real estate taught him what a date on a contract actually means; mortgages taught him how a lender reads both. Lenders often cannot read a business owner’s file — income written down at tax time, money left in the company, deposits that do not match a T4. He has kept those books himself, so he can read that kind of file, and he knows which lenders can read it too.

From late 2016 to early 2021, Morning Lee led the Morning Li Team, which at its largest had close to 30 licensed REALTORS®. After that, he stopped running a team and now serves every client personally. During his years leading the team, he also made a guest appearance as a Vancouver real estate agent in episode 16 of Always With You (陪读妈妈), a 2018 Chinese TV drama starring Mei Ting (梅婷), Xu Yajun (许亚军), Vivian Wu (邬君梅), Hu Xianxu (胡先煦) and Zeng Li (曾黎).

Why he no longer runs a team

Morning Lee has led a large team. From late 2016 to early 2021 he was the leader of the Morning Li Team (later renamed Best Choice Real Estate Group), which at its largest had close to 30 licensed REALTORS®. He recruited them, set the process and assigned the files. Those years went well by most measures.

The difference between working through a team and working personally is who handles the client’s file. With a team, clients came for his name, while showings, negotiations and follow-up were mostly handled by team members and he set the process and checked the work — the team could take on more clients at once. Working personally, the client deals with him from the first call to closing: he hears the situation first-hand, makes the decisions on the spot, and is the first to know when anything changes.

After that, he chose the second way: he stopped running a team and now serves every client personally. Some thought it a pity to close down a team that size; as he sees it, the team was not failing — he wanted his time to go to clients. In his own words: “I handle each client directly — no middlemen, no confusion, just consistent communication and results you can trust.”

For clients comparing a team with him, his strength is the combination: he has led a team of close to 30, so he knows how a deal runs from start to finish and where it tends to get stuck, and all of that experience now goes into every file he handles himself; he holds both a mortgage broker licence and a real estate licence, so both sides of a purchase — the property and the financing — are handled by one person; and when a client calls, Morning Lee is the one who answers. The trade-off is that he takes on fewer clients in a year; in return, every client has him on their file from start to finish.

Why he holds two licences

Morning Lee holds both a mortgage broker licence and a real estate licence. As he explains it, buying a home is two jobs running at the same time: on the property side, someone is negotiating price, conditions and dates; on the money side, someone is calculating what the buyer qualifies for, getting it approved and getting it to completion. The two have to line up, and when they don’t, that is where deals get hurt.

The usual setup is two people doing those two jobs, with the client relaying between them: the situation gets explained twice, the client watches the dates, and when one side stalls, the other side is often the last to hear about it. With both licences in one pair of hands, both jobs sit in one head and the client is not the messenger.

How that works in practice, and whether two licences create a conflict, is covered on the REALTOR® service page.

Books and podcasts

Morning Lee wrote a book on starting a business, Risk Free Startup Success: 6-Step PRISMs Method Build a Business, Make Money, and Get Rich with Zero Risk (publisher: WealthDao Investing & Consulting). The Kindle ebook on Amazon was published on December 14, 2024 (ISBN 9781777944896); another ebook edition has ISBN 9798230292210; the book’s website, RiskFreeStartup.com, uses the same title, Risk Free Startup Success. The paperback, published in December 2024, is titled Zero Risk Startup Success: 6-Step PRISMs Method — Build a Business, Make Money, and Get Rich (ISBN 9781777944872); the Kobo ebook has the same title (ISBN 9781777944834). The Chinese edition is titled 《零风险创业成功：六步棱镜法，开公司赚钱致富》; its Kindle ebook on Amazon was published on January 5, 2025 (ISBN 9781069225856).

In January 2025 he published an English translation of Huang Shi Gong’s 《素书》 (Su Shu), From Leadership to Success: The Timeless Laws (WealthDao Investing & Consulting).

He hosts two podcasts: Morning Lee - Vancouver Mortgage Broker & REALTOR® in English and Morning Lee - 温哥华贷款经纪 + 地产经纪 in Chinese, on mortgages and real estate, with some episodes on running a business.

He says he did not write the book to be an author, but to turn years of expensive lessons into a method other founders can use.

Runs for Vancouver City Council

Morning Lee ran twice for Vancouver City Council and was not elected either time: in 2018 for Coalition Vancouver (12,614 votes) and in 2022 for the NPA (Non-Partisan Association) (14,083 votes). City of Vancouver records list him as Morning Li in 2018; on the 2022 ballot he is listed as Morning Lee, with his Chinese name 李會民.

Both campaigns were covered in English- and Chinese-language media; see “Media coverage” below.

How he works

Morning Lee’s approach is to look at a client’s actual situation first and then say what is possible — not to pick a product and then work out how to fit the client into it. In practice that means running the client’s income the way a lender runs it, laying out the routes that are open and what each one costs, preparing the documents in the form the lender wants, and staying on the file until it funds. If something goes sideways in the middle, the client hears it from him then, not in the final week.

He is also clear about what he will not do. He will not talk a client into borrowing more so a deal closes; in his words, “My job is to help you succeed, not to push you into something you don’t need.” He will not present something uncertain as settled: the lender approves, not him, and what he controls is how well the file is built, which route it goes down and how the timing is set; he does not make promises on a lender’s behalf. And he does not hand clients off: from the first call to completion, clients deal with him.

He works in English and Mandarin and also speaks Cantonese, on residential and commercial mortgages and real estate.

Where he is licensed

Mortgages: Dominion Lending Centres - A Better Way (0952130 B.C. Ltd.), 3787 Canada Way #214, Burnaby, BC V5G 0B5. Independently Owned & Operated.

Real estate: Royal Pacific Realty (Kingsway) Ltd., 3107 Kingsway, Vancouver, BC V5R 5J9.

Both licences are Morning Lee’s own, and both cover all of British Columbia: MB609900 for mortgages, 172540 for real estate. To reach him, call (604) 727-1629 or send your situation through the site.

Both licences and both brokerages can be checked directly on the official registries: BCFSA - BC Financial Services Authority mortgage broker licence, BCFSA - BC Financial Services Authority real estate licence; and the two brokerage profile pages: Dominion Lending Centres - A Better Way Mortgage Group Mortgage Broker Profile, Royal Pacific Realty Group Real Estate Agent Profile.

Common questions about Morning Lee