Real Estate Forum - October 2013

Erixon. “They’re not really looking to take a lot of extra risk. What they want is access to property types like apartments that are not readily accessible in Canada and to take advantage of the better pricing that’s a result of the deep recession in the United States. So we’re doing that on behalf of a couple of Canadian pension plans at present,” while in discussions with other, non-Canadian investors to assist them in North America.

Erixon’s longstanding reputation
in Canada as “the American in the
room” helped pave the way for many
of these assignments at AY. “The first
thing that institutional investors
look for is expertise,” she says. “I’ve
done a lot of transactions and have a
lot of relationships in both markets.
The second piece is that here in
Canada, Avison Young is a known commodity. The keystone of
the organization is honesty and integrity and our byline is
intelligent solutions. And so we really pride ourselves on bring-
ing solutions to the clients as opposed to pitching deals or
throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks, which
sometimes brokers get accused of doing. That’s not the way
this organization works.”
In the near term, Webb says “we’ve got a lot of growing to
do” in terms of filling out the service matrix. “We haven’t even
begun to build our multifamily capability here,” he says.
“We’ve got a strong start to our retail platform, but there’s still
a lot of growth that can occur there across the country.”
When AY’s expansion outside Canada was in its formative
stages, branching out into Europe rather than the US was a
possibility. There is now a UK office, and Rose says a heavier
push overseas will follow in due course, driven by the same
principles that have governed the company thus far.

“It will be identical, because your strategy and your execution doesn’t change,” he says. “What does change is your adherence to subcultures.” That goes both for the beliefs and customs of individual countries, or provinces within those countries, and for the acquisition and integration of service providers.

AY’s movement into Europe and, ultimately, Asia will be
based on “a global set of belief systems, taking into account the
cultures and the subgeographies underneath,” says Rose. “But
outside of that it’s the same plan: target the right clients with
the right people who want to be collaborative and who want to
be partners. There are so few, if any, options out there, other
than Avison Young, to accomplish this.”
Underpinning it all, Rose concludes, is AY’s
structure. “It’s the structure that keeps it
together,” he says. “It’s the structure that drives
the success. It’s the structure that risk man-
ages. And it’s the structure that determines
that we don’t just say what we’re going to do,
but we’re actually going to execute on what we
set out to do.

“I’m asked all the time: how is this possible?” he relates. “How could a company in Canada, that really only Canadians knew about five years ago, open up in 39 offices throughout the US? How could you double and triple in size and move your market share up to the top three in Canada in such a short order? And it’s not about any one individual. It’s about a group of incredible individuals adhering to a strategy and a structure that allows you to collaborate with clients. And that, in and of itself, has provided the execution and the success.” ◆

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“We really pride ourselves on bringing solutions to the clients as opposed to pitching deals or throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks.”