Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
1996, and according to Choi, 'about 70 percent of our clientele are Asian',
almost all of these ethnic Chinese (Chow 1996d). Nine of Royal Pacific
Realty's leading agents (all Chinese Canadians) had been nominated to the
Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board's Medallion Club, indicating they had
been in the top ten percent of regional agents by sales for at least five years.
A top seller has been Winnie Chung, whose web site announced in 2008 that
she has been placed in the top one percent (the President's Club) of regional
MLS agents for 14 consecutive years. Although her extensive listings cover
much of the expensive territory on Vancouver's Westside she has only in
recent years advertised in the Westside edition of the (English-language)
Real
Estate Weekly
. She also lists her properties in the real estate sections of the
Chinese-language
Ming Pao
,
Sing Tao
, the Taiwanese
World Journal
, and the
China Journal
, comprehensively covering ethnic Chinese immigrants and
investors from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Mainland. It is notable that one
of the region's top agents has had such impressive long-term success working
substantially in an immigrant non-English speaking sub-market.
Undoubtedly there has been an ethnic division of labour in the marketing
of real estate. Sam, a white Westside agent, told me, 'The market is divided.
I've had no luck getting Chinese listings; 99 percent of those listings go to
Chinese agents. They always have a cousin or an uncle in the business.'
Keystone Realty, for example, established in 1987 as immigration from East
Asia was beginning to surge, catered to immigrant and resident Chinese
clients in about equal numbers. 'At its peak, Keystone had 125 agents. We
always had 5-6 Caucasian agents'. Michelle, a former Keystone sales agent
who I interviewed in 1998, went on to describe the critical importance of
ethnic social networks for her own client base:
All my clients are friends because I give them so many services. I get most of
my work through referral. Yesterday I sold a penthouse down by the water to a
Taiwanese living in San Diego. With the Canadian dollar so low this month he
knew he was on to a good deal. He still drove hard. The price had been reduced
from $535,000 to $499,000 and he tried to get it with an offer of $450. Anyway
he was referred to me by a [client] family I had helped eight years ago. They
were from Taiwan, they knew nobody and couldn't speak English. One night
the wife had severe headache and the husband called me at 2am to take her to
Emergency. He could not take her because he couldn't speak English, so I
stayed there with her until 6 am. Then I got their kid into a good school in
Point Grey. Now yesterday I sold a penthouse to their friend.
The doyenne of Westside home sales agents has been Manyee Lui, special-
ist in the carriage trade to new immigrants, and successor to Collier's realtor,
Vancouver-born Andrea Eng - the 'broker to billionaires' (McLaughlin
1993) - after Eng moved to a senior position in Collier's Hong Kong office.
Lui established her own company, Hallmark Properties in 1990, and had
