Ryan Starr – Toronto Star

Dur­ing a recent round table dis­cus­sion among Toronto’s top real estate mar­ket­ing exec­u­tives, Joe Latobesi of  Mon­tana Steele Adver­tis­ing offered up his view on this city’s cre­ative talent.

“There’s nobody bet­ter,” he declared. “I’ve gone on hous­ing tours in other places, only to come back and see that we do things bet­ter here than any­where I’ve been.”

Sure, Latobesi was pat­ting him­self on the back.

But his assess­ment was borne out weeks later in Las Vegas when Mon­tana Steele won a whop­ping nine gold sales and mar­ket­ing awards from the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Home Builders, the most ever by a sin­gle agency.

This record tro­phy haul included the NAHB’s top hon­our, Com­mu­nity of the Year, which Latobesi’s firm gar­nered for its work on Bazis International’s ill-fated 1 Bloor condo project.

The agency’s suc­cess did not go unno­ticed by Amer­i­can devel­op­ers in atten­dance at the Jan. 20 event, sev­eral of whom approached Latobesi to talk about enlist­ing his team’s ser­vices. (Great Gulf homes picked up the project, renam­ing it Num­ber One Bloor.)

“We’ve had three or four inquiries,” he says. “They said, ‘we saw your work, took notice of your awards and we’d like you to look at this project.’ They think we could bring a dif­fer­ent point of views.”

Mon­tana Steele isn’t the only local firm attract­ing inter­na­tional atten­tion these days.

Toronto’s real estate tal­ents — whether they work in archi­tec­ture and design or adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing — have become hot global com­modi­ties, lend­ing exper­tise to projects around the world, from the U.S. to the Mid­dle East, and from Cen­tral Amer­ica to South Asia.

Mean­while, Toronto’s bro­kers and devel­op­ers are also fan­ning out across the globe, sell­ing projects to for­eign investors who are attracted to a real estate mar­ket that has come to be seen as one of the world’s safest in the wake of the eco­nomic meltdown.

“I used to say Toronto was the best-kept secret in the world,” says Dan Flomen, a bro­ker with TFN Realty Inc., who helps local builders set up sales offices abroad. “The secret’s now out.”

MAJOR MARKETERS

Deb­bie Cosic’s knack for sell­ing and mar­ket­ing con­dos has resulted in a fair bit of inter­na­tional work for her Mississauga-based bro­ker­age, In2ition Realty with her part­ner Mira Tmljenovic.

In2ition is cur­rently man­ag­ing sales for projects in Florida and Hon­duras. The com­pany has also set up satel­lite offices in Pak­istan to mar­ket Hol­i­day Tow­ers, a four-storey devel­op­ment in Etobicoke.

“The world is watch­ing Toronto,” Cosic says. “We’re the No. 1 condo mar­keters. (Our team has) been to Europe, the U.S., Dubai and India — and Toronto is light years ahead in real estate sales and marketing.”

Flomen agrees. “Toronto is forward-looking,” he says. “There’s the expres­sion, If it isn’t bro­ken, don’t fix it. But I’ve found our top design and mar­ket­ing peo­ple say, ‘Okay, that worked, now how can we improve on it?’ “

“Toronto has had an amaz­ing real estate run over the past 15 years, and with that activ­ity come evo­lu­tion and sophis­ti­ca­tion,” says Elaine Cec­coni, co-owner of inte­rior design firm Cec­coni Simone, which has worked on projects in Dubai, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, China, Anguilla and Cuba.

“There’s a high degree of good design and good projects here, and the way Toronto mar­kets those projects is unique. The rest of the world has come here, seen how it’s done and fig­ure they can cir­cum­vent the learn­ing curve by engag­ing our local peo­ple to do it for them.”

Gerry Ryan is a case in point. His mar­ket­ing acu­men has caught the eye of many an inter­na­tional client. In recent years his firm, Ryan Design, has had projects in Dubai, Kaza­khstan, Turks & Caicos, Rus­sia, Ukraine and Costa Rica.

These inter­na­tional con­nec­tions came largely as a result of Toronto-based builders, archi­tects or bro­kers who rec­om­mended him, Ryan says.

“Nobody from Kaza­khstan or Dubai is going to just call us up and give us a job. There’s always a local connection.”

Toronto archi­tects are also becom­ing well-known global quantities.

Core Archi­tects, for exam­ple, has worked in the U.S., Caribbean, Turks & Caicos and St. Kitts. In the Mid­dle East, the firm was con­tracted by Emaar Prop­er­ties to do mas­ter plan­ning and design for Dubai Marina, lead­ing to other projects in Abu Dhabi, Oman and India.

“The nature of archi­tec­ture is such that it’s a lot more global than other prac­tices,” says Babak Eslahjou, one of the firm’s prin­ci­pals. “And the Inter­net has enabled us to work in dif­fer­ent parts of the world and com­mu­ni­cate far eas­ier than before.”

INTERNATIONAL FOCUS

Toronto’s bro­kers and devel­op­ers are also deploy­ing on global mis­sions in an effort to attract inter­na­tional buy­ers for local projects.

Can­derel Stoner­idge, the devel­oper of Aura at Col­lege Park — a 75-storey condo that’s being billed as the tallest in Canada — has mar­keted the tower in Pak­istan, Dubai, Bahrain, India, Sin­ga­pore, and China.

“Either we’ve been an exhibitor at real estate exhi­bi­tions, or we’ve teamed up with local bro­ker­ages and basi­cally done a road show for their clien­tele,” says Riz Dhanji, Canderel’s vice-president of sales and marketing.

The firm decided to go global in order to tar­get mar­kets that had pre­vi­ously shown inter­est in Aura, he says.

“A num­ber of sales for Aura were made to inter­na­tional buy­ers from Dubai, Pak­istan, India and China. So we fig­ured, why not go directly to these mar­kets to talk about the project.

“Going abroad and phys­i­cally meet­ing with peo­ple has worked pretty suc­cess­fully for us.”

What’s Toronto’s appeal to inter­na­tional investors?

“They like that it’s a safe place to put their money,” Dhanji says, not­ing that lux­ury prop­er­ties here are con­sid­er­ably cheaper than in other major centres.

What’s more, an iconic devel­op­ment like Aura has a par­tic­u­lar cachet for for­eign buyers.

“Because of its loca­tion, stature and height, Aura gets a lot of atten­tion from the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity,” he says. “If I had a 10-storey build­ing on the east side of Toronto and took that over to Dubai, it wouldn’t get the same interest.”

Work­ing world­wide can bring cer­tain advan­tages for Toronto firms.

“As an archi­tect, it’s always good to travel and see dif­fer­ent ways of doing things,” says Eslahjou. “It opens up your per­spec­tive and that feeds your work back in Toronto.”

And in a city that fan­cies itself world class, inter­na­tional work cre­den­tials can help set a local com­pany apart.

“It’s a good sell­ing point,” Cic­cone says, “espe­cially with new clients who haven’t worked with us before. It gives us an edge; there’s a cred­i­bil­ity fac­tor with work­ing internationally.”

That said, it can present chal­lenges — dis­tance, for example.

“Not being on the ground every day means you have to rely on your (inter­na­tional) sales team to be your eyes and ears,” says Cosic. “Plus, every coun­try has its own way of doing busi­ness. So we have to quickly adapt and that can be tough.”

Ulti­mately, though, such local insight is essen­tial to inter­na­tional success.

“You have to under­stand where you’re mar­ket­ing,” Ryan says. “The biggest mis­take we can make as adver­tis­ers is to think we just did some­thing in Toronto and now we can do it exactly the same in a place like Costa Rica.

“Well, each place is dif­fer­ent, and you can’t mar­ket inter­na­tion­ally unless you under­stand that market.”

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