REAL ESTATE I Jason Craik and Cameron McNeill giving condo king Bob Rennie a run for his money
MICHAEL KANE
Sun
RICHARD LAM/VANCOUVER SUN MAC Marketing Solutions partners Cameron McNeill (left) and Jason Craik are about to start pre-selling The Flatiron (at right), a new luxury condo tower downtown. Craik says the pair has sold about $250 million worth of condos so far this year.
Jason Craik wants to be Vancouver’s newest condo king as he pushes to close the gap with perennial top seller Bob Rennie.
Craik, 34, has broken all sales records in the first six months of this year, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. He has moved about $250 million worth of condos, including three of five towers to be built in Whalley.
“We have sold about 1,500 [units] so far this year, and we still have another $300 million in projects coming on to the market, so it is going to be a big year,” Craik said Thursday.
“I don’t want to put down Bob [Rennie] because he is the Wayne Gretzky of real estate and we have a tremendous amount of respect for him, but Bob sold 1,250 units last year.”
Individual realtor sales are not disclosed by the real estate board until the end of the calendar year when Multiple Listing Service totals are tallied to determine the industry’s Medallion Club winners. And there are still six months’ worth of sales figures to come before 2005’s top sellers can be declared.
Rennie, last year’s clear winner with $405 million in sales compared to Craik’s $172 million, declined Thursday to disclose his year-to-date sales.
Both realtors are project marketers heading up sales teams that move new, multi-family developments.
Craik describes himself as the sales guru at MAC Marketing Solutions, while his business partner, Cameron McNeill, 35, is the marketing brains behind the scenes. Both previously worked for large developers before hanging out their own shingle. “All the listings are through my name, putting me in the limelight, but the reality is that we are a tag team,” Craik said.
This weekend he starts taking offers on Vancouver’s second “flatiron,” a wedge-shaped tower destined to become a landmark at the corner of West Pender and Jervis in the downtown business district, a site currently occupied by The Crime Lab restaurant and nightclub. Construction is expected to take two years.
The city’s only other “flatiron” is the near-century-old Europe Hotel in Gastown.
The new 28-storey tower will include three townhomes and 49 suites — only two per floor — ranging in price from $800,000 to $3 million. Every unit has glass walls on three sides and views of Coal Harbour and the North Shore mountains.
Craik can’t say how fast “The Flatiron” will sell, but he expects 100 appointments on Saturday.
By late August, he expects to be turning his attention to his next big luxury project, about 140 garden apartment homes at the $80-million Barona Beach Lakefront Resort in Kelowna.
In addition to projects in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond and Surrey, MAC Marketing Solutions also operates in Calgary and Toronto. Its upcoming project portfolio exceeds $2 billion, on a par with Rennie Marketing Systems.
Although he puts in his share of 12-hour days, Craik spends as much time as possible with wife Christine and three young children. He also enjoys fly fishing at his lakefront recreational property in the Okanagan.
