NEW YORK CITY – Real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield has appointed commercial real estate veteran Pay Wu as the New York Tri-State Regional Lead for Global Occupier Services. In this new role, Wu is responsible for delivering real estate services connected to client goals and strategies for operational efficiency.
Before heading GOS, Wu led Cushman’s Tri-State Region Consulting Practice, where she used business insights and value-added real estate consulting to solve clients’ workplace and real estate challenges. She’ll use that experience to now develop and implement strategies for Cushman’s largest occupier client accounts across all service lines. She will lead a team of over 2,500 account-based professionals and will also be responsible for expanding existing client relationships and building upon their financial performance.
“The different experiences I’ve had pivoting back and forth to the real estate management side and advisory is a great foundation for running this business for the region,” Wu tells GlobeSt.com. “A lot of it has to do with what clients are looking for these days and delivering on the basics to offer great services.”
An industry veteran, Wu has previously held positions at TD Bank, American Express and Deloitte Consulting. Her track record includes more than 25 years of developing strategy, operations and workplace initiatives for large corporations. She has overall experience in portfolio and workplace strategies, M&A, program management, cost management and reduction, vendor and outsourcing advisory, process and operations optimization and technology implementation. She will continue to work out of Cushman’s Midtown Manhattan office.
“After a rigorous recruiting process, Pay Wu’s impressive background, experience and credentials made her the best choice for this position,” said Toby Dodd, president of the New York Tri-State Region at Cushman, who Wu is succeeding. “GOS is a very important part of our business and I am confident that Pay will successfully lead the group and maintain and grow both existing and new client relationships.”
One of the goals Wu has in her new role is to utilize the firm’s existing client data and analytics collected over that past 15 years to learn how to concisely tailor its services to client needs. “It’s about creating insight about the collective wisdom and data and analytics that we have and can pull on,” she said.
TORONTO – One expert predicts Ottawa‘s changes to mortgage rules will help spur demand among potential homebuyers but says policies aimed at driving new supply are needed to address the “core issues” facing the market.
The federal government’s changes, set to come into force mid-December, include a higher price cap for insured mortgages to allow more people to qualify for a mortgage with less than a 20 per cent down payment.
The government will also expand its 30-year mortgage amortization to include first-time homebuyers buying any type of home, as well as anybody buying a newly built home.
CIBC Capital Markets deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal calls it a “significant” move likely to accelerate the recovery of the housing market, a process already underway as interest rates have begun to fall.
However, he says in a note that policymakers should aim to “prevent that from becoming too much of a good thing” through policies geared toward the supply side.
Tal says the main issue is the lack of supply available to respond to Canada’s rapidly increasing population, particularly in major cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17,2024.
OTTAWA – The Canadian Real Estate Association says the number of homes sold in August fell compared with a year ago as the market remained largely stuck in a holding pattern despite borrowing costs beginning to come down.
The association says the number of homes sold in August fell 2.1 per cent compared with the same month last year.
On a seasonally adjusted month-over-month basis, national home sales edged up 1.3 per cent from July.
CREA senior economist Shaun Cathcart says that with forecasts of lower interest rates throughout the rest of this year and into 2025, “it makes sense that prospective buyers might continue to hold off for improved affordability, especially since prices are still well behaved in most of the country.”
The national average sale price for August amounted to $649,100, a 0.1 per cent increase compared with a year earlier.
The number of newly listed properties was up 1.1 per cent month-over-month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MONTREAL – Two Quebec real estate brokers are facing fines and years-long suspensions for submitting bogus offers on homes to drive up prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Christine Girouard has been suspended for 14 years and her business partner, Jonathan Dauphinais-Fortin, has been suspended for nine years after Quebec’s authority of real estate brokerage found they used fake bids to get buyers to raise their offers.
Girouard is a well-known broker who previously starred on a Quebec reality show that follows top real estate agents in the province.
She is facing a fine of $50,000, while Dauphinais-Fortin has been fined $10,000.
The two brokers were suspended in May 2023 after La Presse published an article about their practices.
One buyer ended up paying $40,000 more than his initial offer in 2022 after Girouard and Dauphinais-Fortin concocted a second bid on the house he wanted to buy.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
