Variety key to Chan's success

James Chan, top salesperson

A wide variety of sales to both local and overseas investors resulted in James Chan securing the award for Bayleys Real Estate's top national commercial and industrial salesperson for 2011/2012.

Chan has been with Bayleys for 21 years and during that time has sold more than $800 million of properties.

In the past year he has been involved in a number of high-profile retail property auction and tender campaigns, including the sale of close to 30 retail units in the Rialto Centre in Newmarket and all nine units put up for auction in the Merton East Convenience Centre in St Johns.

Larger sales included the Carlton DFK Centre office, retail and car parking building at 131-151 Broadway which was sold by tender for $16.7 million to an overseas investor.

Chan heads Bayleys' international sales division, a team of multilingual salespeople from China, Malaysia and Korea specialising in servicing the property requirements of both overseas and local South East Asian investors.

Chan, born in Hong Kong, is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese as well as English and says his rich cultural base gives him a point of difference in the marketplace.

"I try to bridge the Kiwi way of thinking to the Asian way of thinking, acting as a mediator between the two. I also always try and create an outcome that produces a win-win for both vendors and buyers."

Chan says the strengthening relationship between China and New Zealand is encouraging Chinese investors to look at New Zealand property opportunities, and particularly at commercial property where the overseas investment approval process is more straightforward than for rural and lifestyle properties.

He will be visiting Hong Kong and other parts of China in two weeks' time to promote New Zealand property to key clients and to meet potential clients.

Bayleys' five top performing national commercial and industrial salespeople for the 2011/2012 year included Tony Chaudhary, David Gubb, Mike Houlker and Alan Haydock, all from the Auckland region.

Mike Bayley, managing director of Bayleys Real Estate, says this reflects that fact that the Auckland has by far the strongest commercial and industrial property market in the country at present. "But there is nothing unusual about that - cyclical recoveries have traditionally started in New Zealand's most populous region and spread to the rest of the country."