Zia Abbas has managed to conflate his realty savoir-faire with an indomitable work ethic to reach professional heights few salespeople could ever dream of.
The 46-year-old Abbas was a multi-award winning Re/Max agent and in June he became president of Realty Point, a Toronto-based franchise that launched in 2014.
He’s become one of Toronto’s most trustworthy sales reps because his business model is fundamentally predicated on trust.
While it may seem like Abbas puts in countless hours showcasing listings – he does – his recipe for success is simple, yet seemingly contradictory: disclosing absolutely everything there is to know. If that means he loses clients, so be it.
“What people see in me is not only a successful Realtor, but they also see my vision and they trust my vision,” he says. “I disclose 100 per cent. I throw everything on the table and it’s up to them to proceed or back off. I’ve lost clients that way, but I’ve built a clientele for a lifetime because of a few transactions.”
Abbas was born in Pakistan, pursued a design degree in Dubai and moved to Canada in 1998. He worked as an art director for ad agencies in Dubai and Toronto for 13 years before a burgeoning interest in construction blossomed into a renovations company he ran part-time for nearly two years. It wasn’t long before he started investing in real estate, and buoyed by his experienced sales rep turning to him for investment advice, Abbas turned his nascent aptitude into yet another vocational endeavour.
“To be quite honest, I put my feet into the real estate world just as a part-timer,” said the married father of three. “I was quite successful in my first profession. I never thought I’d leave it. In the first eight months I had 43 transactions close. Then I had no choice but to leave my first profession.”
Having wholly devoted himself to real estate, Abbas’ success manifested as Re/Max’s No. 1 worldwide salesperson in residential and commercial real estate in 2011 and 2012, and No. 2 in 2013 and 2014. He was also Re/Max’s No. 1 agent in Canada from 2011 to 2013, and he came in second place last year.
In a news release announcing his Realty Point appointment, Abbas says, “Every real estate professional looks towards establishing their own brand out from under the shadow of someone else’s brokerage name and I am no exception. Re/Max provided to me great opportunities that I can now expand on as I take my business to the next stage of success.”
In an exclusive interview with REM, Abbas says “To me, the product is the same for all the Realtors and the location is the same. What makes the difference is the brand, and the brand is the Realtor. How you brand yourself in terms of standing, class, information and building trust among clients – that all matters. If your client is not happy and not satisfied and not making a good return on their real estate investment, you’ll soon lose that account. Use your judgment, experience and vision to properly guide your client.
“You should have only one theme and one tagline: Always protect your client.”
In no place is that ethos more pronounced than on Buy Low Sell High with Zia Abbas, a 30-minute television program syndicated on City, ATN and the Geo Network. Abbas shares his acumen in discerning between good and bad real estate investments, and discusses banalities such as CRA guidelines, taxation details, mortgages and myriad other brass tacks. The program is slated for 52 episodes this year.
Omnipresence is simply impossible in a market as vigorous as Toronto’s, so Abbas – who has spent years cultivating lasting relationships with the GTA’s top developers – chooses the best six or seven condo projects per year, what he calls the top one per cent of the market. He focuses on either resale condo units or preconstruction. For the latter, however, he only engages opening day pricing because he says he cannot justify selling uniform units at different price points.
“I’ve never sold condominiums to my clients for anything other than the opening-day price and I’ve never engaged in a bidding war. I won’t settle for the second or third day pricing.”
Downtown Toronto is his primary playground, but select projects scattered about the GTA attract his attention when their potential is too great to pass on.
“Outside of downtown, the product has to be next to a happening area, next to a commute, next to a subway, next to a hospital, next to a university, next to infrastructure like highways. I also have to look at the supply and demand factor.”
Zia Abbas
Abbas regularly consults builders on the components comprising their units. Few people in the city possess Abbas’ acute awareness for what sells and what doesn’t.
“A lot of builders take my advice ahead of time,” he says. “I sit with them during initial meetings to design buildings on the functionality of floor plans and what kind of units would sell easily for top Realtors. A successful agent is always standing in the middle of the curtain where they can see the characters and they can see the audience.”
There’s no shortage of sales reps in the GTA and only the truly tenacious of the lot will ascend to the same heights as Abbas. He says all salespeople – neophytes and seasoned veterans alike – are akin to shelving stock; lest they posses remarkable qualities to set themselves apart from the fray, their prosaic nature will consign them to obscurity.
Advertising is a dependable method for reaching potential clients, so Abbas implores rookies to create buzz around their names, but he says advertising will ultimately produce diminishing returns.
“If you are an unknown soft drink sitting next to Pepsi or Coca-Cola, what would happen? Nobody would buy you,” he says. “So you should brand yourself and then reach up to an extent where you should have the capability sitting next to that Coca-Cola so that people at least consider you.
“My real business comes through referrals and word-of-mouth, but I reached this level through advertisements, because when the overall crowd talks positively about you, that is what I call a freebie advertisement.”
Neil Sharma is a contributing writer for REM.
