Jay Cousins Marks 30 Years Selling Industrial, Commercial and Investment Property All Over The Island
NANAIMO – Jay Cousins has been a realtor for three decades, and has never sold a house.
He’s sold plenty of Industrial, Commercial and Investment (IC&I) properties and leasing, mind you.
Jay Cousins operates RE/MAX Jay Cousins Realty, based in Nanaimo
“I’ve been a realtor for 30 years now, and I’ve never sold a house,” says Cousins, a Central Vancouver Island pioneer in commercial-only realty, who operates RE/MAX Jay Cousins Realty. “I’ve always been selling investment property. The first firm I went to said ‘Thanks, but we don’t do commercial real estate on a full time basis, and you’ll starve to death’. The second firm, NRS Block Bros., said they’d let me give it a try, and I think I was the only commercial-only realtor in town.”
Cousins remained with Block Bros./Windermere for a decade before moving to RE/MAX of Nanaimo, where he’s hung his shingle for the past 20 years, and now operates as RE/MAX Jay Cousins Realty, continuing to focus on Industrial Commercial and Investment (IC&I) real estate.
“The commercial market in the mid island area is still very strong, and it continues to grow,” says Cousins, taking note of the obvious, hopefully temporary slowdown due to COVID-19. “We have lots of local investors, coupled with a lot of out of area investors from Vancouver and the lower mainland, plus we still have many international investors. We have people that want to place money in an area that is solid and offers a good investment return, and the Central Island fits that criteria.”
Cousins has broad experience in commercial buildings sales and leasing, industrial warehousing, and distribution activity, business evaluation and marketing, and commercial property management. He has served the Vancouver Island market from Mill Bay to Port Hardy since arriving from the Yukon at Christmas, 1989.
Born in Edmonton, Cousins was raised in the Yukon, and his family operated several businesses that he was involved with, including owning and operating a retail complex, a wholesale distribution company, and a sales agency that represented top-name foods including JM Schneider Meats, Freybe Sausage, Christie and Dare Foods. He sold his interests in the companies and moved to Nanaimo, choosing to utilize his degree in commerce and marketing from the University of British Columbia to start a career in commercial real estate.
ICI is more technical and complicated than residential real estate, not just because it involves leasing and extra legalities, but the fact that company valuations are based on revenue and return, as opposed to the conventional comparative market analysis approach of residential.
“You take a house down the street and what it sold for, and the house up the street, and by comparing them, you know where your house is valued in the market,” he notes. “Commercial is all revenue driven. Everybody wants to know what the revenues and return are in the business.”
“We still use the comparison approach for land and some things, but by far the most impact and weight in commercial is put on revenue to determine the value of the business.”
Cousins states that CAP (Capitalization – the ratio of net operating income to property asset value) rates are used to indicate what an investment property will actually yield to a buyer.
“We also consider the diversity of the tenant mix, strength of the covenant, and a number of other criteria to determine what the earning potential of a property is,” he adds.
Outside of the office, Cousins has several fulfilling hobbies.
He is an International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) competitor and instructor. Competitions include shooters drawing their guns from a holster, and running up and down a field, moving around and shooting at targets.
“It’s a time and accuracy sport,” he says, adding it’s a popular one at that. A recent match in Victoria featured 126 shooters, and Cousins estimates there are over 75 shooters in the central island alone.
Cousins is an active singer with the Nanaimo Tidesmen Barbershop Chorus, featuring 45 men from the Central Island, as well as a member of the award-winning Fouray quartet.
“Fouray has been together about eight years now, and we perform at the Port Theatre, and we do birthdays, anniversaries and stage performances,” he notes. “It’s awesome. Singing keeps you healthy and makes you feel good.”
He loves his wheels as well. He’s driven Harley Davidson motorcycles longer than he’s been a realtor and is a lifetime member of the Harley Owners Group, and enjoys long-distance motorcycle rides. He is a member of the ‘Smokin Oldies’ Hot Rod Car Club and owns a couple of hot rods, a Dodge Challenger and an El Camino, which he enters in shows, adding he drag raced when he was younger.
Cousins is consistently in the top 10 per cent of salespeople at RE/MAX of Nanaimo, a multiple-time winner of the RE/MAX Chairman’s and Platinum Club, as well as an inductee into the RE/MAX Hall of Fame and recipient of their Lifetime Achievement Award. A past Chairman of the Vancouver Island Real Estate Board’s Commercial Division, Cousins was also the original Chair of the VIREB Commercial Building Awards.
It’s activities like those he is involved in, and more, as well as a strong market, that make Vancouver Island such an attraction for investors.
“The types of investments we have in this area show good returns, and the yields we get are strong. You can’t get the type of yields on the lower mainland that you can get here. They’re about 4 per cent there, and 5-6 per cent here, and the island is a safe and secure environment for investments. The yields are good on CAP rates,” he says. “This is such a desirable place to live, and I expect the market to be strong moving forward.”