Last week, Canadian residential real estate brokerage Sutton Group and American luxury real estate brokerage Douglas Elliman announced a two-pronged cross-border relationship that will see the American brand enter Canada, and the two companies establish a two-way referral program.
After buying the license for Sotheby’s International Realty Canada in 2004, real estate entrepreneur Ross McCredie, through McCredie Investments, is buying the license to the Douglas Elliman brand in Canada, which will be called “Elliman Canada.” (The company initiated a rebranding a few months ago and, while there’s been no official announcement yet, Douglas Elliman will be rebranding as “Elliman.”)
McCredie acquired Sutton Group in 2023, and has spent the last few years positioning the company for long-term success in a world now dominated by technology and AI.
Michael S. Liebowitz, meanwhile, joined Douglas Elliman as President and CEO in November 2024, after the unexpected retirement of Howard Lorber amidst a wave of turmoil.
The partnership between Sutton Group and Douglas Elliman came together quickly from talks between the two leaders, McCredie and Liebowitz told STOREYS in separate interviews this week.
When McCredie purchased the license for Sotheby’s International Realty Canada back in 2004, he dealt with Rich Green and Wendy Purvey of Sotheby’s. Purvey became Chief Strategy Officer for Douglas Elliman in November, and met with McCredie soon afterwards while McCredie and his wife were on vacation.
“We literally just had a meeting [with the Douglas Elliman team] and chatted about ideas. They were bringing up the idea of having a referral relationship with Sutton Group, and Michael’s like ‘We’re thinking about expanding into Canada, we’d love to do that with you.’ That’s literally how it started,” said McCredie. “It happened pretty quick. We all know each other pretty well; obviously I was pretty successful with Sotheby’s in Canada, and they were excited about that. And that’s how it all came together.”
The two leaders were complimentary of one another; Liebowitz said he liked McCredie’s ideas, energy, and background immediately after meeting him. He described McCredie as “a real winner,” while McCredie was complimentary of Liebowitz’s “unique approach” to being an entrepreneur, saying that he believes they have a lot in common.
Elliman Canada
Like with Sotheby’s International Realty Canada, McCredie will build Elliman Canada from the ground up. Except this time, he’s already done it once before. That said, the plan isn’t to simply follow the same playbook.
Elliman Canada will likely have a smaller number of offices, with McCredie currently expecting no more than 200-250 agents across five to seven offices the first few years. Announced so far are Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, but McCredie said they will also be in some secondary markets, like the popular resort municipality of Whistler in British Columbia.
“But we’re not basing it on agent count. We’re basing it on market share, and really going after the top end of the market — the top 10% to 15% of the market — and top-producing agents. It’ll be a situation where we’ll only be looking for the most respected agents in the marketplace: What I call the Navy SEALs of the business,” said McCredie, adding that agents will need to have been in the business for a minimum of three years, and have a significant track record.
“I’ll have the license, and it’ll be up to me to own and operate these offices. Currently, we’re considering acquisitions of existing high-end luxury brokerages, or potentially just opening from scratch. At Sotheby’s, I didn’t ever buy a brokerage. We opened 40 offices across the country, and I recruited every agent myself. I don’t know that I want to do all that again, but I already know all the top-end agents.”
McCredie says his phone hasn’t stopped ringing since last week’s announcement.
When asked about the timing of the move and the backdrop of the market downturn, he said, “When real estate is really really hot, and sales are happening at phenomenal volumes, people are too busy to move,” he said. “It’s when you have a slowing market that agents start to look around. People are looking for change, and there’s so much happening from a technology point of view.”
Sutton Group CEO Ross McCredie (left) and Douglas Elliman CEO Michael S. Liebowitz (right).
Sutton Group
The referral program, which is already in effect, will connect Sutton Group’s 200 offices across Canada with Douglas Elliman’s 116 offices across the United States — plus France and Monaco, which Douglas Elliman expanded into a few months ago, with clients in any of the aforementioned locations having smoother access to all of the other markets.
Earlier this month, Sutton Group announced that myAbode — an AI-driven deal processing “operating system” for residential brokerages — was making a strategic investment in Sutton Group, with McCredie joining the Board of myAbode, Sutton Group President and COO James Innis becoming Chief Investment Officer of myAbode, and myAbode CEO Bronwyn Smith joining the Board of Sutton Group.
“At its core, the partnership is a shared belief that the role of the real estate agent is ready to evolve, from transaction-focused to truly advisor-led,” the companies said in a press release. “Together, both companies are seizing the opportunity to empower franchise partners, agents and brokerages, giving them the tools to provide a better experience for the Canadian homebuyer at every stage of their financial journey.”
Asked how the deal came together, McCredie told STOREYS that it stemmed from his 30-year friendship with Bruce Coxon, founder of Round13 Capital, the company behind myAbode.
“We hung out together in Whistler for years and know each other really well, so when I bought Sutton Group a few years ago, he phoned me up right away and said ‘We also made this investment in myAbode,’” said McCredie. “At the time, I was busy with fixing what needed to be fixed with Sutton, but after about a year-and-a-half of doing that, we started talking to myAbode specifically. They were building technology on the back-end of the brokerage and our technology was more focused on the consumer front-end, so we just saw lots of synergies between what they were doing and what we were building.”
McCredie has long been focused on pushing the industry towards a wealth management model rather than the traditional transaction model and Sutton Group is also about to launch a wealth management platform called Sutton Wealth, which he described as a “real estate portfolio management tool” that will have verified property information and be accessible to fiduciaries and beneficiaries to manage the portfolio — such as securing insurance or financing — and “remove all the friction” that would otherwise exist. Elliman Canada will also have their version of the platform.
Douglas Elliman
Michael S. Liebowitz was serving on the Board of Douglas Elliman when he took over from Howard Lorber, at a time when the company’s stock price was plummeting and the company was alleged to have continued supporting the Alexander brothers despite being made aware of sexual assault allegations against them. The three brothers were found guilty of sex trafficking earlier this month.
Since taking over, Liebowitz has been focused on changing the culture and righting the business, amidst the backdrop of various other competitors consolidating — most recently with Compass acquiring Anywhere Real Estate, whose brands include Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Corcoran, and Sotheby’s International.
Unlike some of their competitors, Douglas Elliman is focused exclusively on top-end luxury real estate — their agents were the focus of Netflix’s Selling The City, the New York spin-off of Selling Sunset. (Liebowitz previously worked in insurance and famously played a role in getting the World Trade Center insured for the event of terrorism, which ultimately allowed the World Trade Center to get rebuilt.)
The real estate market in Canada has not been faring well these last few years, but that did not factor into the partnership decision, Liebowitz told STOREYS, adding that Canada is the largest inbound source of buyers into the US, with lots of interest in Florida, Aspen, Dallas, Houston, and Austin.
“A lot more people in Canada buy in the US than the US in Canada, but you do get it, and it’s a real big advantage for our US agents and it is a big advantage for the agents that we’ll have in Canada, especially with new development,” said Liebowitz. “I’m a believer that there’s always a bull market somewhere. You’ve got to be in these markets. When business is not that great, it’s the best time to expand.”
“Everything we’re doing as a company now is about lead generation and referral generation,” he said. “The reason we’re going into all of these markets is not so much that Douglas Elliman wants to be transacting outside of the US; it’s really more about the lead generation outside the US that comes into the US. That’s really why we’re doing this. We want to be an international company. We know our brand has scalability. Our goal is to have the largest referral network in the luxury space.”