So, in June 2022, the couple decided to fill this gap by purchasing Re/Max Vision Realty from Heather Malin. While the former owner continues to serve as an associate broker with the team, John Dempster has taken over the company’s reins as owner and realtor. Rachelle Dempster has devoted herself to becoming a full-time broker. The majority of Rachelle’s time involves mentoring and training younger realtors, “It was a natural next step… a lot of realtors have come to us over the years, looking for advice from senior realtors like ourselves,” says John.

In 2005, when Rachelle became certified, she walked into a “hot” real estate market “where people were moving from the eastern provinces to Drayton Valley, literally coming in with U-Hauls filled with furniture and trying to find a place to live,” says John. At the time, he says there were only a handful of houses to choose from, forcing multiple offers on a single property. “We had people pulling into the parking lot and saying, ‘We need a place to live.'” This prompted John to follow suit and join Rachelle—once his high-school sweetheart, now wife—in building their real estate careers while growing their own family.

When the price of oil crashed in the mid-2010s, Drayton Valley’s real estate market suffered a significant downturn. “We were hit very hard, not only in pricing, but jobs were lost, folks were being laid off, and there was an exodus. People were selling houses for a hundred to $120,000 below what they had paid; there were foreclosures. It was a challenging time for us in this area,” says John, choking back tears when reminiscing about some of his close friends and clients. Both John and Rachelle felt helpless at the time. The community they cared for was turning to them, and they were limited by how much they could help.

With a strong faith in their church, John and Rachelle knew they would ride the hard times and come out on the other side. But they also knew that something had to change in the way real estate businesses operated in their community. “We love this community. We wanted to dig our roots even deeper. We raised our family here, and now we had an opportunity to not only be business owners, but leaders,” says John.

With Re/Max Vision Realty, John and Rachelle Dempster are building a “people first” culture, where the bottom line is not about money but the humans they’re serving and the real estate agents who work for them.

“We want to celebrate productivity and top producers, but we also believe in celebrating humanity and the small wins,” says John. “We celebrate if someone has had a tough deal or had to exercise particular care and patience with a client. Our culture is one of encouragement. Not every realtor can be a top producer, but if they’re great at working with senior citizens, we’ll encourage them in that area because we can see it even if they might not see it,” he adds. Rachelle chimes in, “If they’re great with first-time home buyers, we will play to that skill and pull that forward in them. We really want to shine a light on their strengths. That’s our culture,”

Their company awards an “Unsung Hero” award to realtors who peers nominate for going over and above for their clients and employers. Over the past two years, Drayton Valley’s real estate market has picked up steam, and so has the Dempsters’ family business, making them owners of the majority market share.

In 2021, John was awarded Realtor of the Year by the Realtors Association of Edmonton (RAE). He’s been in the top 5% in sales with RAE for the past three years. And so far, in 2022, John has completed
more than one hundred successful transactions.

While John attributes his success to Rachelle, Rachelle opines that “to say that the award is well-deserved is not giving him the credence that he deserves because it’s almost too hard to put into words.” She adds, “This
award is typically given to someone who is in the city. The fact that John’s in small town, rural Alberta, and has received that recognition is not lost on us.”

Today, John and Rachelle’s family-run team at Re/Max Vision Realty includes their daughter and son-in-law, who share their people-first approach, where it’s not about the numbers but the humans behind the numbers.

Sohini Bhattacharya

Sohini Bhattacharya is a contributing writer for REM.

The post A family affair: How one couple is changing the real estate game in their small town appeared first on REM.

After all, in Guyana he had a bright future ahead of him working in the ministry of culture, youth and sports where he quickly became the youth ambassador for his country and the Caribbean. He enjoyed his ministerial role that saw him travel to Europe, Egypt and Australia. From counselling HIV patients to developing youth employment and health initiatives in different regions of Guyana, his job was one that many would aspire for and call soul-rewarding.

But Campbell was destined for Canada. On March 23, 2003, Campbell immigrated to Canada with $300 in his pocket to be with his Canadian wife Allyson. As is the reality for most immigrants, to say that hard work and grit would define the next two decades of his life would be an understatement.

In May 2021, Campbell became the new owner of Keller Williams Realty Centres Newmarket – a brokerage that’s been in operation since 2009 and represents over 200 Realtors spanning Markham to Tobermory, Ont.

On his journey to success as a real estate broker in one of the most competitive markets in Canada, there were many times when Campbell punishingly asked himself, “Why did I leave my life in Guyana for this?” But every time that question propelled him up a few rungs in his career.

There was that time when he spent weeks standing outside a Toronto subway selling Toronto Star subscriptions. “I remember every day coming home and showering and just (seeing) the blackness from the sun and the smoke coming off in the shower. I asked myself, “Oh my goodness. Is this what life is going to be like here?” says Campbell.

Taking “no” for an answer, he quit that job after four weeks, even though the paper promised him a potential rise as a supervisor in newspaper sales.

Then there was that time, three months into his Canadian life, when he worked at an Oakville RadioShack as assistant manager. At the time he was living with his family in Etobicoke and a daily commute to work meant changing two buses and a train over an hour and half each way. “I remember one day traveling to Oakville. There was this massive snowstorm and the buses weren’t working. I had to walk 30 minutes from the bus stop to work. I’m walking in almost knee-high snow and thinking, ‘This is what I left Guyana for?”

After shaking off the negativity, Campbell’s grit saw him convert a RadioShack express store from a veritable hole in the wall outfit into one of the biggest stores, square-footage-wise, within a year and half. Soon he was promoted to district manager, overseeing 25 stores and receiving company awards.

“Here I was, a 23-year-old buck leading people who’ve been in the business for 30 years,” Campbell says. However, he quickly earned their trust and support, resulting in one of the highest achievements where all the stores under Campbell’s management saw not just a sales gain, but a profit gain. “This is extremely difficult to do,” he says.

Five years in, another crushing blow came Campbell’s way when RadioShack laid him off one day, citing “corporate restructuring” as a reason for mass layoffs. Tears rolled out as he drove home to Allyson and young kids, thinking yet again, “Oh my gosh, what did we do?”

The next year Campbell played stay-at-home dad, while Allyson worked as a teacher. “I was taking them (kids) to the park, all the play dates, bundling them up when they needed to use the washroom. But I loved it. I just needed that time for myself,” he says. But it was also a year of extreme lows. “Sometimes when my wife would go to work, I would put the kids to sleep, and I would just cry in the basement,” he says.

During his first year in Canada, Campbell remembers thinking he’d do well as a Realtor. However, with a big family back in a Guyana and growing one in Canada, he didn’t have the gall to take the leap into real estate where “I have to go out and write my own paycheque and go unemployed every day,” he says.

Gradually Campbell went back to what he knew best, retail. He spent the next decade moving from Best Buy to Ikea to Winners, trying to replicate the success he created at RadioShack. He switched jobs every year or two. The Canadian dream was still illusive.

“I hated going to work. The joy wasn’t there. I told my wife, ‘I can’t do this. I’m not happy’,” he says. He drove around with his resignation letter for nine months but feared handing it in because by then Campbell had sponsored his entire family’s move from Guyana to Canada. During that time, he also started attending seminars on how to invest in real estate. In September 2013, Campbell got his real estate license and soon thereafter, he and his wife bought a rental property to provide a home for his mother, stepfather and siblings with the promise that they’d pay him rent.

But the lowest low was yet to come.

“You finish real estate school. You’re all excited. You’re like, okay, now I’m going to go make money. And then you quickly realize that this business requires work,” he quips. Campbell started his real estate career with Keller Williams, where he was given the age-old advice: start with door-to-door sales.

“I would just go and knock on doors every single day for one year except for Sundays and holidays. I put money aside and you’re thinking that this money will be able to last me for a bit, but then there’s a lot of expenses and then your money’s quickly running out,” Campbell says.

Six to eight months in, Campbell and Allyson found themselves knocking on the doors of a food bank in Aurora, waiting in line with food stamps in hand.

“I remember a Saturday morning so distinctly. My wife’s in the garage. She’s putting bags together because she’s going to the food bank. I saw this look in her eyes. And it’s a look of, I’m doing this for our family. However, it is a look of disappointment. And that hurt me more than anything,” says Campbell after a pause, as if reliving every minute of that day.

That was the last time Campbell questioned the sanity of his decision to leave Guyana for a life in Canada. He was determined to make his Canadian life successful.

Next day, he doubled the number of doors he knocked on. His target was to speak to 100 people per day, and just door knocking wasn’t going to achieve that. So he started cold calling. Relentlessly hustling for the next few months saw small gains trickling in.

A few months later, Campbell accepted an offer from a broker of record in his office to co-own a small subdivision. Just as his career seemed to have some semblance of stability, his partner passed away of a terminal disease. This is when Campbell learned the biggest lesson in real estate.

“I realized our mortality in the industry. As real estate agents, all we do is buy homes, sell homes, buy homes, sell homes. At the end of it, do we really have much to show? There’s no legacy, there’s no building of wealth. Someone can make a $1 million, but then their expenses can be $1.1million. On the outside it can be very flashy. But there isn’t much remaining,” Campbell says.

Vowing to never subject his family to hardships again, and under the tutelage of Marvin Alexander, founder of Keller Williams Realty Centres Newmarket, Campbell’s raison d’être is to not just build generational wealth for his family, but to help agents understand how they can build a legacy for their families through their real estate business.

“What Realtors get caught in is just this constant queue of deals. They’re constantly wondering about when’s the next deal. They forget about their business, internally, like P&Ls,” he says.

Campbell believes that agents need to internalize that there’s more to a real estate business than just buying and selling homes. He says agents at his brokerage are trained not just to generate leads and listings, but their monthly wealth building seminars also educate on how to generate added streams of income, whether that be through the stock market or other investment portfolios.

This mindset has seen Campbell receive award after award since he began his real estate career in 2013, for sales, community involvement and community service. He is also active in several  philanthropic pursuits. Campbell and his team have partnered with the Real Canadian Superstore to donate over 300 turkeys with “all the fixings” to families in need through the Aurora Food Bank. This year they were on track to feed 500 families in York Region. This partnership has also donated over 230 back-to-school bags filled with supplies for children.

His brokerage ended 2021 with 230 agents. The goal is to add another 120 by the end of 2022.

“But most importantly,” Campbell says, “it’s not just increasing it by agents. It’s growing with the right people. Partnering with the right people who see the vision, because the truth is any agent can buy and sell real estate at any brokerage, or they can open their own brokerage. But what I want us to be known for at Keller Williams Realty Centres is that we are going help our agent partners build and create wealth for themselves and their family so that they can leave a legacy behind.”

Sohini Bhattacharya

Sohini Bhattacharya is a contributing writer for REM.

The post Colin Campbell’s remarkable story of true grit appeared first on REM.

That transition was completed in August 2020, when Christan Bosley, Tom’s daughter, officially took over the reins of this 93-year-old family institution. (Tom now serves as chair of the company and Ann, Tom’s wife and Christan’s mother, is director). The firm has produced nine Toronto Real Estate Board presidents, five Real Estate Council of Ontario chairmen, three CREA presidents, and two Ontario Real Estate Association presidents.

William H. Bosley, Christan’s great-grandfather, who founded the company in 1928, helped establish the Toronto board and Ontario’s provincial real estate association.

In Every Family’s Business: 12 Common Sense Questions to Protect Your Wealth, author Thomas William Deans states that only 30 per cent of family businesses survive to the second generation. And of those, only 10 per cent make it to the third generation. “If you’re a founder of a business, you have a three per cent chance of your grandchildren owning and operating your business. Long odds indeed,” writes Dean.

Bosley Real Estate has not just beaten those odds but also belongs to a rarified circle of women-owned real estate brokerages.

As broker of record and the first female Bosley president, the weight of the responsibility on her shoulders was not lost on Christan. “You know, after 90 years, within literally six months of taking over, I feared I would tank the company in the middle of the global pandemic,” she says. But under Christan’s digital leadership and know how, Bosley agents were already on the fast tech track to having hybrid meetings to accommodate those who weren’t close by or unable to make it on site.

“So, from a technology standpoint, the transition was very simple. We had all our staff transitioned within a week to working remotely and completely set up at home. It did push us to centralize and move our marketing team off site. That has been one of the silver linings from the pandemic because our team is working better than they have in a long time and certainly much more efficiently,” Christan says.

“We continued our sales meetings once a week. But we’ve shifted the content of our sales meetings in response to what’s happening in the environment around us.”

As a big proponent of mental wellbeing and as someone who has struggled with mental health in the past, Christan saw the need for sales meetings to be a safe space for Bosley agents to also discuss mental health challenges brought on by the pandemic.

“We had 300+ agents wondering how they were going to make a living and whether they’d be deemed essential or not. So, I brought in a mental health expert and we talked about coping mechanisms and how to ensure that agents stayed in a routine while they were at home, and how to make sure they were prioritizing their needs, so they could take care of everybody else,” she says.

Despite Bosley’s shift to digital meetings, upwards of 60 per cent of Bosley agents continued to use the company’s physical locations. “It’s one of the defining differences of the Bosley experience – the fact that people actually choose to come on site and participate in what we have to offer,” says Christan.

In an age that no longer questions the success and viability of virtual brokerages with a digital-only business model, many wonder if centralized brick-and-mortar establishments are a thing of the past. But recently, Bosley consolidated three of their Toronto office spaces into a new 11,000-sq.ft. location at 103 Vanderhoof Avenue. With the addition of a new location in Thornbury, Ont., Bosley now has seven physical locations, thereby quashing the doubt.

“To be honest, I really think that question is a comparison of apples to oranges. I think that the (virtual) business model is so dramatically different. It doesn’t ever phase me as a competitor of Bosley. Sure, they’re out there, but at the end of the day, it really is a different offering and it attracts a different level of professionalism,” says Christan.

Human beings need connections, she says. And if there’s anything that the last two years has taught her, it’s that people in isolation are not effective in a sales position because many sales associates are extroverts and need human contact.

“It’s one thing for an agent to go and get that from their clients. But I firmly believe that if you’re not in a physical office location, face-to-face with your peers, you’re missing out on such incredible and critical learning.” She says the last six agents she hired come from Gen Z – who are entirely online.

“And those Gen Zs are coming into the office to participate because there’s something here for them. What we have here is (almost 100 years) of experience,” she says.

Therein lies the secret to the Bosley success. Staying true to Tom Bosley’s motto to “have fun to make money”, Christan says her leadership values are identical to her father’s.

“I lead by the same things that Tom led by when he was president. He was 100-per-cent present with our agents. He believed that if we’re not having fun, we’re going to change it. What’s the point in doing something that doesn’t bring you happiness? I know what’s happening in most of our agents’ lives. I am present totally. When I speak to them, I am here to support them. It’s a very different mentality. I call them, they don’t necessarily call me. And I think that’s unique for a brokerage.”

Sohini Bhattacharya

Sohini Bhattacharya is a contributing writer for REM.

The post Bosley Real Estate ushers in fourth generation appeared first on REM.

The Art of the CMA: Win Hearts, Minds, and Loyalty by Mastering Real Estate’s Most Versatile Tool

But Robertson says that what we know about CMAs is the tip of the iceberg and “that a lot of people have underestimated what a CMA could do for their (real estate) business.” As co-founder of W+R Studios, a U.S.-based tech company focussed on creating software for CMA technology, Robertson has had many conversations with agents over the years.  During this time, he has mined creative ways in which CMAs can be re-used. He has concluded that CMAs have an unrealized potential that goes beyond just a primary comps report used by selling agents. “I thought there’s a story there. There’s something that a lot of agents can learn from,” he says.

The book is Robertson’s first foray into authorship and like many debuting writers, it’s about what he knows best. With catchy chapter titles, the book is laid out with a plethora of whys and how-tos of the CMA through easy-to-read page-turners, replete with bullet points, charts, snappily titled section-breaks, examples of Robertson’s anecdotal encounters in the real estate industry and end-of-chapter summaries. As such, his book is no different than other business books that follow the same content marketing-informed formula.

But what’s worth reading are the wealth of evidence-based insights Robertson compiles for new and veteran agents alike, who are becoming increasingly wary of            competing with prop tech, Zestimates and ibuyers taking over the home selling process.

“The book is a blueprint on engagement with the lifeblood of an agent’s career – the consumer. The book gives you the strategy and mindset to do more with the information and tools already at your fingertips. Read it. Mark it up and read it again. You won’t be disappointed,” reviewed one reader.

The book helps agents take the guesswork out of pricing and valuing homes, de-mystifies data storytelling, informs on how to use data visualizations to achieve an edge on sales and breaks down the anatomy of a CMA, completed with a script for a successful listing presentation. Robertson even ends the book with findings from his company’s 2020 report on best practices for CMAs and listing presentations. Amassed from a survey completed by 3,325 participants, the report concludes that 67 per cent of respondents feel that CMAs are gaining more in relevance, as we look towards a tech-powered real estate future.

“There’s a way of using CMAs traditionally once you’ve acquired business – where you are sitting in front of a seller and you’re presenting this report – but people don’t look at it as them being a way to acquire business, to generate business. And that’s why I think there are people who want to read this book as a way of generating business, not just using in business you’ve already generated,” says Robertson.

“Think of your CMA presentation as a piece of sheet music. All the notes are there, but you are one who will create the music, build emotional connections and add the nuances and the artistry that makes for a truly memorable experience. Most agents won’t take the time to craft such a customer experience,” he writes in The Art of the CMA.

The book is available at Amazon and directly from the authors.

Sohini Bhattacharya

Sohini Bhattacharya is a contributing writer for REM.

The post The unrealized potential of the CMA appeared first on REM.

That evening, O’Neill left home to keep a business appointment and catch a show afterwards at the Yonge and Eglinton Cineplex. Normally, she’d take an Uber or drive, but that day she decided to hop on a one-stop subway ride from home to get there. It was rush hour and it was easier than spending what could be hours in choc-a-bloc, one-way traffic on chaotic Yonge street, plagued by the TTC’s decade-long LRT construction project.

But O’Neill couldn’t completely avoid dealing with the chaos at Yonge and Eglinton that day. She had to take a roundabout route to her destination that forced her to cross the busy intersection. Jostled and pushed around by hordes of pedestrians, one of the last things O’Neill remembers from that evening is a bright orange light. She thought they were traffic lights. The next thing she remembers is looking up to see paramedics hunched over her, cutting her clothes with scissors saying, “We have a possible neuro case and it’s life threatening.”

“I thought I was hit by a sniper, but the medics said I’d just been hit by an east-bound TTC bus that had thrown me 20 feet up in the air,” says O’Neill. The bright orange light was the headlight on the bus. O’Neill’s face took the fall and saved her life.

For the next four months, she saw her prognosis inch from critical to stable at Sunnybrook hospital. She endured traumatic and painful reconstructive surgery to her face.

During recovery, O’Neill was determined not to feel like a victim or a patient. Within an instant her life had spiralled out of control, but the real estate veteran – and many would agree, an industry legend – wasn’t going to let it break her. She contemplated the fragility of life, and how futile it was “to waste time on past resentments, or past disappointments or past anything. Always have your goals and continue, but always, always be aware that you have to be subject to change at any time and adapt to it,” she says.

Her accident notwithstanding, this mantra has helped O’Neill conquer formidable heights in real estate from the moment she chanced upon it over four decades ago.

In 1980, the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) was housed at 1883 Yonge street (near Yonge and Davisville). O’Neill was there to interview for a newly minted position of education co-ordinator.

“I thought I was going to the board of education,” she says. “I applied for a job at the board of education and below that in the paper was a tiny ad for an education co-ordinator at TREB. So I applied there too as a lark.”

Two years later she received a call to come in for an interview. Back then, TREB’s department of education was non-existent, so what they really wanted was for O’Neill to create it from scratch. They offered her twice the salary she’d been making as a psychometrist at Hubbard Memorial Hospital’s rehab centre.

After consulting her parents, O’Neill decided to accept the job. “And the rest is history,” she says.

“My friends used to phone me and say, what are you doing? And I’d be sitting at the desk with a secretary and pens and pencils. And, I’d say, I’m thinking. And they’d say, well, what are you thinking about? I said, I’m thinking about what I’m going to do,” says O’Neill.

“The industry had a very myopic view of education,” she says. “Back then, the sales division or the women’s division or the commercial division would put on a seminar with a guest speaker and that was their idea of education. They had no vision of what it could become.”

O’Neill heralded a new era of change and inclusion into TREB, which she says had long been crippled by stifling traditionalists and exclusivists. “It was like everyone involved in a stagnating industry suddenly got a wake-up call. Her unbridled enthusiasm was like a cannon shot in the executive halls,” said REM’s late publisher Heino Molls in a Publisher’s Page column.

Under O’Neill, TREB saw the birth of its government relations department. Soon, she was also managing editor of the organization’s glossy quarterly real estate periodical. The growing board got too big for its Yonge Street offices.

“It was just a sleeping giant. It just took off,” O’Neill says.

“When we (TREB) moved to 1400 Don Mills Road, along with the architects and the board of directors, we designed almost every inch of that new office. I designed the auditorium because I had a certain vision of how I wanted people to come in and learn. When I walk in the building now, of course, nobody knows me and nobody cares, but you just kind of stop and you think, wow, wow. I was such an integral part of every brick, and every tile, every colour of this building.”

In 1988 O’Neill left the board and joined Canada Trust, teaching at the firm’s career centre. But when the recession hit and the centre was shut down, O’Neill was asked to manage some Canada Trust real estate offices in Mississauga – once again unexpectedly pulling her back into the real industry. Later, when Canada Trust folded its real estate operations, she worked for Johnson & Daniel, Sadie Moranis Prudential Realty and Bosley Real Estate.

Along the way she started volunteering for committee work at the real estate board.

Sales representatives benefited from O’Neill’s fearless campaigning and leadership when campaigning for their right to vote in the business affairs of the board. At the time, “We didn’t have one person, one vote. It was only brokers, and it was very cliquey. The brokers would get together at their offices, have proxy votes and fix the elections,” she says.

In O’Neill’s eyes, TREB was a great equalizer and there was no reason to not have one person one vote, when “all members invested the same amount of effort, time, sweat and equity into doing the job.”

After one of many thwarted attempts to give sales representatives a right to vote, O’Neill penned an op-ed in October 1996 denouncing her opposers at the TREB, saying, “Currently, there are 16,357 salesperson members of TREB who are disenfranchised from the voting process. In spite of the five-year stipulation before salespeople could vote, the ‘naysayers’ were fearful of even that restricted voice. It’s not only unfair, it’s unjust…The issue is not one of salespersons versus brokers, but one of progress, talent and leadership.” Salespeople at TREB won voting rights in 1997.

Eventually and against stiff competition, O’Neill became president-elect of TREB in 2007. She ended up serving for almost two full terms as the former president resigned to take a new position out of town.

Beginning in 2012, O’Neill served as provincial director of the Ontario Real Estate Association for two two-year terms.

In the golden years of a career spearheading many firsts in Ontario’s real estate history, today O’Neill’s life has come full circle, as she sits by the window of her Sotheby’s office at 1867 Yonge Street, right across the street from where she started 41 years ago at TREB.

“When Maureen first joined Sotheby’s International Realty Canada, it was a nascent brand with relatively little brand equity in the Ontario real estate market,” says Don Kottick, president and CEO. “Maureen joining the firm ignited the brand’s ascent, as this was perceived as a sign of strength and credibility, attracting more high-producing and high-profile Realtors to the organization. Over the course of time, Sotheby’s market share in the GTA has steadily grown, and in 2020 for the first time, Sotheby’s surpassed Chestnut Park, Johnston & Daniel and Harvey Kalles in terms of market share related to sales and unit volume.

“Her legendary recovery from the near fatal bus accident to quickly resuming her position as Ontario broker of record for Sotheby’s International Realty is still the talk of the town,” says Kottick.

Looking back, O’Neill is humbled by her achievements and those who marshalled her success. And she continues promoting the virtues of continuing education. “I’m still making sure people reach their full potential,” she says. “I’ll always be very pro-education.”

Sohini Bhattacharya

Sohini Bhattacharya is a contributing writer for REM.

The post Maureen O’Neill: A career based on education appeared first on REM.

Kristen Trembinski

But the challenge for Kristen and future co-owner Jamie Coccimiglio was to help incoming young agents like themselves overcome their lack of confidence in a market where “all the other real estate brokerage owners in town were amongst my father’s generation here in Sault Ste. Marie,” she says.

Jamie Coccimiglio

“As a younger person starting out, you’re typically selling someone’s largest investment. What people don’t understand when they’re going through (real estate) courses is that the courses are just one component of it. But in the business, there’s so much to learn from there on. And it’s mostly done on the job,” she says.

When Coccimiglio joined Trembinski as co-owner in 2017, they decided to take a hard look at where they struggled as young brokerage owners and where they could use a helping hand. “And a huge component for us (to focus on) was a hands-on training culture,” says Coccimiglio. Bolstered by the existing Exit formula, the two realised that creating a future-forward business where work/life balance was part of the bottom line would not only attract high-performing agents but would also help to retain them.

“When we started it was mainly about business,” says Coccimiglio. “And what we tried to do is not focus just on the business side of it.” They wanted to foster a mindset that included training, camaraderie, fun and confidence.

“I think in the future, we’re going to see that the most successful businesses aren’t just focusing on the business side of it. It’s that positive work culture and environment that they’re also working on. That’s what’s going to take some businesses to exponential growth, because if you’re happier at home and at work, it affects your business.”

With their new work/life balance raison d’être, Trembinski and Coccimiglio are seeing their vision come to fruition through the exponential growth their brokerage has experienced since their partnership began.

Currently with 40 agents and counting, the retention rate at their office hit 97 per cent in 2018 and grew to 100 per cent in 2020. During times when many business owners have moved or considered moving their brick-and-mortar operations online, Exit Realty Lake Superior will expand their physical presence. “We’re doing an expansion on our building here to accommodate (growing numbers). We have about 10 onboarding within the next month. So, our numbers are probably going to be closer to 50 by the time summer hits,” says Trembinski.

At Exit Realty Corp. International, 25 ends are considered the minimum required to make the corporate award category. At Exit Lake Superior, agents with 25 ends or 100 GCI are dubbed “top producers”. Of the 40 current agents, 21 are top producers, five are brand new to the business (less than six months) and most of the remaining agents are on the cusp of hitting the top-producer mark.

In addition, the brokerage’s average per agent production for 2020 was 29 ends per agent with approximately $4,300 average commission/transaction. All this adds up to $5.52 million in volume per agent for 2020 and approximately $126,000 gross closed commissions/agent, Trembinski says.

The brokerage has maintained No. 1 market share within the Sault Ste. Marie marketplace since 2017.

“Our career highlight award was the Canadian Broker of the Year from Exit Realty Corp. International in 2017,” says Trembinski.

Despite the pandemic, the brokerage hosts remote/virtual once-a-month career nights, regular training sessions and sales meetings twice a week. It sends out weekly calendar reminders to its agents at the beginning of every week to help them co-ordinate with the company’s set schedule.

“It boils down to communication. All our agents are independent contractors, so it’s important to keep the communication lines open and strong where we’re touching our agents almost daily or at least a few times over the week,” says Trembinski.

The owners attribute the brokerage’s rapid success to its open-door culture where agents can “come and see both of us whenever, whether it’s calling us or us reaching out to them. We have policies in place that for the first year of business, all paperwork is to be run by either me or Kristen,” says Coccimiglio.

By focusing on the individual’s overall wellbeing, in keeping with the universal Exit approach of moving from an ego-driven to an empathy-driven company, “we can all just do so much better. And that’s always been at the forefront of our growth,” Trembinski says.

Sohini Bhattacharya

Sohini Bhattacharya is a contributing writer for REM.

The post Exit Realty Lake Superior’s formula: Training, camaraderie, fun and confidence appeared first on REM.

This was the question Paul Poliszot, CEO and broker of record at REXIG Realty Investment Group in Oakville, Ont. asked some of his small investor clients. He was astonished that they responded by citing a small fraction of companies, including Realty Executives, where Poliszot worked between 2009 and 2016.

Back then, and fresh out of business school with a finance degree, Poliszot entered a real estate industry that was recovering from the 2008 recession. “Obviously, there are big firms out there, like Cushman, that service large corporations or big investors on multimillion-dollar purchases. But there was nobody that was really servicing the smaller investor. And I was very surprised that maybe nobody thought the market was big enough,” says Poliszot.

A small investor, he says, “would be someone whose financial worth is up to, let’s say $20 million. It’s not somebody who has the bandwidth to go buy out entire apartment buildings, one after the other. It is somebody who typically has a business or a very well-paying job. They show up everyday to work and they are just looking to maximize what their dollars can earn for them outside of their core business.”

Recognizing that there was a gap in the industry, and with mentorship from his broker uncle, who had managed a portfolio of over 3,000 rental properties, Poliszot had a slow start in an under-serviced niche. But he soon developed his calling for working with smaller investors such as medical professionals, doctors, dentists, pharmacists, entrepreneurs, lawyers and senior-level executives who wanted to see their money grow.

During his stint at Realty Executives, Poliszot helped “hundreds of members trade and invest in real estate.” This was around the same time that the Greater Toronto Area’s condo market was starting to boom. In 2014 he won an award for selling the most condos in Toronto’s downtown in a particular month and quickly achieved platinum status for new condo sales. He stayed in the company’s top five for new condo sales.

Around 2015, Poliszot bought a franchise from Realty Executives regional and named it Realty Executives Investment Group. His investment business continued to thrive under the new banner. At 37-years-old, he has amassed an impressive list of awards, which include the Chairman Award in 2017 and the Top Gun Commission Gold award in 2019.

Recently Poliszot established a new independent company, REXIG Realty Investment Group. Operating from a 4,500-square-foot office with more than 20 agents, Poliszot and his team function much like a real estate investment bank with their clients “to provide them a macro economic view of what is going on in the marketplace. Many of these investors have the ability to buy real estate in any global metropolis, not just the GTA,” he says.

Starter investors are “put into short-term assets first to get them to understand how the process works and how they can really see those returns initially and maximize them. We then build on a medium-term portfolio and then ultimately a long-term portfolio. Even if somebody comes in with significant amounts of capital, we still won’t advise them to go buy large assets right away, because they have to learn the process,” says Poliszot.

Residential Realtors are missing an opportunity to build wealth for themselves and their clients. As masters of their crafts, while seasoned Realtors build their muscle within a specific geographic area or a demographic, they still miss out on the cohort of clients that are looking to strictly invest, he says.

“We try to educate this agent and train them to think like an investment advisor and not just a Realtor. Ultimately they are dealing with an individual’s, typically, most expensive asset. With rising real estate prices for two decades, this is something that if families can learn how to tap into, and if agents can learn how to tap into, they can make some phenomenal decisions in a very short period of time and put themselves on the road to wealth and on the road to stability and financial independence,” says Poliszot.

With a client list that includes several top medical professionals, REXIG’s business is growing fast, based on the number of referrals they’ve received in a short time. Polizot’s appetite for acquisition and delivering profits for his clients are the key driving forces behind his new company.

“I take every risk, and the investments that we ultimately recommend to our clients, we test first with our own capital to make sure that the process is sound.  We make sure that the profit will be there,” says Poliszot.

Sohini Bhattacharya

Sohini Bhattacharya is a contributing writer for REM.

The post Paul Poliszot: Helping small investment clients build wealth appeared first on REM.

Before that lockdown, he specialized as a project manager in residential construction for Mondev, a Montreal-based real estate development firm. As part of the Mondev team, Tassé worked closely with brothers Jordan Owen, 26 and Mark Owen, 28, whose father owned the company. The three struck up a friendship outside work that led Tassé directly back to Jordan, mid-lockdown, with a business pitch to start a company making reusable masks.

Jordan had just returned home to Montreal after his post-graduate program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) cancelled classes and pivoted to online learning. He immediately jumped at Tassé’s idea. With Mark joining the team, they took the pandemic by its horns and launched Bien Aller, a company monikered after Quebec’s COVID catchphrase “Ça va bien aller.” (It’s going to be fine.)  Soon, Bien Aller became the first company to sell reusable masks in Quebec. Within three months, it sold over 250,000 masks across Canada and the United States.

As soon as Bien Aller started helping save lives and generating profits, the trio turned their sights to fix a problem in real estate development that had long irked them. “The problem in the industry is that new residential developments or developers have a hard time efficiently determining the pricing of their units,” says Tassé.

So, they “wanted to build a solution that would allow the developer to have an overall market view of the project, where it’s located, help the developer develop his initial pricelist in a more sophisticated way, and allow the developer to have a platform that allows them to follow in real time the sales of his project and optimize those prices,” he says.

The team used artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to do away with traditional, more unscientific ways of pricing units, and replace them with a rigorous data-driven approach to fixing the price of a condo unit.

Last June, the trio invited a fourth friend, Benoit Thibeault, and cofounded and incorporated Squarefeet.ai. By September, the startup had launched its online platform that “got great traction from the (real estate) industry,” says Tassé.

With Realtors positioned as the end-users of their technology, Squarefeet.ai “allows them to be able to get the maximum revenue for the developer and it’s going to allow them to differentiate themselves from other Realtors, because they’re backed by AI-driven decisions. This is huge for them because now they have a tool that allows them to be better than the competition,” says Tassé. Ongoing discussions with companies such as Baker Real Estate and JLL have further reinforced Squarefeet.ai’s claims.

“Real estate is a highly driven data industry but at the moment, there are very few solutions that allow us to utilize that data, to (deliver) data-driven solutions. Those data-driven decisions are going to separate the developers that have huge success and the ones that have less. Technology is going to have to be implemented in this industry to be able to keep up with the rest of our lives,” says Tassé, especially in the context of how life and work have changed due to the pandemic.

Data-driven decisions will eventually pave the path for better-designed units, he says, because “we’re going to be able to quantify what works and what the people want to have as units, which ones are the most successful on the market, which are going to allow the developer to create better buildings and maybe eventually cities that are more catered to the need of its different citizens.”

By the end of 2021, the company aims to release the first version of its technology to “cater to the existing stock of real estate” within Quebec, while planning to expand the product’s reach to the rest of Canada thereafter.

Bootstrapped by ongoing earnings from Bien Aller and with venture funds raised through various business and startup accelerator programs, Squarefeet.ai is poised to establish its foothold within a futuristic vision to help the real estate industry evolve into “something that’s more refined than what it is right now,” says Tassé.

Sohini Bhattacharya

Sohini Bhattacharya is a contributing writer for REM.

The post SquareFeet.ai stakes claim as “pioneer of price optimization” in real estate appeared first on REM.

Hamilton’s gentrification is one of the driving themes in Hedges’ first self-published novel, where her protagonist Kay is a fine arts dealer, who Hedges describes, “has left her position and comfortable life in Montreal to establish a gallery in a beautiful building on the harbour in Hamilton, Ont.

“She went there for two reasons,” says Hedges. “Number one, to be close to her son who was studying at McMaster, but also because the opportunity became available for her to purchase her own gallery.”

Those who know Hedges will assume that her novel’s protagonist is an autobiographical rendering of herself. However, for general readers too, as one gets deeper into the book, Kay Lange’s character as an art gallery owner and a visual artist, with a deep concern for the ongoing gentrification in Hamilton and love for travel, seem to be drawn out of experiences more than just familiar to the author.

“We write what we know,” says Hedges. But Practise of her Profession is more than autobiographical. It is also about wanderlust. It’s about “the trajectory not taken, the life not lived, the choices not taken, and coming to a crossroads to take the different paths,” says Hedges.

The overlap with real estate is that her protagonist purchased a property sight unseen. It was recommended and she made the move. The book goes on to discuss the fallout of that decision and explore themes that are familiar to real estate. Such as how perhaps the municipality oversells an area, in terms of the future of a particular neighbourhood. “The opportunities in the area, the vision may (sometimes) be a little bit ahead of the reality,” says Hedges.

Gentrification has always been a big issue in real estate, says Hedges. Through her novel, she questions the notion of whether property developers are doing the best thing by gentrifying a neighbourhood. Realtors may have clients who feel they are doing something so good for a neighborhood or a city, but those already living there may not agree, she says.

She says that while there are no right or wrong answers to that dilemma, Realtors are hyper aware of both sides of the debate and how it effects their businesses.

Another important theme Hedges draws upon in her novel is that of cultural appropriation. While not a Realtor’s key concern, Hedges is passionate about calling out cultural appropriation, misrepresentation and the need for authentic celebration of Indigenous art and life. “It’s a book about art, art in our life, art in the lives of the community, and how we access a community through its art, how we learn to understand the history and the culture of a community through their visual art,” she says.

In a passage in the novel, Hedges writes, “A joke for you: It’s Halloween and a Canadian Indigenous man opens the door of his suburban home to a neighbourhood ‘trick or treater’. The kid is dressed in full headdress, a war bonnet and carrying a toy bow and arrow. The man at the door says, ‘What are you supposed to be?’ The kid says, ‘I’m an Indian Chief.’ The man nods. ‘Well, I’m a white man,’ and he grabs the kid’s candy. Kay could only laugh.”

While dealt with levity, Hedges cannot be more serious when she says, “Cultural appropriation is a big part of the visual arts in Canada, recognized especially in our indigenous community, and recognizing that when we celebrate something, what is the source of that? And ensuring that that is presented by someone who actually has ownership of the source of that creativity or that symbolism. I think we have a long way to go,” in doing so, says Hedges.

At 57, Hedges is in her 17th year as a Realtor. Until her early 40s she worked for non-profits, specifically in cultural management. But as work-life balance became more of a need, real estate seemed like the only profession that could allow her the time and means she needed to carry on her love for travel, visual arts and her writing pursuits. It helped that Hedges’ mother had a Realtor friend she looked up to as a teenager. “I admired how she was able to give so much of her time and still have this successful career,” says Hedges.

“That’s the wonderful thing about being a real estate. You can structure your time accordingly to follow these interests and give back to your community.”

Through her book, Hedges says she tries to replicate the same sense of discovery she feels and enjoys when working with her real estate clients.

“Being in Hamilton in the last 10 years, seeing the shift of people coming out of the Toronto urban centre, and discovering a place or rediscovering Hamilton,” she says are what makes the Practise of Her Profession as much about Hamilton as about Kay Lange.

Indeed, Hedges says that unwittingly she has made the city a powerful second protagonist in her book. Like her Hamilton-bound clients, Hedges’ novel exudes that “feeling of moving, and learning about a new place, learning about who they are in a new place, how will we change and adapt. That’s a big part of it,” she says.

Sohini Bhattacharya

Sohini Bhattacharya is a contributing writer for REM.

The post Realtor Bettianne Hedges explores the life almost lived in her novel appeared first on REM.

At the time of a once-in-100-years pandemic, when the government’s focus is on overcoming unprecedented challenges and face-to-face meetings seem like the distant past, OREA’s sustained lobbying efforts have paid off.

Sean Morrison

“It comes by building a good reputation (over years) with the government as a trusted stakeholder. It starts with being a good partner. And it shows the power of the Realtor lobby in Ontario, when our 80,000 Realtors work together for a common goal,” says OREA president Sean Morrison.

He says OREA leaders engaged in weekly Zoom meetings with government officials, “not approaching them with our hand out,” every time, but by working with them to develop research on what Ontarians want.

Morrison says OREA is not “mono focused on just what’s good for the Realtor. We’re also looking out for what’s good for the consumer and Ontario.” OREA recently partnered with Nanos Research to create the Ontario Residential Real Estate Monitor, to “measure and track sentiment of Ontarians who are actively in the housing market.”

The Nanos research report, says Morrison, helped bolster their lobbying efforts with the government “so that they understand the attitudes of consumers and Realtors across the province.” The findings of the report aided government decision-making in OREA’s favour when looking at policies tabled by the association, and “why we’re suggesting those policies, what support there is in the constituency for these policies and what would be a very popular policy amongst Ontarians,” says Morrison.

OREA’s lobbying efforts also included thanking the government publicly on pro homeownership and Realtor legislation. Morrison highlighted the potency of showing basic gratitude because “we’ve heard several times that many other organizations don’t do that. It’s one of the most important things that we do in our lobbying – to acknowledge when they’ve listened to our advice and when they’ve done something that helps Realtors or Ontario communities,” says Morrison.

Two recommendations from OREA’s discussion paper Rebuilding Ontario: A framework for recovery were greenlighted by the province: creating a one-year home seniors safety tax credit and cutting business education taxes for commercial properties.

The safety tax credit “will be worth 25 per cent of up to $10,000 in eligible expenses for a senior’s principal residence in Ontario. The maximum credit would be $2,500, providing 27,000 families with $30 million in relief,” says Hudak’s statement.

COVID-19 has revealed systemic failures in long-term care homes. Growing concerns about senior safety makes this tax credit a vital win for OREA.

“The eligible expenses in this program would be for things like grab bars and related bathroom reinforcements, which will help keep seniors safe in their homes, so they can stay in there longer. But it would also include things like renovations” to improve senior’s residences or provide secondary suites for seniors, says Morrison. Other accessibility enhancements such as wheelchair ramps, stair lifts and elevators are also covered by the credit.

Morrison says the tax credit goes hand in hand with an economic stimulus because “it creates jobs in the economy” for those who specialize in accessibility installations for seniors.

The province’s commitment to cutting the business education tax rates “will lower all high BET rates to a rate of 0.88 per cent for both commercial and industrial properties beginning in 2021,” says Hudak’s statement. Directly benefitting 200,000 Ontario business properties, this recommendation promises to provide “approximately $450 million in annual savings.”

Other OREA recommendations outlined in the Rebuilding Ontario report include creating opportunity zones in underprivileged communities “like Northern Ontario where a mine is closed, or the major industry or mill has closed. Creating that opportunity for other industry to go in there through things like differential tax treatment, or investments in infrastructure would be helpful in those communities,” says Morrison.

Other suggestions include a temporary six-month Land Transfer Tax holiday for homes priced at less than $600,000 and increasing the scope of the seniors safety tax credit by introducing a broad-based home renovation tax credit.

Earlier this year, OREA’s lobbying efforts also paid off when Ontario Realtors were finally allowed to form personal real estate corporations. The association had been working on that file for many years.

Morrison says OREA’s lobbying efforts to “increase professionalism through TRESSA regulations” and its focus on stimulus packages has slowed down due to COVID-19. But he says the association is determined to continue working with the government to “make Ontario the leader in North America when it comes to professional standards and enforcement of business tools for our Realtor members.”

Sohini Bhattacharya

Sohini Bhattacharya is a contributing writer for REM.

The post OREA’s lobbying efforts pay off, even during pandemic appeared first on REM.