RE/MAX Escarpment Realty Inc.

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Burlington

Fort Erie

Hamilton

Niagara Falls

Niagara-on-the-Lake

Oakville

St. Catharines

Stoney Creek

Welland

Jennifer Johnson

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Buyers

Sellers

Number of Listings

Average Sale Price

When we look back at the last five years in real estate, or the economy in general, it can be described as a “see-saw lustrum.” The English language is particular at times but misses the boat at others. Words for the passage of time are often varied and precise at the same time. For instance, a 10-year period is known as a decade; a 25-year period is called a quarter-century; a 50-year period is a semi-century or golden jubilee; and, of course, 100 years gets counted and mentioned all the time, as in the twenty-first century. So, what is a lustrum, you ask? A lustrum is a less common term for a five-year period. Its origins date back to ancient Rome and refer to a purification ceremony that occurred every five years. The ceremony concluded the census — the counting of the population for military and taxation purposes. Luere means to wash (is that why the English call the bathroom the loo?) or purify, which was the primary purpose of the ceremony, including an animal sacrifice performed by a censor. The Romans truly lived in excess if they needed a reset or cleansing every five years.As far as my “see-saw” reference, the last half-decade saw rapid change from one direction to another. Rapid movements in the market — down in 2020, up in 2021 and down again in 2022 — continued and so on. So much rapid change came in this short period, from one extreme to another, where we all experienced a wide range of emotions propelled by geopolitical and economic circumstances. Can this period be described as a time of great “lust,” as in the word lustrum? Hell ya! The longing for power, money and even living life to the fullest was heavily weighted in the first half of this decade. Remember all that “revenge spending” on our houses, on luxury goods, eating out and, of course, travel? I’m not suggesting we are in need of a cleanse, though I do feel we just finished the first stage of the idiomatic seven stages of relationships with this century, out of the lust or passion stage and settling into the discovery or realisation stage. The latter half of the ’20s is a perfect time to launch into learning and unearthing the possibilities with more clarity and stability, away from the challenges, complications and noise of the past five years. With that emerges new concepts, ideas and expressions.The Real Estate Word CleanseAs a student of the real estate industry, I felt it was important to do my part to cleanse our industry of some of the words, myths and misconceptions that have impacted the first half of the roaring ’20s and culminated in 2025.Mortgage DefaultsAt the beginning of 2025, we heard a lot of chatter around rising mortgage rates coinciding with rising default rates. Particularly, those borrowers who got a mortgage in 2020 at below two per cent were expected to be shocked by their renewal payments as rates doubled. All those doomsayers shouted from the rooftops that homeowners in this circumstance were going to be walking away from their homes in droves.CMHC just reported that the country’s national delinquency rates fell slightly in the second quarter of 2025 — the first decline in three years (though B.C. and Ontario were above the national average). Furthermore, the lower the interest rates, the more principal is paid down, which is a bonus at renewal. And if that isn’t enough to stop talking about mortgage defaults, let’s look at the numbers.<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/CAHECjCnRFGAUZBZTCao"> IncentivesIn many parts of the country, housing starts are at an all-time low, and builders and developers are tired of sitting on the sidelines and want to get back into the market. History has a way of repeating itself, and builders and various levels of government have played a role in kick-starting new construction. Everything from development charge reductions, deferrals or rebates to eliminating HST on new construction for all buyers, not just first-time buyers. Builders can also impact the market with mortgage rate buy-downs, no-interest, non-payment second mortgages, closing cost credits, free upgrades, lease-to-own programs and short-term rent guarantees for investors.Unfortunately for us in Canada, banks do not allow rate buy-downs, but the math is compelling. On a $1-million mortgage, to buy the rate down by one percentage point — from four per cent to three per cent — the upfront cost is $30,000 ($15,000 on $500,000), which gives the buyer $536 in monthly savings for the five-year term. This is a great way to bring affordability to the market. Can you imagine if buyers were allowed to withdraw from their RRSPs tax-free to do this, or if sellers could offer this as an incentive when selling their home?Creative FinancingIt’s time we explore more creativity when it comes to helping people get into and move up in the real estate market, creating financial instruments to avoid additional costs that drag on equity-building and affordability.For instance, if there were a creation of a “market value second mortgage” made up of 10 to 20 per cent of the purchase price. Sellers or home builders could leave five per cent in the deal; parents could contribute funds within it; land transfer tax could be deferred and placed within it; in new construction, a portion of development charges and HST could be deferred and placed into this second mortgage. If the value of this second mortgage equalled 20 per cent, the mortgage would be conventional, there would be no insurance premium of four per cent added to the mortgage, and PST would not apply on the mortgage insurance ($1,600 on a $500,000 mortgage due on closing).So how would this mortgage get paid, and how would it not burden the homeowner? The second mortgage is payment- and interest-free. Those entities that contributed would receive their money when the homeowner sells, and they share in the proportionate appreciation. So if the property appreciates 10 per cent after five years and the homeowner sells, then those in the mortgage receive 10 per cent on their share of the second mortgage.RentalsThere is much to accompany the topic of rentals in 2026. Purpose-built rentals will remain a hot topic, but with more thoughtful unit mixes catering to different demographics. Family-sized units will be a marketing term; student rentals may lose their lustre as foreign student numbers are restricted; and senior-oriented rentals with some services — light health care, food service, cleaning services, etc. — will rise in prominence to fill the gap between a retirement home and a long-term care facility.Modular ConstructionDon’t quote me, but permanent homebuilding in various forms is over 10,000 years old, so why would modular home construction, which appeared in the early nineteenth century, be something we could adopt overnight? There are many naysayers who claim modular homes do not have legs. During the California Gold Rush, hundreds of homes were factory-made in the east and shipped west. In the 1830s, packable timber homes were shipped to Australia from London, England, to house British emigrants.Don’t wait, Don’t miss!What can I say about these superlative statements as someone who directly benefits from a booming real estate market? Can we really pronounce last rites on “won’t last long”? No more than the words “this house has loads of potential,” “motivated seller” or “fixer-upper.” The market is just that — the market — the last bastion of pure and unadulterated supply and demand. One thing is for sure: economic conditions can turn on a dime. A Q1 announcement of a trade deal or tariffs increasing for Canadian exports can move the housing market one way or another.Is 2026 the Recovery Year?I’ve always believed in the adage, “How you end the year, you begin it!” We have witnessed some remarkable events in the housing market as we round out 2025. New housing developments are being launched, sales in November have plateaued instead of showing their usual seasonal decline, and months of supply in some categories — particularly single-family homes — have come down 20 to 25 percent.Surveillance ShoppingAlso of note is the fact that showings per sale have never been as low as they are now for the month of November. It’s a phenomenon where buyers are becoming extremely familiar with the inventory and market nuances with the help of their real estate agents. As a result, they are making faster buying decisions. I refer to it as “surveillance shopping,” which I feel will continue to dominate the market in 2026.When asked whether we should re-list or reduce the price, I’m in the reduce camp, because buyers are watching. Also, don’t refuse a sale with a conditional offer on selling the buyer’s home — especially if the home the buyer is selling is priced sharply to the market. A sale sends a message to those who are surveilling, which justifies the market price and can bring those waiting in the wings out of the shadows.What is The Bank of Canada Telling Us?The Bank of Canada estimates neutral policy rates between two and three per cent nominal, which translates into mortgage rates that are “normal” by historical standards but well above the ultra-low levels of 2020–21. In other words, the proverbial needle begins to move in the right direction for the economy and housing in nominal-rate territory, and we are currently at the lower range of neutral. Buyers who have been sidelined due to the high cost of borrowing now begin to enter the market, and the need to upsize or get into the market takes precedence.One thing is for sure: the Canadian economy is due for a cleanse. As the economy proves resilient and begins a path to growth — no matter how nominal at first — so too will the real estate market. It always does.

5 Years of Market Swings Set the Stage for 2026

I have always been infatuated with “frequency illusion”, and believe it or not - it only received that moniker in 2005 by Arnold Zwicky a linguistics professor from Stanford. Frequency illusion is something which I believe plagues all humans on the planet. The technical definition, thanks to my friends at Wikipedia, that people may mistakenly believe that certain events or phenomena happen more often than they actually do because of inaccuracies or biases in how they process information. This can unfortunately lead to a regression effect in accuracy of frequency estimates. In other words, you buy a white Tesla Model 3 with pride and distinction, and once you drive it off the dealership lot – all you see is white Tesla Model 3’s. You take an Uber and there it is again... a white model 3, you watch Fox News or CNN and see a photo of a white model 3, with a photo of Elon Musk beside it. Believe it or not, before the term Frequency Illusion was coined, this phenomenon was referred to as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, which by your natural inclination is to assume that these two psychologists from the University of Oxford named Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof studied this when they were completing their PhD doctorate. Well, that’s not true, believe it or not these two people were a part of a not so nice far left militant group seeking to overthrow the West German Government. For some of you too young to remember, Germany for approximately 41 years, was divided by a physical wall into two separate countries.  So along came Terry Mullen, an online message boarder in 1994, who wrote a letter to theSt. Paul Press, and in the letter he describes how after he mentioned the name of this radical militant group he kept noticing it come up again and again. I realize by now that you are very disjointed with this read, but you must admit the origin of this everyday life phenomenon, is rooted in this one guy. I wish he would have been posting about the Roman Empire, and it would be called the Maximus Decimus Meridius phenomenon, and would explain a lot of what’s happening on Instagram and TikTok today. Sorry It Took Three Paragraphs To Tell You My Frequency IllusionBeing in the real estate industry, and attending conferences and masterminds, I find myself seeing Zillow over and over again. Zillow has not been able to create a stronghold in Canada or anywhere else globally for that matter, but it has been a dominant force in the US real estate landscape and has now become my Roman Empire. It has infiltrated my newsfeed, my reels, and my casual conversations. I have written about the evil empire in the past, and like Darth Vader faced his biggest challenge on the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi, Zillow may or may not be facing something similar. 2025 The Year of Living Dangerously for ZillowEarlier this year there was a quote from Zillow’s CEO Jeremy Wacksman in Geekwire, that set my frequency illusion in motion. He said, “If we were starting in 2025, and we had this clairvoyance of how this had already been working, I feel like we would have [made some policies differently]”. Well, that’s all fine and good but to me this statement is akin to what we as kids referred to as a ‘do-over’ or another way to look at it is as a back-handed apology. 2025 for Zillow has been a year of several (I stopped counting at 20) major lawsuits, federal investigations, and industry criticism focused on its business practices, antitrust conduct, referral transparency, listing restrictions, media copyright issues, and deceptive agent relationships to name a few.  Compass vs ZillowCompass sued Zillow for banning exclusive listings, arguing this policy is anticompetitive and harms brokerages. Compass has been in an industry battle to preserve its ability to market exclusive listings which has gone against the National Association of Realtors Clear Cooperation initiative, which forces agents to put their listings on the Multiple Listing Service® within 24-48 hours. Compass has been a vocal anti-clear cooperation proponent, and has been creatively and/or legitimately trying to continue to promote its so-called private exclusives amongst its own network. In true Death Star fashion, Zillow struck back by announcing that any property listed for sale, and not be made available on their site within 24 hours would be ‘forever banned from Zillow’.  The Portal Wars are Heating UpCommercial Real Estate portal CoStar, filed a copyright infringement suit against Zillow for illegally using over nearly 50,000 watermarked images owned by CoStar, claiming $1 Billion in damages. CoStar, who also owns Homes.com(a head-to-head competitor of Zillow’s) and Matterport (a virtual tour provider), decided not to renew their API (application programming interface) with Zillow, and as a result all Matterport’s walk-through virtual tours were pulled from Zillow.  The Zillow Hits Just Keep On ComingNo one can smell blood in the water better than class action suit lawyers who are coming at Zillow for misleading consumers by funneling them toward agents who pay hefty referral fees, not necessarily the best fit for buyers. One class action lawsuit alleges Zillow deceived homebuyers with hidden agent fees, steering them toward Zillow affiliated agents through its Flex referral program. Furthermore, if these so called Zillow certified agents do anything to steer Zillow referred buyers away from Zillow Home Loans, then those realtors will cease to receive any more referrals. Sounds anticompetitive to me!!! Whose Lead Is It Anyway?Back in December of 2023, Zillow closed on its acquisition of Follow Up Boss (FUB) for an estimated $500 million. It was touted as a way ‘to simplify the business process for real estate agents, helping them increase productivity and grow their businesses.’ Two years later, Zillow has made FUB a required platform for its Premier Agent and Flex Partner Program. It does allow these realtor partners a window into the activity of the consumers on the Zillow platform, with access to AI insights on specific consumer behavior. It has been touted as a two-way integration, but what Zillow/FUB forget to tell their referral agents is that the two-way street runs to and from the agent’s own database on FUB.  In other words if an agent or team receives a lead through Zillow, then Zillow reserves the right to reassign leads under specific circumstances, particularly if the REALTOR®/team fails to meet certain performance requirements or communication standards. So of the approximately 227 million unique monthly visitors to Zillow, what are the chances that the 5 million buyers who buy and the 5 million sellers who sell in any given year in the US are not already in the Zillow database. Which according to Zillow’s conflict-resolution policy, if a lead is assigned to another agent within FUB based on their hard work and follow-up strategies, and does not already exist on Zillow, then the lead will not be reassigned. If You Can’t Beat Your Competition Pay Them Large to Get Out of the WayEnter the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), these are the people who just imposed (September 2025) the largest civil penalty in the agency’s history of $1 Billion, along with $1.5 Billion in consumer compensation (40 million eligible consumers) at $35.50 each. So what did this company do? Amazon did not admit wrong-doing, but agreed to pay the total of $2.5 billion for ‘allegedly’ tricking consumers into Prime subscriptions and making it difficult to cancel them. Sounds like every other streaming service. The FTC is accusing Zillow of paying the ailing Redfin (before Redfin’s sale to Rocket Mortgage) to partner (or be paid to exit) with Zillow in multifamily rental listings to the tune of $100 million, and in return Redfin agreed to stop posting rental listings for the next 9 years, and as a result Redfin let go of several hundred employees in their multifamily division. It is the FTC’s assertion that this action violated antitrust laws by suppressing consumer choice and innovation by the elimination of a Zillow competitor. What is Fueling The Beast’s Thirst for MoreThe sleeping giant that is Zillow has always been a sleeping giant, so what woke them up, and what should be a wake-up call to us all? January 2025 was the alarm clock for Zillow, housing appreciation in January in the US and Canada was pretty flat. In most areas was a fraction of 1%, and made consumers and Zillow’s leadership rub their eyes in disbelief over their Zestimate numbers. At least a quarter of all listings recorded a price reduction, and YTD sales were off by 5%, when 2025 was touted as the price recovery year, it was not starting that way. As this blogger has said on several occasions the watering hole is getting smaller, and it is beholden of us as real estate practitioners to get a greater share of the water or expand to another water source. Well, Zillow did just that and has been planning their strategy for many years, or was this their master plan all along? Can the Real Estate Industry Strike Back or Will the Threads of Destiny Rule The Day.Before starting Zillow, the co-founders who previously co-founded Expedia (Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink) and Hotwire.com was Spencer Rascoff’s. These earlier ventures were in the online travel industry, and without question these three tech gurus got together to not only disrupt real estate but to eliminate the people on the ground (agents and brokerages). Do you think for one minute these three musketeers didn’t utter the words “we are going to do to real estate what we did to travel…eliminate the travel agent.” Come on, ask any start-up, they all have a craving for disruption and want to eliminate the service provider. So they soon realized that travel was something that was done frequently and the lifecycle of the transaction was very short. Where the real estate journey is longer, done much more infrequently and has a ton of moving parts. Their goal has always been direct-to-consumer like they did with travel. But they soon realized that the industry was fragmented and the supplier of product came from over a million suppliers (listing agents) so eventually, they decided to partner with them/us. But when inventories lingered and sales volumes shrunk significantly in the US market (sound familiar), they found their realtor partners weren’t paying for positioning as they once did, and decide to go to a referral model which is like a hybrid direct to consumer model. Their direct connect model delivered consumers to high performing teams and individual agents. These referrals came with service delivery rules and punitive measures if their agent partners were found straying Zillow leads away from using Zillow’s mortgage originator. The fact that they can go into your sacred CRM and pluck away and re-assign buyer/seller leads when the real estate agent fails to close them, or if the agent successfully completes the sale, they have the pleasure of paying 40% of the commission they earned to Zillow. It’s Time We Take Our Industry Back From The Portals Like ZillowHaving just come back from a real estate conference in Europe, it was clear by many of my conversations that the portals seem to have the power in many European markets driven by millions of consumers who are on them daily. A portal’s true super power lies in the data they have been collecting on real estate consumer buying/search behavior. We as Canadians in the real estate industry have been sheltered from the portal wars, as we own our portal Realtor.ca. However, as consumers demand a better experience than this platform delivers (and it’s going to happen) we could find ourselves in a similar situation.  It’s time we start to embrace a true network which is consumer, agent and broker friendly (and its not an MLS), designed for the needs of all stakeholders, and also be responsive at the same time. A platform which does not look at consumers and their service providers as commodities to generate revenue, but to embrace technologies and information distribution to empower all. The dawn of this, I hope, is within our grasp.Before it becomes too late.

Who Is Baader-Meinhof and Why Have They Infiltrated My News Feed

The word ‘GREAT’ has been used throughout history to describe extraordinary events which not only had extreme consequences at the time but had tremendous physical and symbolic impact in their wake. What’s uncanny is the fact that most of these so called ‘GREAT’ events were not always born of greatness the way we know it. When we think great, the ‘GOAT’ comes to mind (greatest of all time), or ‘Great minds think alike’, or ‘Great job’, or the ‘Great White North’. All things rich with enthusiasm, except if you are a sitting Republican president, the last one may not count. Events of the past which were associated with this adjective were usually associated with large scale human hardship, like; The Great Fire of Chicago (1871), The Great Famine (1845), The Great Plague (1665), The Great Depression (1929), and The Great Recession (2008).  The Great Reset is something which has been referred to by conspiracy theorists post pandemic, it is not an actual historical event, but it comes at a time when I believe we are being faced with the most incredible technological advancement in the last 500 years….Artificial Intelligence. Okay, five hundred years sounds a tad bombastic, but for sure this technology will definitely shape the 21st century. If we examine what has been spent in Q2 of 2025 on all things AI ($400 Billion), it overshadowed consumer consumption in the US, (consumer spending makes up over 60% of US GDP). Not to mention that growth in AI stocks in Canada and the US make up an oversized proportion of stock market activity. <img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/mHyluaoS97St4SB3H0gC"> If It Looks Like a Bubble It Must Be a Life Changing TechnologyThroughout economic history we have experienced these technologies which without question changed the world, but also burst like a bubble. Remember the dot-com bubble as the internet became the dominant technology of the day. Not only did direct to consumer companies like Pets.com ($11 IPO to $0.22 two years later) collapse in the bubble, but so did internet infrastructure companies like Nortel, at one point it was Canada’s largest company, and well positioned to supply the world with telecommunications equipment. Then the bubble began to expand with an oversupply of broadband infrastructure throughout North America and Nortel’s stock peaked at C$124.00 after a massive stock split in-between, and later plummeted to 47 cents.  Is AI All That And A Bag of ChipsThere are a few theories to the origin of the expression ‘All that and a bag of chips’, for this article I’m going with a food vendor who exclaimed “all that” was a basic meal and the addition of a bag of chips brought the meal to a new level of value. Like the icing on the cake, it is an intensifier. AI to this humble blogger’s opinion is like the bag of chips for everything we do. It is next and a differentiator when we add it to what we are already doing. It is something that should ‘UP’ our businesses, it will help with developing and refining a piece of content, it will help us streamline our operations model, it will help identify gaps in our service model and give us ideas to improve it. It can identify bottlenecks and friction points in or general operations and help design a new model, and create resources to smooth the edges. AI represents your ‘power partner’ to power our businesses through this new reset era. 2025 The Year That Was Supposed To BeThis was supposed to be that golden year (even though 25 is the silver anniversary year) for so many industries, real estate included. Two things lined up, it has been 5 years since the pandemic, and the fact that the century has come of age. The movie theatre business is the poster child for 2025 being the turn around year. Summer to the movie business is like Christmas is to the retail business and Halloween is to the candy business. The summer block buster was the one to heal all woes of a lack luster year. It’s like their Black Friday. Aside from pandemic years July and August represent $2 billion plus in sales, which have been that way since 2015. It has been reported that the cinema business is off by 20 to 25% pre-pandemic, sound familiar? Content Is No Longer KingThe traditional movie business has proven you can’t win with content alone. Let’s face it theaters are fundamentally the same as they have been since as long as I can remember. Decades old facilities, sticky floors, unoriginal concessions and ridiculously high prices for a bottle of water. In 2025 the thought-to-be blockbusters like Snow White, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (let’s hope its the final sequel), Superman and Jurassic World Rebirth turned out to be busts. Tried and true franchises like the Fantastic Four and Ballerina the John Wick spin-off, reek of unoriginality and failed to re-attract their core audience.  It’s time this business redefines the movie-goer experience, not only should they re-design the theaters with 4D motion seats, pod seating, couches, blankets etc. Provide virtual or augmented reality previews tied to upcoming films, insert Easter eggs in the cinema experience films only, gamify the theatre experience to encourage people to go multiple times and to multiple movies, with surprise gifts for those loyal viewers. Full digital experience with interactive apps where you choose your seat, and you have a food locker with your snack order in it for the minute you arrive. More gourmet and healthy options for food and beverage. The decor should be themed toward the movie, with instagrammable back drops. Encourage movie-goers to share their ideas for future sequels and pay royalties to those who provided the best ideas. The Emergence Of The Hybrid Business ModelThe quarter-century milestone brings about sober reflection as the century moves from young adult to full fledged responsible adult. As we now enter the “coming of age” era of this century it brings about feelings of nostalgia and reflection of trends and events of the past, but in order to move forward we must all possess a clear unencumbered vision of the future. In other words, many industries basked in the euphoria of the pre/during pandemic lift, which was artificial non-the-less, but left collateral damage in its wake. As businesses owners and home buyers/sellers mourn the lower costs and benefits of doing business in 2019, and the exponential growth which quickly followed, now must put forth a different strategy for the future.  First-time buyers must make a more defined plan to build a down payment, buy amalgamating accelerated savings through well invested TFSA’s, using RRSP’s which are funded by parents or grandparents, and good old fashioned discipline. Move-up buyers may also have to take a hybrid approach to moving up as equity in some housing categories may not be as accelerated as others. All industries including real estate practitioners must be thinking in a hybrid fashion going forward. We can learn a lot from Toyota’s hybrid, multi-pathway approach to building cars. They have decided to put their efforts in various fuel cell technologies not just one. We in the real estate industry should adopt a multi-channel approach to our real estate business along with a new and improved customer experience. We should be producing quality general and segmented content (as one size does not fit all), and expand within the real estate vertical to areas like multi-generational housing options to co-purchasing with non-family etc. What Happens When The Watering Hole Gets Smaller….ConsolidationCompanies like Porsche, are realizing a future with less sales, the management at Porsche is imagining a world where selling 20% less vehicles could be the norm. There is no more evidence of this than in the Canadian and US real estate markets. Sales in the last few years have been declining and remain much lower than the 10 year average. Real estate companies have been wrestling with this ‘new normal’ post pandemic and post cheap money. In the past when this occurred consolidation/acquisition was the key to moving on. Increase your top line and all your financial woes would disappear. But when you add AI to the mix it creates a goal within a goal. What I mean by that is as you expand your reach to create an invaluable data lake to draw more water/data.  It has been reported that Compass’ purchase of the franchisor Anywhere (Better Homes and Gardens, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Corcoran, ERA, and Sotheby’s International) was an all-stock transaction valued at $1.6 billion dollars, with Compass assuming Anywhere’s estimated debt of between $2.6 billion to $3.16 billion. At the lower debt level that’s a monthly payment of interest only (5%) of over $10 million dollars to service the debt alone without accounting for operations. This may seem an illogical acquisition on the surface, but is there a deeper strategy at play. The messaging around this acquisition has been touted as a way to strengthen Compass’ balance sheet, increase their footprint and bring about greater revenue diversity.  The Final Word About The Great Reset Goes To The Master Plan of One CEO.But is there something else at play? There was no question that Compass was ready to acquire something off the heals of their failed purchase of Berkshire Hathaway’s real estate business HomeServices of America back in March of 2025. Not only does this fill some gaps for Robert Reffkin the CEO of Compass but also allows him to put a nail in the proverbial clear cooperation coffin. Clear cooperation is a real estate policy from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) and the National Association of Realtors (NAR) in the United States that limits exclusive listings to 24-72 hours, and then must be listed on the Multiple Listing Service. Reffkin’s public feud with NAR and local boards was not a quiet one, also his strategy to hold back listings from the MLS was a direct hit to real estate portals like Zillow and Realtor.com. With the new company now having 340,000 agents, their ability to bypass Real Estate Boards and show case exclusive listings may become a reality, but flies in the face of greater exposure to the approximately 1,113,690 other realtors in the US and in turn ‘RESET’ the way real estate consumers in the US shop for properties.<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/SspPOvCwTXS6IBUt0ZQd">

Are We At The Dawn of 'The Great Reset'?

The Summer of 2025 for me was an absolute perfect blend of warm summer days, great conversations over Hugo Spritzes. Work wise things went at a very nice pace, and quiet contemplation turned into a robust thought process. While the real estate market locally came to life this summer, where we at RE/MAX Escarpment and Niagara saw a healthy 15% increase in unit sales over July of 2024, agents were busy, mortgage specialists seemed optimistic, and lawyers breathed a sigh of relief that closings were starting to increase after a slower than normal spring market. I wish I could incorporate a sound affect at this time as all seems to be going tickadeeboo, but what comes to mind is that scene in Jaws 1 (released in 1975) when the ocean is calm and Roy Scheider who played Police Chief Martin Brody, got a brief but impactful glimpse of Bruce (the name of the mechanical shark prop used in the movie) aka Jaws, and said “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”  Whilst I would love to have summered in Martha’s Vineyard where the movie Jaws was filmed, to stare down the mouth of a great white shark, “my shark” so to speak came from 3 separate instances this summer. One, was Porsche CEO admitting that his company’s business model does not work. Two, was Berkshire Hathaway’s $5 billion write down on underperforming Kraft Heinz. Three, was the colossal shut down and embezzlement of trust funds by the discount brokerage iPro Realty in Ontario. As a business owner, the response to these canary’s in different coal mines does not lie in getting a bigger boat, they lie in getting a smarter boat; one that is more nimble, one that optimizes performance from the crew, the boat that is fuel efficient and can still make a big splash. Wake-up Call #1 - “Our Business Model Doesn’t Work”Oliver Blume, long time CEO (circa 2015) of Porsche, circulated a company memo stating that ‘our (Porsche’s) business model no longer works.’ What is really astounding by this commentary is that Porsche’s first quarter sales in North America in 2025, was their best quarter in history. Porsche’s first quarter deliveries in the US were nearly 19,000 vehicles, representing a 40.6% increase year-over-year. With that great success came a price increase, which Porsche announced in July of 2025 ranging from 2.3% to 3.6%, representing the second price increase in the last 4 months. So what are we all missing, and what does this have to do with my business? In order to answer that, lets do a deeper dive into what is occurring at this remarkable auto brand which is ranked the #1 most valuable luxury brand (8 years in a row), above Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Rolex, and Ferrari. The top reason for ‘the sky is falling’ memo is that Porsche’s largest customer growth engine (China) shrank by a mere 42% year-over-year in the first quarter. Porsche’s overzealous goals to go electric, may have confused its client base. I ask, does the typical Porsche customer want to be just seen and not heard…I think not. Another threat to this switch to EV is the fact that China has created their own EV auto industry which is more technologically adanced and far less expensive. Sometimes you just can’t stand on the shoulders of your brand of performance and handling, without the juxtaposition of excelleration and the roar of a combustion engine.  This new era of automobiles is all about high tech and high value. It’s about re-deploying resources in the combustion engine into high quality finishes, useful options, and next level technology. You see, Porsche forgot its brand promise of sexy sounding cars that performed, and poured a lot of money into EV’s which may have confused their customer base. As a result, Porsche is forced to look inward to adjust its business model to restore profitability in this uncertain era of the automobile. The lesson here is never take your customer base for granted, and assume that they will follow you whatever direction you decide to take. Wake-up Call #2 – Everyone One Knows ‘It Has To Be Heinz’… Except the ConsumerFrom Erin Brockovich, to Once upon A Time In Hollywood, to Home Alone, to South Park – Kraft Dinner probably ranks up there with CocaCola for product placement in movies. Nonetheless, Heinz ketchup, the Kleenex of condiments, “the taste that’s worth the wait,” has fallen out of flavour. Is it because they changed their recipe or their logo like the beloved Cracker Barrel? Or was there an indiscretion between the CEO and an HR executive at a Coldplay concert? No, it was just that store brands have been taking marketshare in food and condiment categories, because mac and cheese/ketchup is easily replicatable, which Heinz tried to refute with its slogan “it has to be Heinz”. The lesson here is you just can’t only rely on your established presence in your marketplace. Wake-up Call #3 – The Rise And Fall of A Large Discount BrokerageFor those of you who were away in August and may have missed it, there was a company called iPro Realty, which was the 5th or 6th largest brokerage by number of agents in Ontario with over 2500 real estate agents, became insolvent. The ownership used trust account money (buyer’s/tenant’s deposits for future property purchases/leases) to keep their business afloat. The owners of iPro allegedly paid back investors and subsidized their operations by using money that didn’t belong to them. By the time our sleepy regulator (Real Estate Council of Ontario) noticed the trust cash register was down approximately $8,000,000.00, it was too far gone and had tarnished the trust of the industry and the dismissal of the head of our regulating body. The lesson here is there are going to be failures in your category of business. Your response should always be what measures are you going to take to prevent your own failure, and how to rebuild your own industry due to their gross mismanagement. Sound the Alarm – The Tide Is Too HighEach one of these situations are like your alarm in the morning. It goes off once and you hit snooze, it goes off twice and you hit snooze again, by the third time you wake up ready to take on the world. If these circumstances were separated by months instead of weeks they probably would have gone unnoticed, and would have been a part of the regular news cycle. But when a company of the stature of Porsche admits its survival is in question, I take notice. And when a series of products which are a part of all of our lives day in and day out begin to pile up financial losses, I pay attention. And when a real estate brokerage in my back yard takes a fall of such epic proportions, I give heed.  Where Business Meets The Big Blue OceanOur businesses are built to withstand choppy waters. We have the team, the resources and equipment on board to help navigate uncertain waters, but sometimes we are lulled into the complacency of calm seas, so in order to make sense of these three successive occurrences, I will yield to a sailors expression handbook for the answers. Batten Down The Hatches – Take Control of Rising Operational CostsAll Hands On Deck – Employee Optimization and Asset RepositioningShip-Shape – Always Operating in A State of TransparencyFair Winds And Following Seas – Always Be Aware of Market Pressure and Demand ShiftsBetween the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea – Not Adopting Technology and InnovationSquare-Rigged, and Squared Away – The Case for a Strategic ResetHeadwinds – Regulatory and Macroeconomic UncertaintyKnow the Ropes – Stay In Your Lane

You're Going To Need a Bigger Boat

I had the pleasure of listening to a futurist recently at a conference speaking about none-other-than AI, the most featured topic of 2024 and 2025. Steve Brown, a former Google DeepMind and Intel executive said “AI is better than ever, it will be the worst it’s ever going to be today.” The statement rang like a high-pitched bell in my head, not because he was referring to the greatest technological advancement in human history in the last 500 years, but that it made me curious to apply his statement to advancements, situations, products, experiences, services etc. This self-indulgent journey into a middle-aged man’s romantic notion of ‘we did it this way and we liked it’, a throwback to an SNL skit about an ornery old man played by Dana Carvey who would make these bold statements about the way things were. He would start the ‘Grumpy Old Man’ skit/character with “I’m old and I’m not happy, I don’t like things now compared to the way they used to be, progress phooey! His commentary went from personal hygiene, to contraception, to the perils of modern entertainment, to technology. “In my day, we didn’t have ATMs. There was just one bank in each state, and it was open one hour a year! You were born, you got in line and you died! And we liked it that way!”, as he would slam his hand on the infamous Weekend Update desk.  Can Nostalgia Replace Convenience..Kodak &amp; BlockbusterSoon you will mention the name Kodak or even that of Blockbuster to a room full of senior high school students and they won’t know what you are talking about. Blockbuster closed the last corporate store in 2014 after they filed for bankruptcy in 2010. While Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012, after having 80% market share in the United States for several decades. Much has been written about these two companies, the only true way to describe their fate is stone cold irony. Netflix approached Blockbuster with an idea to merge, and later Netflix founders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph offered to sell their company for $50 million to Blockbuster, and they declined. Irony #2, Kodak invented digital photography in 1976 and shelved the project, which would later lead to their demise. My question is does it always have to be an all or nothing situation. Both of these companies had a lot of infrastructure in place in and around what they did. Kodak made tons of money supplying film and Blockbuster was in every neighbourhood to serve the community. Would the earlier adoption of digital imagery really improve all facets of photography. I remember my dad taking photos of us throughout some sort of family event, we were never concerned if we came out okay in the photo, we lived in the moment and maybe subconsciously we knew that the event would be remembered by a photo, but was that the be all and end all? Did we stop what we were doing to take 20 photos, 5 vertical, 3 horizontal, 3 down shots, 2 up shots, 3 with a flash, and 4 without…NO!!!  How things turned out was like a crap shoot, and nobody cared about its perfection. What was great was the day the film was picked up from being developed and we would all re-live the magic of imperfection of the family outing and laugh and laugh. My mom would squirrel the best of the best photos which depicted the day in an album. And on those rainy days when you just weren’t feeling yourself you would go to the photo album shelf and re-live those moments. You knew exactly where that event was in which photo album, today it could take you 10 minutes to find that exact photo on your phone with the other million photos that are just aimlessly stored there. Nothing was more satisfying on a Friday night in December of 1993 to stumble across the last copy of the Special Edition of Terminator 2 Judgement Day. You have to remember that the movie Terminator 2 Judgement Day came out in July of 1991 in theatres and in video in November 1993, by that time it was like watching it for the very first time. The banter down the aisle at Blockbuster was magic, you saw your neighbours, we were armchair movie critics who told each other “don’t waste your time with that one” or “that movie was awesome, I watched it 8 times, 3 in theatre and 5 times at home.” Are We In the Vortex of the Disruptors Dilemma?In the late 1990’s a Harvard professor and business person named Clayton Christensen wrote extensively about how strong market share companies like Blockbuster, which had the ear of their shareholders who were addicted to late fees, missed the mark by not introducing new technology. His book The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997) chronicles companies who were faced with the unfortunate dilemma that both Kodak and Blockbuster had, that by investing in new technology could diminish or even destroy their existing market stronghold. Thus leaving it to another company which is based on a new technology platform which disrupts the marketplace. Many of us have conflicting thoughts when it comes to Artificial Intelligence, we know by underinvesting resources and time in tomorrow’s disruption which is AI, can lead to our demise.  I have very good news for many of us who provide a service that is infrequent like being a real estate agent or a mortgage broker, or a family lawyer, AI is not out to take your job. AI doesn’t want it, but it does want to help you do it better. The key going forward is not to allow it to take over your business but it should be something which augments your business. In the words of futurist Steve Brown, AI is designed to take the ‘SUCK’ out of our jobs. If we decide to lean in too much, it could also take out the ‘VALUE’ in what we do. So imagine if Blockbuster and Kodak would have understood the strength of the experience they gave to consumers and coupled it with leading edge technology?? What could these companies have accomplished, and what can we learn from the nostalgia of Blockbuster and Kodak and apply it to our own businesses. When The Face-to-Face Is Your Best ToolAccording to 21st Century collaboration expert Erica Dhawan, 3/4 of face-to-face collaboration is non-verbal. So ask yourself when you are consulting with your client, how often can you really read your client’s body language. I have a theory that part of the reason that transactions are down in real estate is the lack of in-person contact, and the rise of technology which removes the ingredient to true collaboration, which in turn makes things happen. Look at corporations going back into the office, these titans know something that we as service providers have completely abandoned. More gets done in-person!!! I remember driving to my clients home at 11:30 pm with a signed-back offer and together through the body language of the moment we got a meeting of the minds (or my client’s were operating sleep deprived). Fast forward to today, and people say let’s deal with it in the morning when I’m at work, and we can do it by DocuSign, or let’s forget it all together. The Non-Negotiable Face-To-Face Communication<ul>
<li>Initial pie in the sky, needs assessment, brainstorming client meeting</li>
<li>Client on-boarding (listings, buyer consult meeting)</li>
<li>Communicating bad news (price reductions, transactions not firming up)</li>
<li>Communicating very difficult sign-backs</li>
<li>When a client asks for a new strategy, or they are frustrated.</li>
<li>Anytime you are discussing worst case scenarios</li>
<li>Delivering great news (when a buyer/seller transaction has become firm)</li>
</ul> Hybrid Face-To-Face Communication<ul>
<li>When introducing partners to the transaction (lawyers, mortgage brokers etc.)</li>
<li>When reviewing analytics around listings, competition updates etc. </li>
</ul> The best exercise is to do a list of all of your client interactions and apply the type of communication which works best to enhance your client’s experience. Think for a moment if you always call with bad news and text or email when you have progress or good news. What kind of expectation does that leave for your client? How Deep Is Your Engagement?It seems the name of the game is engagement and the more connections you can make the higher the chances we can engage more. But how deep are these connections, just because you have 1000 followers on Instagram doesn’t mean you have high quality connections. And to add more fuel to the weak connection fire as artificial intelligence takes over some of our lead nurturing then how deep will these connections be. We all need to move away from the lure of a transaction mindset powered by AI to a deeper connection mindset. Dhawan, goes on to say that 70% of connections are dynamic, meaning there is a presence of a physical force or energy, so how do you expect to achieve stronger connections with existing clients and future prospects without physicality? At this point, I have a hunch as to what you are thinking after reading this. For those who stuck with me until the bitter end, I have ten main points to remember when you are trying to balance connecting with more people, prospects and past clients versus connecting more deeply and more productively: <ol>
<li>Respect people’s time.</li>
<li>Identify digital early adopters vs digital detractors within your sphere.</li>
<li>Sometimes responses are not immediate, let things marinate and set parameters around a response which could mean “respond next day”.</li>
<li>Automate the routine, but remember to put more resources into physical one-on-one communication.</li>
<li>Protect the emotional because that makes you human and that’s your main differentiator.</li>
<li>Communicate with clarity, care and consideration (send some sort of a multimedia pre-list with some seller to do’s making the listing presentation more of an action plan).</li>
<li>Strategize/plan in person, digital conversations lack empathy and understanding.</li>
<li>Use AI to aid in trend development, this is the gold standard of advice for consumers which will win you a lot of referrals.</li>
<li>Inform in a timely manner, providing clients with information in the moment for the moment is critical to building trust, don’t get sidetracked with your own insecurities to knowledge dump, that only adds to confusion and mistrust, stay on their track, not your own.</li>
<li>Make always being prepared be your primary focus.</li>
</ol>

(Blank) Will Be The Worst It’s Ever Going To Be Today

You Are The Master of Every Situation

Most of us go about our lives with the simplest of intentions, don’t get me wrong our lives are complicated but given the choice we would rather learn by osmosis than pull an all nighter learning a complex concept. If you were to tell me that when I was a second year McMaster student, taking Economic History under the late Dr. Peter George who served as President and Vice Chancellor of McMaster University for 15 years, that I would ever use the word ‘tariff’ in a sentence later in my life, I would have told you the chances of that are slim to none!!! Dr. George had a very commanding personality and was well versed in the content of this course as his research focused on economic history, particularly in Canadian and American contexts. He spoke of government subsidies and tariffs in and around the trade of the proverbial guns and butter. Fast forward to today, and one of the most searched terms on Google is the word ‘tariff’. Judging from this term’s significance and the uncertainty which surrounds it, maybe taking economic history including the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 (we all know how that turned out, the Great Depression of 1933), should be mandatory if you want to be president of the United States or a leader of any country for that matter. My love of the science of decision making and what are barriers to how people consume goods and services was born of the teachings of Dr George, and an economist named Herbert Simon. Simon challenged the long standing belief of ‘perfect rationality’, which simply means we all possess the ability to process all relevant information, with the assumption that we have access to near perfect information and the ability to play out all the consequences of our decisions. Simon highlighted that uncertainty about the future and the ability to acquire credible information (sound familiar) leads to a limiting effect when it comes to decision-making. Simon refers to an environment where we have unlimited cognitive capacity plus perfect information leads to optimal decision making and therefore the person making the decision will always make the best possible action to achieve their goals. It’s kinda like the theory around girl math.  Then along came Daniel Kahneman, who is widely regarded as the father of the study of psychological decision-making and behavioral economics. His groundbreaking work with Amos Tversky, identified 5 different theory’s behind our economic decision making and earned him a Nobel prize in 2002. Some of these may seem familiar to you so what I decided to do was to put these theories to the test when it comes to one of the biggest economic decisions we can make - to buy and/or sell a property and furthermore, how to utilize these theories to help draw your attention to the content and practices you need to incorporate into your business to ensure success for your clients. Loss AversionPeople feel the pain of losses more intensely than the pleasure of equivalent gains. For example, if a buyer of a condominium found out that a condo in the same building they bought in sold for less per square foot than the one they just bought they would be heart broken. Even if their real estate agent explained that the other unit had an inferior view and that they have already gained 2% in value from the time they bought until today. In other words losing $100 hurts more than gaining $100 feels good. Do any of these loss aversion examples sound familiar?<ol>
<li>A homeowner refuses to sell their property at the current market value at the same or lower than their original purchase price, even if holding onto the property incurs ongoing high costs.</li>
<li>Buyers bid aggressively in competitive markets to avoid the “loss” of missing out on their dream home.</li>
<li>Investors hesitate to sell underperforming rental property, fearing the emotional impact of realizing a capital loss.</li>
<li>Sellers set an unrealistically high list prices to avoid the perceived loss of equity, especially if they are moving up in value.</li>
<li>Buyers prioritize avoiding the regret of mortgage rates dropping further, when they wait for mortgage rates to drop, rather than buying during a market dip/correction.</li>
</ol> How to Counter Loss Aversion with Tools and Content<ul>
<li>Provide articles or videos explaining the long-term benefits of selling at market value, even if it involves a loss, to free up capital for better investments.</li>
<li>Share listing data where listings followed the market with a series of reductions and cancelations, showcase how saleable 60 day and 90 day inventory really is.</li>
<li>Create calculators/spreadsheets that show potential gains from reinvesting proceeds into better-performing assets.</li>
<li>Highlight success stories of sellers who accepted losses but benefited from reinvesting in growing markets.</li>
<li>Lean on professional advice from accountants, financial advisors and mortgage specialists to objectively assess the financial impact of holding versus selling and create content around their advice.</li>
</ul> Reference DependenceDecisions are made relative to a reference point, what they just spent to re-shingle their roof, rather than the expectation of a buyer of not having to replace a roof right after they purchase a home. These so called gains and losses are highly guesstimated and come from different vantage points.  Do any of these reference dependence examples sound familiar?<ol>
<li>A buyer evaluates a property’s value based on their current rent payments rather than looking at short and long term value appreciation and principal pay down. </li>
<li>Sellers tie their asking price to the amount they spent on renovations, regardless of whether the market supports that value.</li>
<li>Sellers/Investors base decisions on past market anomalies (2021), and far lower interest rates (2020), expecting prices and/or rates to return to those glory days.</li>
</ol> Strategies Around Reference Dependence<ul>
<li>Shift the focus from personal reference points to the broader market through regular more granular market updates through neighbourhood analytics vs analytics by city or large trading area, and weekly vs monthly statistics.</li>
<li>Introduce automated valuation tools (AVMs on Geowarehouse, HPI valuation tool) to provide unbiased property valuations.</li>
<li>Frame decisions around future opportunities rather than past benchmarks, reference pre and post pandemic growth numbers.</li>
</ul> Risk PreferencesIt’s all about gains and/or losses, people for the most part are high risk-adverse when it comes to gains, they follow “if it’s too good to be true it ain’t worth the risk” and prefer smaller ‘for sure’ gains than larger riskier returns. As far as losses go, people are risk-averse, willing to take risks to avoid overall losses. Do any of these risk preferences sound familiar?<ol>
<li>Buyers are fearful of becoming house-poor, thus opting to buy at the lower end of their budgets, in a fast rising market.</li>
<li>The notion that investors and/or savvy buyers feel there is upside in purchasing distressed properties, or properties being sold under a divorce situation etc.</li>
<li>Homebuyers choosing fixed mortgages over variable to avoid uncertainty in future monthly payments.</li>
<li>Sellers or landlords accepting lower offers during slow markets to either mitigate or avoid the risk of holding onto the property longer.</li>
</ol> Content and Tools Around Risk Preferences<ul>
<li>Provide tools that simulate different outcomes based on risk levels (e.g., fixed-rate vs. variable-rate mortgages , paying out penalties in order to convert to a lower rate).</li>
<li>Create balanced investment guides highlighting how diversification can reduce risk in a real estate portfolio.</li>
<li>Lean in on professional advice from home inspectors, contractors and mortgage specialists to create content around mitigating risk.</li>
<li>Show buyers examples of emerging neighbourhoods which are underpriced compared to more fast paced adjacent neighbourhoods. </li>
</ul> Probability WeightingPeople overweigh low-probability events (e.g., lottery wins, higher than normal mortgage defaults) and underweigh high-probability events which leads to prolonged and often distorted decision-making. Do any of these examples of probability weighting sound familiar?<ol>
<li>Buyers overestimate the likelihood of finding a better deal later and delay making offers, missing out on good opportunities.</li>
<li>Investors/buyers overweigh rare events, such as the housing bubble, leading them to avoid real estate altogether.</li>
<li>Sellers overestimate the chance of finding a buyer willing to pay a premium like that market inept out-of-town buyer, and hold out for unrealistic offers.</li>
<li>Sellers place undue weight on rare features (e.g., a home with solar panels) and over-shoot on an asking price.</li>
<li>Investors focus on lower priced micro pre-sale condos which have a highly nonfunctional layout, and in turn very low demand.</li>
</ol> Content around probability weighting<ul>
<li>Present clear data (CMHC mortgage default report) showing realistic information around the probability of rare events, like housing crashes. </li>
<li>Share expert predictions about market trends (CMHC Housing Starts) to counter overestimation of rare events like extreme price drops</li>
<li>Educate investors on spreading risk across various property types and locations.</li>
<li>Teach buyers how to evaluate properties based on fundamentals (price per square foot, Home Price Index, return on investments of home improvements).</li>
</ul> Framing EffectThe way choices are presented (as gains or losses) significantly influences decisions. For instance, people may choose differently when the same outcome is framed as avoiding a loss rather than achieving a gain. The real estate industry has been built on framing, maybe too much so. Some might argue it still works, and some might say client’s see right through it. Do any of these examples of the framing effect sound familiar?<ol>
<li>A listing framed as “priced below market value” attracts more interest than one framed as “priced competitively.”</li>
<li>Mid-century modern furniture can make buyers imagine a trendy lifestyle, influencing their willingness to pay more.</li>
<li>Describing a home as “luxurious” or “executive-style” frames it as high-end, even if features are standard.</li>
<li>Buyers perceive a property described as “cozy” more positively than one described as “small,” even if both are identical.</li>
<li>Sellers respond differently when told “you could lose $10,000 by waiting” versus “you could gain $10,000 by selling now.”</li>
<li>Real estate agents frame offers as “close to asking price” rather than emphasizing how far below it they are to encourage acceptance.</li>
<li>Framing a location as “family-friendly” or “up-and-coming” makes buyers perceive added value beyond the property itself.</li>
<li>Marketing phrases like “won’t last long” influence buyers’ urgency and decision-making.</li>
</ol> Content and best practices around the framing effect.<ul>
<li>Ensure all marketing materials present both gains and losses factually (be transparent) avoiding manipulative framing techniques.</li>
<li>Use balanced frames that highlight both the benefits and risks of a property purchase (e.g., “Affordable price with potential for growth”).</li>
<li>Provide guides helping buyers and sellers identify framing biases and make informed decisions based on facts rather than presentation style.</li>
<li>There is a fine line between something being staged to bring about a liveability emotion vs the home being over-staged which invokes a distrust on the part of the buyer, where they ask “are these sellers trying to hide something or divert my attention with this over-the-top furniture.”</li>
<li>Run A/B tests on marketing materials using different frames but ensure they align with factual data about the property or market trends.</li>
<li>Create campaigns explaining how framing can influence perception and teaching consumers how to recognize it in real estate ads.</li>
</ul> What Does This All Mean?My intention was to create real-life decision situations, which are centred around the aquisition and/or the disposition of real estate. There is no doubt that we live in an environment where information is not in short supply, but good or even great information is very scarce. There is no magic bullet content creator which fits all situations, but the information exists and can be curated for your client’s needs to fill in some of their knowledge gaps. My best advice is to operate from a place of transparency and objectivity, which may not make the so-called sale, but will increase your client’s trust in you 10 fold.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

A Tale of Two Countries

I consider myself an early adopter, I love new technology and I come by it honestly. I can remember hearing stories about my maternal grandfather having one of the first colour televisions in Hamilton. Considering my grandfather emigrated to Canada in 1951, with $100 in his pocket, it became somewhat legendary that he managed to buy a colour TV just 3 years later. I do not profess to be legendary but I do love the latest and greatest. A lot of technology went into the colour television and it greatly improved the audience experience, and on the flip side it vastly improved sales for advertisers who could now showcase their products in vivid colour, which is a clear example of a win win technology.Car Sharing Revolutionized How We Get AroundI, like many of you, embraced car sharing the minute it came out, I remember bragging to my friends that I took an Uber in Chicago in early 2011, they had never heard of Uber, I was legendary until the very next year when it came to Toronto. As Uber and Lyft became the norm in many travel destinations I skipped the car rental line, the taxi line and went right to the E-Hailing world of Uber and Lyft. The convenience of this new way to travel began to tarnish for me when I calculated the ride-sharing charges on my trips. I’m probably not going to rent a car when I go to NYC, but when I’m in the Florida Panhandle, or Palm Beach, or in Milano, I’m probably going to rent a car, as I did in all those places over the last 60 days. I started with just simple calculations of what an Uber costs to go to and from the airport, especially if I wanted to travel in something cleaner and roomier. Those 2 trips amounted to 50% of the cost of the rental, not to mention, all the short trips to and from restaurants, convention venues etc. Furthermore, I lost some flexibility and found myself restricting my movement when I would just rely on Uber. When you look at the global car rental market against the global ride share market, they are running neck and neck, albeit the CAGR (compound annual growth rate) is stronger for ride share but it still exists for car rental companies, meaning they are not a business going the way of Blockbuster. So, I am not alone in my mobility thoughts where an old school method still has merit.The ChatGPT Early Adopter – A One Day LegendSo how many of us are interacting with AI on a regular basis? Adoption of OpenAI’s ChatGPT reached 100 million users in just 2 months, making the early adopters a ‘single day legend’. Colour televisions became available to North American Consumers in 1954, and it took over a decade for the colour TV to reach 1 million users, so those early adopters kept their legendary status for a long, long time.Is AI Going Mainstream?In February 2024 on X, CEO Sam Altman posted that OpenAI generates 100 billion words per day. So, I went to ChatGPT to give me perspective, and asked how long it would take an average person reading for 8 hours a day every day to consume all those words, and how long it would take an avid reader, which AI calculated to be approximately 5.4 million words annually to do the same. The answer is 2,283 years and 18,519 years respectively. This is just the tip of the iceberg, imagine when our entire planet’s population (which are producing 100 trillion words a day) starts using AI and disseminating all that content with their own particular twist on it.So how are we expected to sift through all of this continuous word avalanche, and where will trusted information come from? Forget about the space race, the AI race is to create models which can consume as much information as the entire internet, yes the internet!!! With all this text making its way from just one source (OpenAI) can you imagine what these platforms will have to ingest. Currently there are 70,000 AI companies worldwide, with 40% of them based in North America. As a matter of fact it is conceivable that this so-called AI word vomit will be ingested again by the same platform which created it in the first place. Giving new meaning to the ailment of acid reflux, without the purple pill to cure it. As content is created exponentially, these AI companies will not only recycle their own output but will take in the output of another, adding to the layers of content confusion.Our Opportunity to be THE Trusted Source is Upon UsSo, what does the future look like for consumers who want to get informed on… let’s say the subject of real estate. Are we all going to have fact-checking bots which will filter through our AI information feed and separate fact from fiction. I really love technology and have an appreciation for the heavy lifting AI does for me to round off the edges of an email, a company communication, a marketing piece or a simple text. And particularly, how AI can absorb vast amounts of information in a single gulp, segment it, interpret it, and then summarize it in seconds.One of the ways I use AI is to find trends in our own proprietary data (Appointment Report) to establish trends, single out anomalies to not only predict the future, but also to give context to this moment in time. Several times I have had to challenge some of the outputs, but I am only able to do that because I am familiar with the data, which I have followed for the last 10+ years we have collected it. But not everyone has that luxury, and it’s beholden to all of us who are real estate practitioners, to keep our pulse on the data. So, when we encounter a hallucination with the AI platform we or our clients are using, we can step in with prompts to recalibrate the outcome which is in keeping with past data sets.A Copy of a Copy Degrades Over TimeSo, how are consumers going to know if the AI they are relying on has a hallucination, or draws from some other word vomit of a so-called expert who has fashioned his or her content to get their own message across. As these companies evolve, and generative AI is trained on its own output there is a theory that what will be occurring is output which is a copy of a copy. Remember back in the day when you made a photocopy of a photocopy, the quality diminished, it was readable but its clarity became compromised. So, imagine content being created from copies so-to-speak, every millisecond of every day, what would that do to the sharpness of the content.Outputs will lose originality and lack innovation, errors will be replicated, and biases will be compounded. By no means do I profess to be an expert on any of this, and there are people who graduated summa cum laude in quantum mathematics working on this right now, and will be able to figure this out. One thing I know for sure is we as experts in our industry need to embrace data, albeit consumer behaviour data around appointments or search, or sales frequency in a certain neighbourhood. It is beholden upon us to be the purveyors of data, making sure it is current/fresh and from a trusted source.What Will the Agent of the Future Look Like.The skills of an agent of the future will centre around our ability to harvest all of this information and provide it to our customers in a way they want to consume it. That on the surface may sound like something we are already doing, but without the fire hose of compromised content which is in front of us through many AI platforms. It is time we all start to familiarize ourselves with the data that surrounds us and to input it into an AI platform we trust. Be that early adopter who uses AI to streamline your customer’s journey, and to sift through data to empower your clients to make momentous decisions. But remember some of the noise of the market can inhibit success, and your ability to hack time to fulfill your clients needs may be derailed, so beware of the latest and greatest which on the surface makes sense but can compromise your ability to serve your clients best interests.The normalization of using AI will be commonplace and seamless, the dialogue around our customers needs will be formalized using AI, and will be as simple as a conversation. But we need to continue to be a part of that conversation, and the only way we can assure our place in it, is if we live, breathe and embrace the data. Market share will increase for those agents who are able to primarily deal with the intricacies of the transaction, along with the increased noise generated by AI which surrounds it.

AI vs AI (Artificial Intelligence vs Agent Intelligence)

Predictions are Something of a Fairy Tale

Traditionally December marks a month when we cast our minds to hope for the next year. As the 21st century says farewell to it’s first quarter, I felt I owed this century some homage, by not predicting what was going to happen when the the 2000’s turns 25, but by forecasting what may lose its significance going forward. When I was in high school I had a desire to become a lawyer. I decided when I got into my first year of university that I was going to volunteer as a probation and parole officer, to get my legal feet wet. I worked with many great people who trained and mentored me through the Probation and Parole office in the east end of Hamilton.I would meet once a week in the evenings at their offices on King Street East, and I mainly had younger male clients with a series of minor offenses or older men with a single offense. I remember during my training for the role, there was this theory regarding young men who were in and out of trouble during their youth. The magic chronological number was 25… the theory being that when a man reaches the age of 25 a light switch either goes off or stays on. They either continue their journey of destruction or they settle in to a life on the straight and narrow, so to speak, and their pre-25 life ends abruptly.That’s how I feel about 2025. I feel we are going to shed the stuff that got us here throughout this first quarter and, there are things that will not make it into the second half of this decade. If you have the stomach for a eulogy to some of the concepts and things that made up this 25 year old century then read on. If you are a Swifty, or an investor in micro condos, or a mortgage rate junky or someone who measures time by Covid 19, then turn your sights onto something else, as this will not be for you.Move Over Bank of Mom and Dad… Grandparents Are Taking OverIt used to be that grandparents were all about spoiling their grand children with the latest toys and sugary treats, but now they are getting into the finance gig. Over the past 10 years grandparents have transitioned from contributing to their grand children’s education to helping with a down payment for a home. There are financial vehicles that can make this happen, and your financial advisor can help you navigate through all of the letters from the FHSA (First Home Savings Account) to TFSA (Tax Free Savings Account) and RRSP (Registered Retirement Savings Plan). There is even a way to use the RESP (Registered Education Savings Plan) whereby the original contributions can be withdrawn on a tax-free basis then either gifted to your grandchild or put into their FHSA. 2025 should be about surrounding yourself and your clients with the best experts to facilitate this transfer of wealth.Say Good Bye to the Micro Condominium UnitRemember all the hype around tiny houses? I totally get that clever use of space on the ground, where you can get out into open space immediately. We all know builders loved the micro-unit and built a ton of them in high-rise condominiums. There is a glut of this type of unit on both the re-sale and rental markets. Some are under 400 square feet and fail the ‘swing the cat test’. This was the home building industry’s answer to the affordable housing crisis for both end users and investors. But consumers realized it wasn’t easy to live in such small square footage. As a result we are experiencing the dawn of the housemate. People getting together to buy or rent larger units. With a larger unit you get greater living space, cooking and eating space. Yes there are practical issues with this type of communal living but they can be overcome. As a result some smart builders are answering this new demand by building larger units with two primary ensuites and bedrooms of equal size. 2025 will be the year builders respond to the needs and practical desires of home owners and renters alike.Renting Won’t Be a Dirty Word AnymoreThere is a lot of chatter around renting vs owning a home where a recent Statistics Canada study found that the median net worth of home owners was 10 times that of renters. Even though this may be true, renting has still become a choice for many Canadians. Approximately 1/3 of households rent and it is becoming a trend with older Canadians to cash out of their homes, invest their capital and forgo the non-recoverable of home ownership like regular maintenance, municipal taxes, and in some cases condominium fees. Also remember a third of households have a mortgage. Isn’t a mortgage a rental of money?A Magazine Is RebornEveryone around me loves Costco except for me! I do appreciate how clever Costco is at merchandising products, and making consumers spend copious amounts of money on household items in quantities they may not need, and that shopping at Costco is a ritualized event. As a result of how good Costco is at fostering consumerism, I am too weak of a consumer to go there and so I choose not to. Recently, I read in the New York Times that Costco’s magazine called Costco Connection (CC) has a distribution of 16 million copies, and is the third largest US magazine. The likes of Oprah, Tom Hanks, Jimmy Kimmel and Bruce Springsteen have allbeen on the cover of CC! According to Costco 93% of its readers own a home (no surprise there) and have an average household income of nearly $200K.Costco has gone back to an old school success strategy of winning door to door instead of click and un-click. Their readers swear by its content, and more importantly trust it. Which is a far cry from the low levels of trust that influencers have been experiencing, as consumers feel they are just product prostitutes and not advocates for a better consumer experience. In 2025 the influencer may diminish in effectiveness and the established magazine which separates church from state, will be the new trusted resource of consumerism.Cheap Money Won’t Fuel Demand…Demand Will There have been 4 successive rate drops in Canada, and the Bank of Canada says there are going to be more. Long term rates have been coming down, and the delta between variable and fixed is shrinking. Is it that buyers are waiting for further drops to get moving again? There are ways to hedge the rate cuts by going variable and locking in when rates have hit bottom, but there isn’t a hedge when it comes to where home prices can go. In 2025 if all the economic junkies including the federal government are correct, we will be experiencing one of the biggest housing tail winds since the overnight rate was .25% in March of 2022.The last time we saw anything close to this time period was in the first quarter of 2009, just after we had a very buoyant market in 2007 followed by the financial crisis of 2008. As a result of a declining market/economy the Bank of Canada reduced the over night rate by 50 bases points, and 12 months later in April of 2010, the Canadian Residential Benchmark price rose by 13%. 2025 will experience more rate drops, an increase in insured mortgages up to $1.5 million dollars and 30 year amortizations again, coupled with some pent up demand, should make for market stabilization with an increase in home prices to follow.Even The NFL Has To Dig Deep and Get Financially CreativeRecently at a meeting in St. Paul Minnesota, NFL royalty met to decide on how to gain greater liquidity for its owners. They discussed how Taylor Swift could become a commentator and spread the wealth of capturing a new audience like she has for the Chiefs. Just kidding. There was a monumental vote which allowed the most valuable sports league in North America to sell a 10% stake to private equity. That means many of these owners can now retire debt or build billion dollar stadiums by accessing this kind of capital which is different than traditional interest only borrowing. Private equity gets paid through performance fees and dividends etc. So what does that have to do with the price of houses in Leamington Ontario. Well it doesn’t but building a creative bridge to home ownership does. 2025 could be the beginning of being more creative with how we finance home ownership for first-time buyers through joint ownership, where a downpayment is re-payed once the property is sold, and is interest free throughout the duration of the home ownership. The investor/institution would then receive compensation through capital appreciation of the property which is shared proportionately (such as a market value mortgage), without being burdened by a monthly payment. The private equity investor would work together with the home owner to plan and invest in improvements which would benefit both parties when they go to sell it.What Does Warren Buffet KnowWarren Buffet has been unloading Apple stock at a voracious rate, however it still remains Berkshire Hatheway’s largest single investment by far. It is rumored that Buffet isn’t really comfortable with tech stocks, and that after the passing of his vice-chair Charlie Munger who was the technology patron, he has decided to reduce his stake in Apple. But maybe the Oracle of Omaha is realizing what some of us Apple junkies have been feeling for a while. That Apple has not come out with anything that’s been innovative in a long while from a phone perspective. The only difference on the iPhone lately is the number on the box. Apple’s only foray into innovation was an AI operating system (late to the party don’t ya think) which can be updated on any late model phone. In 2025 consumers are not going to buy into hype anymore. They are looking for real value that rewards them, and innovation which makes their lives easier.Mortgage Defaults… Are They Really Going to Be a Thing in 2025???Canada Mortgage and Housing measures arrears by how many home owners have missed at least 90 days of payments. Currently it is on the so-called rise in higher priced areas like Vancouver and Toronto where the arrears rate has increased more rapidly. Currently in Canada the 2024 Q2 delinquency rate is 0.19 compared to 0.14% in the fourth quarter of 2022 after several rate increases. There are approximately 6,000,000 mortgages in Canada which makes the current number of 90 days plus in payment arrears at 114,000 mortgages vs Q4 of 2019, Q1, Q2 and Q3 of 2020 at 0.28% or 168,000 mortgages during the beginning of Covid 19. Without a doubt the noise around mortgage defaults in 2025 will be there, but in reality it will fizzle out as the resilient Canadian home buyer navigates themselves out of it as they have in the past.No Thanks, I’m Good with a 25 Year AmortizationI have had the pleasure of seeing Caroline Rogers the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada speak on a few occasions. If I am correct she always does a a state of the housing market at the tail end of the year. She doesn’t mince words and this year she did not disappoint. The quote which was carried by most of the media was there is “no free lunch” coming on December 15th, 2024 when mortgage rules are relaxed. Rogers explained that based on today’s mortgage rates and at the current average price of a home across Canada, if home buyers opt for 30 years instead of a 25 year amortization they will decrease their payment by approximately $200 a month but will end up paying $50,000 more over the life of the mortgage. 2025 will be out with uninformed and willy nilly borrowing strategies and consumers will opt to be more conservative with a goal to pay off their mortgages.

Ask Not For A 2025 Prediction

From a business headlines perspective November is probably the most quiet month of the year compared to October or March. I researched landmark economic events in the month of November and found two which stood out in the last 100 years. The end of WW1 in November of 1918 a monumental event on many levels, and the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX in November of 2022 (founder Sam Bankman-Fried is awaiting his appeal in MDC Brooklyn in same dormitory-style cell as Sean Combs). I’m not sure why November is a lackluster business headline month. Is it because the US has a Presidential Election every 4 years in November and that dominates the headlines in November? Or because US Thanksgiving is in November and people only care about football and turkey that day? In Canada the 11th month hosts Remembrance Day, which is a day to put our differences aside and remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. However, nothing else really happens in the Scorpio month. It seems that November is the calm before the Christmas Storm, where no one wants to shake things up economically. However, October is the poster child for seismic business events with the triple crown of financial doom, so much so they branded days of the week with black. Black Tuesday (1929 Stock Market Crash), Black Monday (October 1987 saw the largest one day drop in stock market history) and October 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed under the weight of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Come to think of it, November has an annual Black Day - it’s a Friday and that is a happy economic day!!!!Would You Do Your Job For Free?Recently, I was getting my hair cut by who I believe to be the most talented coiffure in Southern Ontario. He is the owner and has a very sound business mind. We often speak of our opportunities and failures. He was formerly an emergency room EMT, an experience that he speaks about with fondness. However, when the question was posed, “Would you have done that noble work for free versus what you do today?”, his answer was steadfast. “I would do what I do today for no money at all”. I found that answer very interesting, so I decided to pose it to myself, and to an audience I was in front of recently. Only 3 people put up their hands - the organizer of the event, someone in the front row, and me. Yes, I know what all you naysayers are grumbling under your breath, ‘that’s a pie in the sky question and no one would answer that honestly.’ Most entrepreneurs, along with 100% commission based sales people should have no problem answering that. I gave an honest answer, because when I was building my business, I forfeited any compensation in order to build my business Many a REALTOR® has done the same. Is The Game of Golf More Rewarding Than What You Do For a Living?You see, leaders/entrepreneurs should always pay first and eat later. It’s how you earn your stripes. But more importantly, when you are creating something you are passionate about, you do not need to be paid for it. Let me put it another way, 99.9% of golf enthusiasts are always chasing that perfect round. They often complain about their frustration with the game, and not only do these people not get payed to spend 4 hours in the elements, they pay for the privilege to torment themselves. With November being a month of low anxiety so to speak, it is a perfect month to reflect on what your vocation is, and how to bring that passion back into what you do. I declare November to be the ardent month of the year, where we become introspective about what we do, and create a systematized approach to re-kindle our LOVE for our chosen careers. Rekindle the TingleIt’s time you re-introduce yourself to what you do. Remember those first dates with your significant other, when your conversations would last forever, and you couldn’t wait to do it all over again? It was sort of an obsession in a good way, because you both connected on so many levels. The rest of the world was put on hold, and you both had focus and rhythm, and you finished each others sentences. How cute you both were! Now think of the ‘you’ when you started in your career. I remember when I started as a REALTOR® I travelled all over God’s country to show properties to my clients. I was so excited to show leases just to get more product knowledge, or do open houses and midnight negotiations. Then there was a time when the noise of your fellow REALTORS®, the market, a looming recession, or interest rates rising that took you away from your infatuation with what you do. Just like the novelty wore off of in your relationships, when your friends started to get married, your parents prodded you to pop the question, you followed suit and before you knew it you had a couple of kids and a mortgage. The noise of your new life begins to takeover and that happy tingle in your stomach which stated this whole love thing sometimes disappears. I realize I am speaking in generalities here however, allow me to speak with conviction when I say that we all fall in and out of love with what we do.The Dawn of a New Way Is Upon UsThe most uninspiring part of our day is the repetitive activities we need to do everyday which become monotonous, and are, in fact, an infatuation killer. So what are we to do? It’s time we map out every step of every process of what you do in your service business. In real estate it is the listing process, your lead generation process, your buyer process, your post listing/sale process, etc., etc. Where can technology automate the process and when does human contact serve the process well? By creating a combination of physical and non physical touch points, you will wow your clients throughout their individualized sales journey.What is also very important during this whole systemization process is to identify areas in the process from which to extract data. AI has a voracious appetite for data, and the more exotic the data the better the outcome will be. We all have our own ability to collect exotic data. The data points we have about our clients help make the future process that much better for your client base. AI will be able to mine your database, your communications, the questions your clients frequently ask and make additions to your process. It will prompt you to have information ready before a particular client asks you for it. This will enrich your clients journey and make you the most referred REALTOR® in your network. This is called audience analysis and segmentation, and it’s available today on some CRMs. The Funnel is Still The FunnelThe sales funnel hasn’t changed. There are still 3 stages: the Awareness Stage, the Evaluation Stage and the Buying Stage. The only thing that has changed is how we create and deliver components of the funnel. Podcasts, how-to videos, vlog posts, guides, seminars etc., are all a part of the awareness stage which is vital to building any business. The middle of the funnel is where consumers evaluate you, your service or your product. It’s testimonials; it’s ratings; its showcasing your past clients’ successes which in turn demonstrates your value. The bottom of the funnel is the action stage, where you impart your knowledge on the potential client (market evaluation, suggestions to add value to ..., staging consultation, etc.) to earn their trust and in turn they buy your service. A commission based business can get frustrating but it is probably self inflicted. When was the last time you really evaluated the cost of an online ad, or the effectiveness of buying leads? Recent studies (US) have estimated the online lead generation business at a cool $4.5 billion, with an estimated $125,000,000 to $200,000,000 return on that investment. Let’s do some math. There are approximately 1.5 million REALTORS® (NAR members) in the United States, who spend approximately $3000 annually on online leads ($250/month). Online leads have an average success rate of around 3% (4.5 billion x .03 = $125,000,000). Let’s go one step further. There are approximately 5 million existing home sales in the US per year (4,090,000 in 2023). With 150 million online leads being sold to REALTORS®, and divide the amount of transactions that occurred, you discover that there were 25 leads per transaction, or 4%. Do the math at $4,500,000,000 x .04 = $180,000,000. With these numbers it’s no surprise how frustrated REALTORS® are. By taking control of your own funnel you are assured to attract more like minded consumers to yourself and your close rate will be much higher, and you will fall back in love again with what you do!Focus on People and Partner with the Best Technology We all need to practice like crazy to become more efficient, because the more efficient we can become, the more quality time we can spend with our clients nurturing those business relationships. Efficiency equates to value and creates a much better customer experience. Remember you are not buying technology, you are partnering with it, so do your homework, attend conferences and ask a lot of questions of as many experts and suppliers as you can.

It's Time To Court Your Career Again

If I had to pinpoint something in my day that I would say I cherish, it’s my birthday calls. It gives me an opportunity to speak to our agents and staff on another level. We try and keep it light and about their milestone in the year, but it inevitably comes around to our business. I learn so much from these the moments in time—what price points are selling, is there a cool listing they are working on, or what’s happening on the front lines with their buyers and sellers. These conversations fuel my mind and my soul, and for that I am extremely grateful. Back when my daughter was 4 years old I decided to call our agents on their birthday. Alessandra is now 20 years old and a junior at Syracuse University. Currently she is studying abroad in Florence and called me last Saturday at 4 pm Florence time, and I did not answer her. So at about 10:45 am our time I called her back. No, “Hello Papa”, or “how is your day going”, etc. Instead she snarled, “Doing your birthday calls?” Growing up my daughter would hear my side of the conversation when I was making these birthday calls. After I got off the phone she would always ask me, “Where are they going for their birthday?” I would tell her and she would often ask if we could go there. We made it a game and would plan a lunch or dinner the next weekend at one of the birthday venues. When people were away on an exotic trip like Vegas or the Caribbean I had a lot of fast talking to do. Of course on the call she asked me, “So where is everyone going for their birthday today? The Keg, Red Lobster, Nashville etc?” (BTW The Keg, Red Lobster and the Niagara Casino are the three top destinations). I told her that Red Lobster is going off the list, and she asked why. I told her that they filed for bankruptcy in May and have closed nearly 150 restaurants so far. It made me wonder why such a North American institution crumbled under $1.5 billion dollars of debt. The chain opened in 1968 and was touted as a restaurant in landlocked communities serving up seafood at an affordable price. Ironically, lobster was not on the original menu due to their high cost. I remember eating my first lobster there when a grade school friend had a birthday party there. In the 80’s after being purchased by General Mills (Cheerios and Betty Crocker) it became the largest table-dining chain in the US. Later it was sold again for $1.5 billion to a private equity firm who proceeded to do the unthinkable. They sold the land under the restaurants for $2.1 billion and called it a saleleaseback. So they went from owning their own properties (like McDonalds does), to becoming tenants. As rents rose and sales decreased it became evident something dramatic needed to happen to turn around sales. Success Leaves CluesI believe that success leaves clues, and so did the management at Red Lobster. In their wisdom, they looked back to see when they had success in bringing in volumes of diners. It was when they did their Ultimate Endless Shrimp, which they only did seasonally in September, to capture the back-toschool crowd, and Monday is usually the slowest day of the week. It was reported that their customer base dropped by 30% from 2019, and the brain trust at RL announced Endless Shrimp all day and all week. Shrimp-addicted consumers stormed the place; people camped out all day and all night in booths to gorge on shrimp. Shrimp marathoners flooded TikTok, declaring their goals to eat 100 shrimp or talking about how they were going to spend their entire day eating shrimp. The restaurant’s clientele changed overnight. The restaurants were loud and chaotic, and their regular customer base fled to other restaurants. So what happened to Red Lobster? Their staff was pushed to the limit; their facilities were worn to the bone; and their profits turned to loses, and the company was bought under bankruptcy for $375 million. When you think of the landscape of restaurant chains, Red Lobster had a niche with a seafood offering. It was the only casual dining chain of its kind in a sea of beef and chicken joints. So what can we learn from this iconic restaurant’s debacle? Is Having A Niche Risky?It is undeniable that Red Lobster scaled the seafood concept, and filled a niche which wasn’t being filled in the food service landscape. You live and die by a niche. Consumers’ tastes change. Specialized ingredients like seafood are subject to market pricing. Did you ever notice that restaurants with fish or lobster dishes on the menu, they are usually subject to ‘Market Price’? Seafood costs are a moving target. So when you adopt the concept of ‘Riches in Niches: How to Make it BIG in a Small Market’ by author Susan Friedmann, you run the risk of the market changing course in your specialization. For instance, if your primary focus was on residential real estate investors, with the sudden increase in mortgage rates, many investors were experiencing negative cash flow. If all your sales activity was in this one basket, then you would haveexperienced a challenging 18 months as rates increased, and landlords were feeling the pinch. To add insult to industry, landlords with long-term tenancies at lower than market rent began to ‘renovict’ their current tenants to take advantage of rising rents. Tenants dug their heals in and refused to move, adding further stress to the landlord, making this investment category undesirable along with your niche expertise. The Quick Buck Has Short LegsAs far as I am concerned, Red Lobster committed the cardinal sin when it comes to appreciating assets… they sold them. So much has been written about how McDonald’s isn’t really in the food business, but is in the real estate business. According to former McDonald’s CFO, Harry J. Sonneborn, “The only reason we sell fifteen-cent hamburgers is because they are the greatest producer of revenue, from which our tenants can pay us our rent.” No truer words have been uttered, especially since McDonald’s real estate holdings are worth over $40 billion. They are the #1 non-real estate company with significant real estate holdings in front of Walmart, Costco, Amazon, Apple, and Walt Disney. McDonald’s strategy of collecting rents insulates them from the ups and downs of consumer demand, and when real estate values plummeted in 2008, they usedtheir cash reserves to snap up more land and buildings. Using cash flow assets to help smooth the edges of a slow market, and/or leveraging equity to grow your business is always a smart strategy. A Desperate Decision Has Dire ConsequencesThe $20 all-you-can-eat shrimp deal brought about the demise of Red Lobster due in part to significant losses due to rising shrimp prices, increased client traffic, higher labour costs, greater wear and tear, and the loss of their loyal customer base. A perfect storm, so to speak. When we introduce a significant price cut (reduced commission), promise of more services (unlimited staging), the market slows down (holding more listings longer), and reducing marketing like videoor drone photography, we set ourselves up for failure and frustration. Sound familiar? When you become hungry for positive cash flow and cost-cutting initiatives, we tend to make decisions that could negatively impact our businesses and set the stage for long-term dissatisfaction.

Lessons From A Lobster That Is In The Red

An Ode To A Home Buyer/Seller

For the first five days of August my home internet/cable was down. That meant I was without streaming on my smart TV and of course no mainstream TV. It’s not that I am a TV or streaming junkie but I use these entertainment sources as white noise in the background. As I move from room to room I catch tidbits of useless information, but my worst habit is something I got from doing quick overseas trips. That is having the TV is on all night while I sleep. I have done my share of quick trips to speak in Europe and as a result I have trouble with the time difference, primarily on the second night, and the white noise of the TV has always been my sleeping pill. That’s why if you put me in front of a TV and I happen to be lying down I’m out cold no matter how exciting the subject matter is.  Sometimes It Makes Sense and Not Dollars As I retreated to my iPad and my iPhone during the Olympics I went down the proverbial rabbit hole on not just the games themselves but some of the back stories. Like NBC buying the rights for 10 Olympic Games (2014- 2032) for just under 8 billion dollars, nearly a billion dollars a broadcast with revenues around $1,000,000,000 (summer games averaging more advertising revenue than the winter games). Can we say that was a really a great deal for NBC? That is why they have enlisted the likes of Snoop Dog to call a ping pong match and dressage to boast ratings, or is NBC’s Olympic’s coverage just a ruse to promote Snoop Dog as the latest coach on the Voice? Sometimes decisions we make do not have to have a profit attached to them. There is often a bigger picture. The question is do you know what that ultimate vision really is?  And Sometimes It Does Not In the shadow of Toyota’s recent announcement to end its over $800 million sponsorship of the Olympic Games, it makes you wonder why the IOC’s largest partner is opting out. It has been reported that Toyota was not happy with how the money was used, and felt it ‘was not used effectively in the support of athletes or to promote sports’. Isn’t that the whole premise of the Olympics. When did the IOC go off course? Why aren’t they staying in their lane? Maybe Toyota felt its audience wasn’t really into surfing, skateboarding, break dancing, or 3 on 3 basketball. What’s wrong with just having 5 on 5 basketball? Or regular 6 on 6 volleyball, why do we need beach 2 on 2 volleyball on sand, under the hot sun, and in skimpy uniforms in the Olympics… oh I know why.  Be Cautious When Jumping on the Bandwagon The fact that organizers of the Paris Olympics opted for a carbon neutral summer games and built the Olympic Village housing the athletes with no air-conditioning during the hottest part of summer is a clear example of trying too hard to be green. And instead it turns out they had to install 2,500 electricity-sucking temporary air-conditioning units which are far from carbon neutral. The recyclable cardboard beds that were as comfortable as sleeping on the floor, and the plant-based protein meals that no one wanted to eat. This ‘trying to be different for the sake of being different’ greatly diminished the culture of camaraderie amongst athletes all living in the village has been lost, as some teams hired their own chefs and even moved out all together.  Stop Trying So Hard When you try too hard you end up over-compensating in another direction, which leads to the consequence of diminishing the heart and soul of what you are doing. The fact that they doubled down on racing in the River Seine, where athletes got sick with gastrointestinal infections makes no sense at all. I read that the Australian team took E. coli medication for a month prior to the games in preparation for the pollution levels of the Seine, Is that not a banned substance? I am not arguing about the theories around global warming, but I will say that to put the stars of these Olympics in substandard conditions is wrong. There could have been a way to serve both the athletes and the environment. I think the organizers should have to stay in the Athlete’s Village and the athletes should stay in their air-conditioned hotels, and fly in the private jets that shuttle the stars to and from Paris. What can these so-called gaffs at the Olympics teach us about the clients we serve, the partners we engage with, and our businesses as a whole? I have always believed in asking myself and my team 5 questions before we embark on something which affects the success of our business. <ol>
<li>Is this an example of us/me trying too hard?</li>
<li>By doing this are we staying in our lane?</li>
<li>Who does this initiative serve?</li>
<li>What would it be like to walk in the shoes of those it is intended to serve? </li>
<li>What’s the plan for the last mile?</li>
</ol>Without a doubt we have seen some interesting changes in consumer and business behaviour over the last 5 years, some in part due to COVID and others due to the over-abundance of cheap money which played a role in rising inflation. Some businesses took advantage of the rise in goods and services by raising their prices which lead to consumers voting with their feet. Low interest rates made businesses and individuals look at investments and growth as something that would flourish, forever fueled by low cost leverage and rapid appreciation. They justified over-extending themselves because the cost to do so was a small part of their expenses and it would all last forever. Well it didn’t, and now we must adapt to the aftermath and try to predict where the almighty consumer will go next. If we all could adopt solid business principals that transcend market fluctuations and avoid these pitfalls our businesses would take a steady growth trajectory which is sustainable and scalable.  Are Some Real Estate Brands Trying Too Hard to Be Different? It is well documented that the primary reason Gary Keller chose the so called ‘profit-sharing tree’ was because he wanted to differentiate his business from the crowded landscape that was real estate. The landscape at the time was just different brands with different flags carrying the same message. Agent compensation was always in the forefront but the theory was if an agent had more compensation, they could use those resources to achieve better results for their clients. Like the age old statement, “you are better at spending your money than the government is”. As a result RE/MAX was born. The founders Dave and Gail Liniger understood the premise that the agent on the ground knew where and when to spend the resources needed to get their client’s home sold, and build a profitable business for themselves. So what would emerge is taking that compensation model one step further where two types of real estate companies would emanate. One which focused on delivering to the consumer a buying/selling journey with many touch points (RE/MAX, Royal LePage, C21, Compass, etc.), and the other to recruit agents to a so-called down line which focused primarily on the well-being of the real estate agent (Keller Williams, eXp, REAL, Revel etc.). These companies labeled themselves disruptors but their so-called innovation to our industry was not focused on making the buyer/seller’s experience better. It came in the form of multi-level marketing, whose primary focus is the betterment of the REALTOR® by providing a built-in side hustle. Remember, Avon was founded in 1886­—hardly a new business model. I have always felt that if you want to be innovative in any industry and in real estate particularly, you must walk in the shoes of the consumer. Understand their pain points, their frustrations, celebrate their wins, improve the workflow, etc. I am not sure how MLM is an innovation for the consumer. Correct me if I am wrong, but this type of pyramid sales is the function of a market which has too many REALTORS® who got into the industry to make a quick dollar off of someone else’s work. When the market shifts and requires expertise and skill, these models somehow promise to supplement an agent’s income but as the market shrinks so does the proverbial downline. Every Business Wants to Master the Last Mile Remember when Amazon showcased their drone delivery system, and it was part of a 60 Minutes feature in 2013? It was toted as the answer to the proverbial last mile by delivering packages more efficiently through the air, skipping over driver-less vehicles which have yet to become mainstream. Packages would go short distances from a central warehouse to your home via drone. More than 10 years later the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finally permitted Amazon to expand its drone delivery service, now allowing operations beyond visible line of sight. This is a blue sky idea which would probably put an end to last mile discussions at Amazon. Most businesses do not have the resources and vision of Amazon, but we all wrestle with the last mile. Be it a manufacturing company or a service-based one, these last mile discussions are had in board rooms across NA. So when is the last mile in real estate? Never!!! I like to refer to the fact that there are several last miles in every interaction we have with our clients. Last miles are a subset of what is happening in the moment.A real estate transaction is multi-faceted, which, in—turn demands the last mile at every twist and turn. When you show properties there are so many facets to the last mile. You must equip your buyers with deep neighbourhood knowledge, sales history of all the properties you are showing them, the price per square foot of comparable sales, and the trends that are happening, from months of supply, to the list-to-sales ratio of a specific neighbourhood. Without all this data, the last mile becomes irrelevant and you fail to give your buyers a rich post-showing wrap up, to either eliminate a property or put it on the short list, thus creating a clear expectation as to how deep the negations will be.  Can Someone Please Tell Brands to Stay In Their Lane \There seems to be a trend in and around chasing the next level of consumer. Dollar Tree, a well-known discount retailer, has found that their growth is with shoppers who have a combined household income of $125,000. In response to that Dollar Tree has increased their upper limit to $7 from the $5 price ceiling, as they found those who made a higher income were shopping in their stores. Some would say this strategy is a sharp divergence from the brand’s mainstay and is a departure from their lane. They attribute much of their growth to this sector as they attract this type of consumer who is looking to save on their day-to-day needs. Time will tell if this strategy is successful or not. It may persuade their core customers to experience higher check-out balances and opt to go back to traditional retailers. When you change your consumer profile from serving first-time buyers, to downsizers, to move-up, to investors, or to luxury buyers and sellers, you need to adapt to their specific needs. It is fine for Dollar Tree to up their price points to attract upper-income buyers, but is that the only attribute to find success in this sector? Will they need to improve the look and feel of their stores. Will they increase price points and lose their core clientele, as they feel they have become too expensive? To expand your client base you must always be aware of what resources you need and how it will affect your mainstream and loyal customers. If you jump from serving investors to first-time buyers because the market has turned, you will find your investor clients who still need your expertise, moving away from you and it will be hard to get them back.  What Does McDonald’s Have to Do with Real Estate Commissions? McDonald’s has learned the hard way that going away from their core value proposition of providing quick and cheap or great value at a low price has met with consumer backlash. Many of McDonalds’ customers protested loudly on social media causing 2 outcomes: patrons stopped going and ate at home to get better value for their money, and the other group went to more sit down mid-level restaurants instead, saying, “if I’m going to spend more money, I might as well upgrade to a higher quality brand”. This all lead to McDonald’s reporting their first loss in global sales since the pandemic, so to win back consumer confidence, McDonald’s reintroduced the $5 Value Meals. Let that be a lesson to us all, when you go off course on your pricing or your service offering to the point that your consumers do not recognize your brand promise, you will in turn suffer the consequences. I get this call all the time from my agents who flirt with substantially lowering their commissions to buy the listing instead of doing more with the resources they have to heighten the prospect of a sale or improve the customer journey. When you zig and zag like this, you send the wrong message to your clients, especially past clients who experienced a higher commission when times were good, but you reduce your commission when times are bad. How does that make any sense? Your Brand Promise is the Foundation of Your Success When you get out of your lane and default on your brand’s promise, you make your customers rethink their loyalty to you. When you fail to understand what got you where you are in the first place, you turn your back on your core customer, which can cost you sales. When we try too hard to be everything to everyone, we water down our brand deliverables, and more importantly, stretch ourselves too thin. It is important to go deeper on what you deliver rather than go wider; once you find your footing, that’s the indication to expand your reach. When you get seduced by the next shiny object and introduce it into your daily interactions, you confuse your clients and make them second guess your motives. By creating a format to test the viability of a new initiative, we set in motion a plan to either go forward or abort mission, which sets the stage for your ultimate success by not overdeploying resources.

Stop F'N Trying so Hard

Recently I had the chance to watch that famous monologue by the actor Jeff Daniels from The Newsroom (2012), where he reluctantly answered the question, ‘Why is America the greatest country in the world?’ The scene was played at a real estate conference I attended recently in Scottsdale. It opened the conference and was brilliantly designed to get us all thinking of our collective next frontier as an industry, and more importantly, how we can shape the next 12 to 14 year cycle.  (Reference:<a href="https://youtu.be/z2HKbygLjJs?si=7R-usKE4EVRfa9Ps"> Watch this clip from The Newsroom</a>, "Why America is the best country in the world". The Newsroom "Why America is the best country in the world". ) This next cycle is known as the AI revolution which began in 2021 and is the most democratic of all of the cycles. It is where we can control the controllable and empower all of us as individuals. When you look back at other significant periods in real estate history like the late 60’s to the late 70’s, we saw franchising emerge with companies like C21 and RE/MAX. The next period was when real estate companies went public throughout the 80’s and 90’s. The Era of digital transformation dominated the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Coupled with technology, increased growth in the realtor® population, and signs of a shrinking market gave the rise to new real estate models like eXp and REAL (2011 to 2020).  So I decided to re-write Jeff Daniels’ answer as if he was a realtor® on a panel, and a potential first-time buyer from the audience asked him, ‘Can you say why the real estate industry is the greatest industry in the world?’ Answer: The Montreal Canadians (Daniels answers The New York Jets). And, yeah, you….first time buyer.  Just in case you decide one day to plunge yourself into the real estate market there are some things you should know. We used to have the best real estate market, but we don’t. Anymore. We’re 16th (US is 17th) country in the world home ownership, behind countries like Romania, China, Vietnam, and Russia. We used to be higher. We used to have the highest quality of life index (2023 Numbeo Quality of Life Index), but we don’t have that anymore. We’re 15th (US is 21st) in the world for quality of life. New Zealand is ahead of us. We lead the world in only three categories: number of people who believe Celine Dion is a national treasure; the number of adults who believe the Toronto Maple Leafs will win the Stanley Cup again, and per capita maple syrup and poutine consumption. That’s it. We used to have the best infrastructure for real estate - the best transportation, utilities, internet. But we’re 8th in the world in infrastructure quality now, behind Estonia and Slovenia. Real estate investment was tried and true when it came to wealth creation for Canadians. Now we have uncertainty. We have a housing affordability crisis, a homelessness crisis, and a crisis of overregulation and overtaxation. And we sit back and tell ourselves it’s all going to be okay, because this is still the greatest real estate market that has ever existed. How Do We Make The Real Estate Industry Great Again? How do we turn this ship around? The first step in solving any problem is recognizing that there is one. The Canadian, and albeit the North American real estate industry, is not the greatest in the world anymore, and we, as industry leaders and practitioners, should all play a part in rebuilding, restructuring and redefining it.  The fundamental solutions lie in a simple statement from motivational speaker Richard Montanez of Flaming Hot Cheetos fame, “Learn to use your past for your future”. The history of real estate can be drilled down into meaningful decades catalyzed by technology with the same 6 buckets: property search, transaction management, market statistics, property marketing, client acquisition, and recognition/brand advertising. We should be looking at each of these buckets through a lens of AI to enhance the customer experience, and to create the life/work/balance we want for ourselves. We are probably in year 2 of a 14 year cycle in real estate, which will probably be dominated by AI, like the internet dominated the late 1990’s and well into the 2000’s. If you only believe half of what AI can do, it is already a milestone moment in how we in the real estate industry will shape our businesses, interact with buyers and sellers, and measure our success. This era will eventually run out of momentum, like the era of paper-based advertising did. The question is, how are you going to tackle this new era in real estate. The concept of automation has been with us for over 300 years, and AI, simply put, automates many areas of our work, play and well being. AI will be as transformative as I dare say the industrial revolution was, or the dawn of the internet. There will always be Chicken Littles in our lives who constantly exclaim ‘the sky is falling….it just hit us on the head. It is up to us to approach this new era like Pollyanna, with unstoppable optimism.  Are We F’d!!!! The internet was going to put us all out of business, because our buyers and sellers could peruse listings and sales information on their desktop computers, not via their trusted realtor®. Bricks and mortar retail was going to be decimated due to the internet. It would surprise most that 80% of retail is still represented by bricks and mortar establishments, and Wayfair which was born of the internet is opening its first physical store (150,000 sq ft) in Wilmette, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. What? Well, Wayfair has discovered there are purchases which can’t be done without feeling, touching and seeing.. and remember that returning a couch is a costly and awkward endevour. Like retail, other industries like ours are going ‘PHYGITAL’ (physical locations plus a strong digital platform). A partnership of the two with AI integration will future proof any company/industry which adopts it. What is Walmart Doing With AI and How Does it Affect Our Industry? I remember almost a decade ago when I attended a fintech conference, a presenter from the insurance industry described a navigation GPS platform developed by Walmart, and designed to primarily enable truck drivers to deliver goods to a destination by doing right turns only. What was discovered was that left turns made deliveries vulnerable due to the volume of accidents which were left turn related and the time lost due to them. They discovered that Walmart’s delivery partners could save a significant amount of money, time etc., if they used this navigation software. They provided it to for free, but in turn received a portion of the savings on their delivery charges. Fast forward to today where Walmart set up a pilot for an AI negotiation platform. They asked around 100 of their suppliers to be a part of it too, of which 89 accepted? Why did they accept, well the platform was fed negotiation parameters by Walmart along with a promise to respond in real time to the supplier. The suppliers welcomed the change because many of them were dealing with long waits for a human buyer to respond. Walmart’s target was a 20% close rate. They achieved nearly 70%, which resulted in a 3% savings overall. 3% savings for a company of this size is significant and would probably be equal to a small country’s total GDP. A negotiation bot in real estate?  Say it isn’t so! Why Did Costar Buy Matterport? Recently in an interview with Andy Florence, the interviewer asked…Why Matterport? Mr. Florence the CEO of Costar answered with a series of statistics. There are 7.4 million Matterport tours viewed every year, and viewing times can go as high as 17 minutes per tour. Leads on Costar’s site Apartments.com that include rental properties with a Matterport tour receive on average 74 leads per month compared to listing without a tour that capture only 7 leads a month. Florence’s strategy is to hire several photographers to add 3D tours to all of the apartment units on his site. Currently Matterport has created over 12 million properties/spaces worldwide. Where Does AI Fit Into Matterport’s Future? The Matterport system can observe other things like roof wear and tear. As outside 3D technology advances, a scan can reveal land contours and predict where water can collect, signalling to a home inspector to look for moisture in the respective internal area of the home. Matterport tours can identify granite countertops, Wolf appliances, electrical and plumbing systems. This data could be served up to the consumer giving estimates on replacement, or the value that a high end appliance can add to a property. A buyer can do a scan of their own home, strip all of the furniture and decor items, and move the items in a so-called virtual moving truck and place all of their stuff in a new property which they are considering purchasing. With the ability to manipulate for furniture placement etc. there is no need to measure for furniture at the final walk-thru. So What Does This AI (BS) Mean to Me, and How Can I Take Advantage of It? AI will supercharge solutions, fill gaps, or identify inconsistencies in your customer’s journey. Input your customer comments, emails, texts, complaints and inquires over the last 5 years, and create a bot to offer you a better system to improve your customer experience. This will enable you to predict negative experiences before they happen, and provide you a tailor-made information drip to current and past clients. This is your proprietary data, and will keep you relevant to your tribe at all times, paving a way to more referrals of look-alike clients.  Build a bot to deal with meetings with your team/staff/partners, or better yet, your clients. Take notes at your listing and buyer presentations, at showings, at home owner feedback sessions, and feed them into a GPT, and the bot will dole out tasks to your partners (lawyers, mortgage specialists, photographers etc.) team members, your buyers and sellers, and it can start emails, texts, create graphs etc., to present to your clients in real time. Generative AI was built for customer support and is in the palm of your hand. On-boarding new prospects, marketing automation and post writing is here and now, and writing code isn’t that far off either. To learn more, join our AI conference in September.Visit <a href="www.realestateinfluencers.com">www.realestateinfluencers.com</a> What Can We Learn About The National Association of Realtors Settlement? September 16th, 2024 is D-Day for property listings on MLS® systems to DELETE any offers of compensation to the co-operating realtor®. Traditionally, MLS®’s have had the commission offered to the co-op agent or the agent that brought the buyer to the home owner. As US consumers and realtor®’s enter this fall market, there will be a fundamental change in how the buyer representative will be compensated. 1000 WATT, a survey company dedicated to the real estate industry, conducted a consumer survey around the buyer agent compensation settlement, while T3 Sixty, a real estate consultancy firm, conducted an industry leader survey asking the same questions. Of note was the fact that 63% of consumers surveyed were not aware of anything to do with this commission issue, which gives our American colleagues in the industry an opportunity to educate consumers on the two sides of the commission. Both sets of respondents answered that technology has made the process much easier. Consumers felt they were more likely to seek out alternative service platforms going forward, while industry leaders were more likely to offer more market responsive compensation plans, with asking for a retainer from buyers being the most popular. Both consumers and the industry were aligned concerning the buyer agent’s role going forward and their value, however more transparent communication is needed. MREGA! Will this compensation issue come to Canada? Maybe in some form, but our industry and its licensing bodies have made transparency a cornerstone of our service offering. A similar class action suit has been certified here in Canada, and a settlement could be a few years away. This is where our opportunity lies, and it is beholden upon us as practitioners and industry leaders to formalize our service offering. AI will and can be a part of that. The two worlds of consumer protection and transparency are colliding with AI technology, which will allow us to accommodate our clients’ needs more responsively when they need us the most. I have never been more excited about the future of our industry and how we all can shape it going forward. We can MAKE REAL ESTATE GREAT AGAIN! In the spirit of transparency, I must reference MAGA.

Why Is The Real Estate Industry the Greatest Industry In The World?

Celebrating the achievements of our agents IN STYLE at our 2023 awards event on May 14 at Liuna Station. #remaxEN #unstoppablestartshere

RE/MAX EN 2023 Awards Celebration

Growing up in a disciplined Italian household, secrets were kept to the biter end. You see my parents did not really care which one of us broke something or attempted to murder the other, we would all somehow get disciplined, my sisters were at fault for not looking after me and I was blamed for provoking them. I remember one time we broke this vase which always sat on the lower mantel of our fireplace. It was an ugly black, white and orange glazed pottery piece, which looked like someone made it in their garage. One day my sisters and I were all arguing on what to watch on tv, which when I think about it now we only had 13 channels and 6 of which were Canadian programming so what choice did we really have? Once we decided what to watch, the next decision was who was going to get up and change the channel (also known as ‘turn’ the channel because it was a dial on the the actual tv, no remote). I believe I wasn’t moving fast enough so, being the youngest kid who didn’t warrant a seat on the couch, I sat on the floor beside the fireplace.As a result of many threats on my physical being by my sisters if I didn’t get up and turn the channel, my sister decided to throw a pillow off of the couch at me, I ducked and the pillow squarely hit the vase. It was rather tall and it wobbled around what seemed like forever and finally fell against the brick and onto the hard surface of the lower mantle and broke into 3 pieces. We were all mortified and knew that we would all be getting the blame no matter who caused the damage. That’s the way it worked in our home, my dad called it democratic punishment, it was his way of keeping us all in line.We commiserated over the broken vase for at least an hour until my sister Mari came up with the idea to glue it back together (something she had seen on The Brady Bunch). Obviously, it did not take my mom that much time to notice our handy work, (a remarkable job of reassembly, for a 5, 7 and 9 year old), so she innocently went to my dad to tell him about the broken vase, and how we glued it back near perfectly together. As a surprise to my mom and to us later in life, my dad shrugged it off and said how creative we were, but more importantly we operated as a team. It was our family’s worst kept secret. The Bank of Canada’s Worst Kept Secret - The June Rate DropThe Governor of the Bank of Canada recently at a press conference following the latest rate pause, announced that an interest rate drop was ‘within the realm of possibilities’. We have seen some great month-over- month inflation numbers (slightly up in March) which are well within the BOC target. The US on the other hand has had their inflation rate remain considerably more sticky. So when will the BOC depart from US monetary policy and go it alone (which will cause our dollar to lose value as investors move from lower interest Canada to higher Interest US)? All indicators point to June, as an ideal time when people begin their summer holidays and as many mortgages are set to renew at this time it would also lead to some relieving of mortgage rate stress for Canadians with variable mortgages. A Lower Loonie Ain’t So Bad in the Summer Months - Another Reason for a June Rate DropOur reliance on foreign produce in the summer months, purchased in US dollars, is lessened as we gravitate to more local fare thus not pushing up inflation as our dollar drops compared to the US dollar. Also a lower Canadian dollar can make our exports more attractive and fuel our GDP. A lower loonie will attract foreign travelers and give a boost to our tourism this summer too. Canada will need to reduce rates to prop up our faltering economy and the drop in value of our dollar may barely be noticed by the time the Fed rolls back rates in September. As a result of the fed cutting rates we will see our dollar rebound just in time to buy tomatoes from California in the fall. An Election in the Fall of 2024? - The Last Reason for a Rate Cut in JuneThere has always been a theory that the easing of monetary policy usually comes prior to an election. I can say with certainty that there is going to be an election south of our border on Tuesday, November 5th, 2024 (unless one candidate breaks a hip or the other is behind bars). But by my estimation Canadians are not scheduled to cast their vote in a federal election until October 2025. So rates coming down now would be pre-mature by election standards, or are they? There was a recent poll conducted by Nanos Research which found 46% of respondents wanted an election as soon as possible, with only 33% saying they would wait the full 4 years. Why Did The Government of Canada Deliver a Santa Clause Budget For Millennials.When have you ever experienced a high profile, dishing out money budget like we just had? Normally a Santa Claus Budget so to speak is prior to an election. By my calculation, this election style budget is 18 months too soon, so why now? Could something be happening behind the scenes to the coalition agreement between the Liberals and the NDP? This is a wild card speculation on my part but this recent budget which was focused on millennials which represent 25% of our population and an even larger voting block, coupled with a rate cut could mean leverage for the governing party and in turn an early election. Or are they just trying to win back some attention from those who seem to have tuned out the Liberal Leader as Mark Carney waits in the wings. Using the Capital Gain Tax to Pay for GiftsBack during the 2021 federal election there was speculation about potential changes to the capital gains tax. When governments begin to dial into reducing the deficit, the pot of tax gold is usually capital gains. There was speculation that our principal residences would not be exempt and the fact that we now have a spot on our income tax return where we must note the sale of our principal residence and claim the exemption made many of us think that the only way we as Canadians can build un-taxed wealth was in jeopardy. Instead, it came as no surprise to the accounting community that would brace themselves at every new budget, for a capital gains announcement. And sure enough the wealth re-distribution plank came through, which according to our finance minister only affects just over 1% of Canadians or 400,000 people. June 25th - 6 Months Away From The Holiday SeasonIn an unprecedented move the Canadian government decided to give usa short lead time before a tax increase but they chose the month of June maybe to soften it with good news around a rate cut. Usually when a taxis introduced it would either be retroactive, immediate or commencing on January 1st. In this case they gave us until Tuesday June 25th, not the end of the month, not the beginning of the month, but on the 25th of a month which, for accounting purposes is very weird. I predict a flurry of amendments moving up the closing date of June 28th for the sale of investment properties, cottages and businesses. Why do you think they picked June 25th, exactly 6 months before Christmas? Why not July 1st Canada Day? It would have been very patriotic to celebrate all that is Canadian - beer, poutine and taxes! The TSX Already Knows the SecretRecently the US reported marginally higher inflation numbers along with lower than expected GDP growth numbers for the first quarter of the year. Both the US and Canadian stock markets dropped, with the Canadian market closing higher by end of the day that the US GDP numbers were reported. The US is feeling economic pressure, inflation is slightly higher and unemployment numbers point to a tighter job market conditions. However, if the growth trend continues to weaken what is the US Federal Reserve’s next move? Rate cuts dare I say? Tiff may now be able to sleep at night after he brings rates down in June knowing his US counterpart will have to start easing on monetary policy and follow Canada’s lead and begin to drop rates in September to fuel the US economy. It’s Not A Matter of If......But When?No matter how you look at all this economic data, many of our customers past, present and future are dialled-in to what is happening around mortgage rates and the overall economy. Without question, three quarters of 2022 and the whole of 2023 were historically down years for real estate unit sales. Those people who entered the market during that 21 month period of record high mortgage rates did so because they wanted and needed to. Now we are entering an era where rates will go the other way and confidence/demand in real estate will go back to within the 10 year average. Remember back in Q4 of 2023 there was talk of rates dropping as early as March of 2024 (the US Federal Reserve spoke of 3 rate drops in 2024). That information really moved the market in the early months of 2024 because people got off the sidelines and got into the market. When all that rate uphoria didn’t come to fruition those who chose to enter the market were too far into the process.The consumer train had left the station and people began to look at properties again. They couldn’t unsee the value they were getting for their real estate dollar and they didn’t stop seeing the flaws in their existing homes or the need for more space. In other words, we as professionals in the market should have our ear to the proverbial ground, always do your homework, gage consumer confidence, interpret statistics and educate your tribes as to the trends that may be forming. Be in tune with the market around you and the overarching economic conditions which surround us. By doing so you will provide your clients with the knowledge and expertise which will allow them to make the best decision for themselves, their families and their businesses. Why This Is ImportantDespite the rates remember the fundamentals of real estate as a wealth builder• According to CMHC home prices could reach peak levels of late 2021 and early 2022 by next year• Demographic demand for housing is double housing starts.*• Rental vacancy rates are 1.5% in Canada.*• Rental rates increased by 8% in Canada in 2023.*• Apartment style construction takes 32.6 months in Ontario, up from 29.5 months during same period last year.*• Construction costs are up 80% from 2017, way outpacing construction.**• The sell rate for those aged 75 to 79 is 21% and trending downward.**CMHC**Globe and Mail, source Statistics Canada

The Worst Kept Secret

I travel a fair bit and I’m baffled by the lack of technology which could make the experience that much better. Imagine a world where you enter the airport and an app would geolocate you and welcome you to the airport and tell you to turn right or left to check-in. It would know if you are a ‘known traveller’ because it would have your entire travel history and access to your Nexus/ passport information. As a mater of fact, you would earn points for how quickly you go through security and there would be a separate line for you, with less staff like at self checkout. There would be a line for novice travellers, families with small children, elderly, etc., with more attendants to help. Once through security the app would say, “you have plenty of time to get to your gate, would you like to do some shopping or have a meal? What do you feel like?” It would serve you a list and locations of where you can get a pizza or Starbucks along with the restaurants ratings. The app would give you a polite nudge that your plane is boarding in 30 minutes, with a countdown of the time, and how long it takes to walk to your gate. When you get to your gate instead of those announcements that no one can understand, the app would tell you when your group is being called. I recently was on a flight to Argentina and because I booked last minute with an airline I had no status with, I was at the front of the plane, very close to the serving area. It was evident by the banter in the serving area that there was one particular steward named Karen (the name says it all) who seemed to be the busy body of the group. She made her displeasure known if you had to use the restroom minutes before takeoff. What I always find remarkable is the lack of awareness stewards have when they are in their domain (the servery) and we so obviously have to pass through the servery to get to the bathroom. It’s unnerving how they all remain congregated deep in a conversation about how much they hate the passengers. It’s uncomfortable and you feel odd interrupting their conversation to get them to move out of your way, then they leer at you like ‘what’s your problem? Why didn’t you use the bathroom before you got on the plane?’ Karen’s task on this flight was to get the entree orders, to which she did with great intention. The airlines all have this perk, so to speak, for customers with status. They usually have a few entrees to choose from so the stewards go up and down the aisle criss-crossing with a piece of paper that was printed on a dot matrix printer, with all of our names and our level of status, or lack thereof, and the ones with the greatest status get their choice first. It is weird when everyone around you gets asked their choice except you (Karen passed me by at least 6 times to go to the other side of the plane). It was like I was invisible. I even waived her down while she was passing to give her my choice, to which she replied with the sternest of voices, “it’s not your turn yet!” So you can imagine I was the very last to order my entree, I think even a dead head pilot got to order before me. By the time she would make her way to me I knew I would be getting either baked turbot with a celery purée or the vegetarian tortellini stuffed with sweet potato in a tomato ginger sauce - the least appetizing and the ones no one else wanted.I kept looking at Karen with angst because I knew the chicken dish I wanted was going to be a sell out. Sure enough Karen came to me to ask for my choice, and with a satisfying grin she said, we ran out of that and we ran out of your second choice too!! I could see her mind working, “Why don’t you stop being such a promiscuous traveller and be loyal to one airline. Then you would get your choice!” Where I feel the airline totally missed the mark, not only with me (a potential frequent flyer member), but with the other passengers as well - they should do away with the piece of paper and replace it with an iPad. As the iPad is at the front of the row, all the peoples names and photos should auto populate the seat map. Information about the passenger’s last flight and their status should pop up. A dialogue could go like this, “Mr. Zurini, how was your last flight to London with us? You ordered the beef last time, how was it? Do you want something different this time?“ They would enter it on an iPad in real time to a central database, this information could provide them with a whole slew of data points. The flyer would in turn feel that they aren’t just a number and that they are truly a valued customer. Also, they never give you insight into what the meals are like, they just plunk them down and run away. How do you fix this in the current environment? For starters, passengers should be chosing their meals when they check-in, or maybe they should sit all the status people together so that they can gawk at us non-status people (kidding). Maybe they do it because they want us non-status people to feel bad, and this is how they showcase a differentiated experience. But is it really??!!Hmmmmm, a differentiated experience? Unlike a real-time visual group experience like being on a plane, social media is the vehicle by which we showcase what we do when it comes to our customer’s journey. Our consumers can watch videos, see posts in real time on how we market our listings, how we acknowledge our clients and how we build relationships. What is uncanny to me is that all of this content is the same. It’s like we as Realtors think that only we have the privilege of seeing this content, not our clients. But that isn’t true, they see it as well. So the question remains, is it that we see other Realtors doing something and we duplicate it because we think that’s what our clients want too or do our clients see what our competitors do and they demand the same from us? Case in point - do our customers see other buyer’s photos on instagram beside a sold sign and they want the same thing? Are we copying client appreciation events from each other because we think it’s a good idea or do our clients suffer FOMO and want the same type of event but from you? Do our client’s demand we do that fast paced video tour of their home or do we think it’s cool. When was the last time you asked your client what they want and what they would like to see when it comes to presenting their home? It’s time to dig deeper to differentiate yourself and your marketing. Selling a two bedroom bungalow with techno music in the background and fast paced clips may not play to a senior audience.I get it, we are all trying to get our fair share of the consumer’s attention and we want to showcase the whole property in 90 seconds. Is that really doing it justice? Let’s be frank, unless you listed the White House with the Lincoln bedroom, secondary bedrooms are not going to wow anyone. So why do we have to do these compressed videos showing the two piece bathroom with a corner of the counter top? When you look at fashion advertising it is usually a single outfit or a great bag. Why don’t brands put photos of the entire line in an instagram ad or in a magazine? Not everything is going to grab your attention! A clothing line has basics which are not going to evoke an emotion. Have you ever seen a 2 page spread in a magazine of a wallet??? So why are we wasting precious attention grabbing time on a secondary bedroom or a laundry room or a 2 piece bath for that matter, unless it was Drake’s bathroom which is pretty spectacular! The Lost Art of a Great NewsletterThe cool thing about a newsletter is it stays within your tribe and it can be more personal and far more comprehensive than a social media post, and they are re-rising in popularity. But, they have to be really cleaver and to the point. It should be peppered with personal candid photos of your clients, gifs/memes, personal news about you and your team (your team can also include your real estate service partners) and your clients. It should showcase a client who works or owns a business which is in your trading area that you can highlight/promote. There should be easy to read graphs, well explained statistics and market trends which you can present using short form videos. It is a great way to spread the word about you, your service style, your knowledge and expertise. Stop showing everything you do in social media - it’s not the ONLY way to reach your tribe and often it’s not even the best way. The Makings of a Great Newsletter1. Come up with a really cool name which captures your culture and the essence of how you operate. Here are some titles from my AI assistant: Realty Rundown, Home Highlights, Property Pulse, Realty Review, Home Horizons, Market Movers, Property Perspective, Living Lowdown, Dwelling Digest, Market Metrics, Realty Recap. 2. Don’t waste yours or your reader’s time. Make it really easy to put together, edit and curate content. Also be consistent with your wording. Most people can read between 250 and 300 words a minute so make sure its not a 1,000 word essay you did in high school to achieve the assignment’s word count. 3. Your first headline should be click bait quality. “Your Neighbourhood is Headed for a Boom: The Numbers You Just Cannot Ignore!” 4. Make it really eye catching but don’t overthink fonts, colours and layout, these can evolve over time. It shouldn’t be a word, graph and photo vomit. Number the sections and label them with clear titles. Make sure your thumbnail image really is relevant. Just around 200 words per section is perfect, embed links to allow your keener followers to go further. 5. It must be mobile ready if you want it to be read and consumed with ease. Embed some analytics (heat mapping) in it, so you can gather intel into what is being most viewed or shared. Realintro is a great platform for an e-newsletter which has all of this functionality within it already. 6. This newsletter could be weekly or monthly and can be the impetus to a final yearbook which you can put together and mail a hard copy with a hand written note inside for all of your sphere of influence. Stop the Copy and Paste StatisticsIf I see another so called market update with real estate board statistics, or a social post saying “Bank of Canada holds rates”, without some sort of context, my head will explode!!!!! Without context you are wasting your time, it is important to explain why this data, or this announcement matters to your buyers and sellers. And more importantly, how it affects them positively or negatively, or not at all. It is time you offer your tribe personalized reports, you should incorporate more targeted information using various statistics and ask if your prospect/past client wants a deeper dive into more specific data that affects them directly. Break down complex data with step by step visuals, create comparison (Dare-to-Compare) maps which showcase what is happening geographically from area to area you serve. Use comparative metrics on a national, provincial, regional, municipal and neighbourhood level. I never met a line graph I did not like when it comes to visualizing and demonstrating a trend, make notes right on the graph, create videos incorporating real number examples not just percentages. The best way to explain numbers/statistics is by incorporating them in a relatable story, avoid industry jargon and remember to update a video or post when something dynamic happens, create a glossary of terms, and hyperlink those terms whenever you use them in a post/blog/email/newsletter. And remember to follow-up, and get feedback on information you are sharing, ask if they know someone else who could benefit from the same kind of information. Don’t forget to always offer the personalized deeper dive into the numbers/statistics, and how they directly affect the individuals in your sphere. How Does Your Tribe Consistently See What You Are up To? The stuff you create isn’t always getting consumed by the people you are trying to reach. You would nearly have to like and comment on everyone in your sphere of influence 5 times daily on all their social channels to ensure they are consuming your content. Why are we not creating marketing that is constantly being absorbed by the people who matter in our business. It’s time you take a direct approach to distributing valuable content, text, email, newsletters, phone calls and addressed mail to name a few. Take charge and give your past, current and future clients an experience which is customized to them, which is valuable, relatable, contextual, current, thoughtful.

Why are we Failing the People we Serve!

We recently updated our core values to reflect our commitment to our success, but more importantly to create a positive impact on our agents, our staff, our customers and the communities we serve. We have made a conscious effort to update our values (3 times in 12 years) to reflect what is happening in the broader market, changes in the way people interact and to embody our company’s strategies going forward. Blah, blah, blah......you might be thinking. When I survey major company’s websites, I often don’t find their core values or guiding principles clearly displayed so are these just words on a page or a dusty plaque in the back of some marketing department? I have a real affection for the written word. When I read something or hear something cleaver, I always take note because someone or somebody came up with that collection of words. I often think, what was the impetus to their word selection and phraseology? I have always been fascinated with success stories, so late last year I watched the movie Air, the story about how Nike and a tight knit group of executives forever changed sports marketing and how elite athletes get remunerated for their image endorsement. As I was doing my research for this blog, I asked various people if they had seen the movie. So many said yes they had and how Micheal Jordan was their hero, and how he changed the game of basketball forever, and that Viola Davis was amazing in the role of his mom. There was some disappointment that ‘the great one” (I know that’s Wayne Gretzky) wasn't really a character in the movie which was about him, or was it? Who would play Michael Jordan anyway? Tough shoes (forgive the pun) to fill. I think the star of this movie was the written word, not the script (which was good), but the actual written words which make important cameos throughout. What? You don’t remember words on the screen? You are NIKE’Snot alone! Most people I asked did not remember any words either. They remember that Matt Damon had a dad bod in the film, but they did not recall words. Even when I mentioned that these words were on white paper and the text was original typewriter font, known as courier typeface, still I got blank stares. Then I asked ChatGPT to identify the written statements on white pieces of paper in courier typeface and their significance in the movie. ChatGPT’s response was “I couldn’t find specific details about what appears on white pieces of paper in the movie ‘Air’.  The available information focuses on the general plot and themes of the movie......”. it went on to say that for intricate details like these watching the movie might provide the answers you are looking for. Why the ‘f’ didn’t I think of that???? (Human capacity ‘1’ Artificial intelligence ‘0’) So I watched the movie again and sure enough the star of the film showed up at five minutes 25 seconds, the 10 Nike Principles, with #9 getting the spotlight, “It won’t be pretty”. Throughout the film the star steals scenes and sets up the next one. The most profound scene is at the end where the Nike founder is lying on his couch doing a forgiveness meditation for himself as he unwinds the decision he made. The camera pans back and above him, framed on the wall and bigger than life, are the Nike principles which have guided him through this unorthodox decision he made. Phil Knight asks, “what is the most money we have made on a single shoe line? $3 Million? That’s not bad” he whispers. Well that first year Nike made $162 million on Air Jordan and it is reported that Michael Jordan averaged $400 million a year in revenue share. The year that deal was struck Nike had 17% market share, Adidas had 29%, and Converse 54%, and ironically Nike bought converse for $305 million in 2003. Do you think if Nike principle #10 did not exist, (If we do the right things we’ll make money damn near automatic) that Phil Knight would have made that momentous decision? As a result of this movie, I was inspired to makeover our guiding principles and/or our core values, so at the end of 2023 our leadership team and I created our next generation of core values, which have been replaced in all of our office locations. These values promise not to be just static words on a page. We are working on making them come alive in everything we do, they will be at the core of all of our decisions, they will echo our rhythm (how we do things) and continue to shape culture. The Power of Core Values When was the last time you looked at your core values? Do they have relevance, are they easily articulated, do they have meaning to your customers, your team, and your fellow colleagues? Do you even have core values/principles? We all talk a good talk when it comes to our mission, values, and vision, but are they a living breathing document? Or are they just words on a page, or a plaque on the wall, or a piece of paper in a file at the bottom of your desk drawer. Some entrepreneurs go through the exercise MVV (Mission, Vision, Values), so that they can check it off a proverbial list but, it is something integral to your brand promise, and how the internal and the external world interacts and engages with you. The Story You Tell Day in and Day Out If someone were to read your social media posts, your newsletter (if you have one), your emails, your texts, your extra remarks on your listings, view your videos, watch your weekly vlog (ya right), etc, would they be able to have a clear understanding what you and your business stand for?  Would they appreciate what you are accomplishing, or what you are thinking when it comes to them (your client), or how you organize your business? Are you strategic or haphazard? The content you put out into the universe should be the building blocks of your brand. If these blocks are made of wood one day, straw the next, and stone the week after, what does that tell your consumer base about you? Keeping and maintaining someone’s interest is a difficult gig on the best of days, and yes, our everyday existence can be a bunch of white noise but, if you stay true to your core values your message will become familiar and so will you as a professional in your field. It is important to break through your own white noise, by creating attention grabbers. Oprah Winfrey was the master of that, she competed with other daytime talk shows and often the topics were similar but her break through, I believe, was Oprah’s Favourite Things - she was the very first influencer! This elevated Oprah above her competition, it was something that was her OWN, and of course her audience stood up and took notice. What was even more remarkable was the fact that those who weren’t her die hard fans took notice of this list as well. Why Your Communication Rhythm Really Matters The magic really happens when you start seeing those around you adopt your rhythm. Think of Beyoncé’s new song Texas Hold ‘Em - nothing extraordinary from a lyric perspective but the rhythm is the star of this show. It has exploded on social media and a new line dance was born in 48hours. Think of all those posts which will feature her song and will command a place in our day. This is the extreme, but apply it to you and your tribe and how your tribe will respond to your posts with the same cadence as yours. How they will communicate to their tribes and be able to refer you to their friends and family, with the same rhythm you put out there. I have always said the best review you can get from your clients is, “So-and-So really got me/us, they really understood where we were coming from and anticipated our stresses/needs/wishes before we had them”. 5 star!!!!! So, don’t just create your core values and set them aside. Post them offline and online, where you, perhaps your team, and your clients can see them all the time. Model your business systems, social media strategies and client interactions with your core values/guiding principles in mind. Let them guide the decisions you are struggling to make in your business. Unsure if you should invest in a new technology or revamp your systems or put on a client event? Look to your values for the answer - it could be the Air Jordan of your business, which could be the trajectory you have been looking for.

Is There Value In Your Core Values

Lessons from my First Real Estate Conference of 2024

The words of the year just came out last month, by the acclaimed word wizards of the Oxford Dictionary, Mirriam-Webster, and Dictionary.com. What is remarkable to me is that the words of a particular year really do not spill over into the next year. How can something so important as language, which we use every day, not seem to infiltrate our discussions in the next year, after those words had so much influence in the year prior. Maybe words suffer over exposure like celebrities - Payton Manning, Kevin Hart, or Ryan Reynolds…dare I even say Taylor Swift?What were the words of 2022 anyway? Teal, homer, permacrisis, woman, gaslighting and (aside from woman) I do not think I used any of those words this year. As far as this year’s words go, dictionary.com’s word of the year was ‘hallucinate’ (something I do when I have a high fever), or in this case a nod to artificial intelligence and the production of false information. Isn’t that fake news? No, that was 2021’s word of the year. Mirriam-Webster’s word is ‘authentic’, another nod to AI, and the notion of deep fakes infiltrating our lives…sounds like a nod to politics in North America. Lastly, do not forget the word snobs at Oxford, their word was a non-word, it was ‘rizz’, which I was afraid to look up the meaning (enough from you Seinfeld fans, I know what you were thinking), however it is a nod to Gen Z and their own language, it’s a term to denote style, charm, and attractiveness. One can only hope to obtain this moniker at least once in 2024!!!Conrad’s predictions of the words and or phrases we will be using in Real Estate in 2024.Interest Rate ‘Rollbacks’ Thank you Walmart for bringing the word rollback to such prominence, this word or some facsimile of the word will be something we will hear next year. That will be music to the Canadian and US consumer’s ears. However, as far as I am concerned, I find that Jerome (Jay) Powell has way more ‘rizz’, when it comes to mortgage announcements - in the world of financial dating our Bank of Canada Governor, Tiffany (Tiff) Macklem is a serious swipe left!!!!!! I am getting tired of Tiff’s constantly scolding us as Canadians by saying, “It’s still too early to consider cutting our policy rate”, “Until we see evidence that we are clearly on a path back to 2% inflation.” Why can’t Tiff be more ‘authentic’ like Jay, when he said it is “not likely” that we will be raising rates, and lets begin to focus on “the question of when will it become appropriate to begin dialing back the amount of policy restraint in place.” He went further on to say that they may be looking at 3 rate decreases in the coming year!!!Halleluia!!!! Powell really gets the consumer and the need for transparency and trust, a big swipe right!!!! I dare say that the BOC is in lockstep with the US Fed, and I believe Mr. Macklem is ‘hallucinating’ if he thinks we won’t follow the Fed as they rollback or dial back rates in the coming year. Joint OwnershipIf affordability was the word of 2023 in the housing market, then joint ownership will command a spot in 2024, as consumers get more strategic about entering the market.  ‘Variable-Rate’ Mortgages are Cool AgainThe rise of the variable rate mortgage as we enter the climate of rolling back rates in Canada, will prove to be a smart strategy if your mortgage is up for renewal in the coming year. Three consecutive rate pauses by the Bank of Canada is a charm, and should lead to rate cuts in 2024, maybe as early as the end of Q1 or the beginning of spring. Renewalpocalypse or Renewalageddon If the jump in the stock market is correct about long term rates coming down, and the fact that bond yields in the US and Canada are dropping, it looks like we may avoid that mortgage renewal shock after all. As a result, if you have to renew your mortgage this year, you can re-calculate your renewal at a lower rate, as rates retreat. A one percentage point drop-in current rates on a $500,000.00 mortgage, would save nearly $25,000.00 in interest over a five-year term.When you factor in how wages went up 3 to 5 percent over the same period, renewalageddon may be averted. Furthermore, those who had 5-year fixed mortgage in 2019, around 3 to 3.5%, could be looking at 4.5% in 2024, but their new mortgage amount would be down over $70,000 at $428,674.00 and the new monthly payment will be $2,374.40 from $2,366.23. Bad news for the sharks waiting on the sidelines for sellers to be offloading their homes in 2024.  Open BiddingWhen the Real Estate Council of Ontario introduced ‘open bidding’ as a part of the new Trust in Real Estate Services Act, many of us in the real estate industry thought ‘when will we ever see using this in a market where homes are lingering on the market, and months of supply are at over 4 months’. Well, as rates take a rollback position, we may see more buyers entering the market. As supply decreases, we could find ourselves in that heated market (particularly at the lower price points) just in time to offer this new tool for consumers. ‘Private Lending’With the tightening of lending policies at the five major banks, many businesses have turned to non-bank lenders or private lenders. Of the $1.4 trillion in corporate loans insured in Canada in the third quarter, 40% came from alternative lenders. That says a lot, and this trend has found its way to consumer mortgages, smart money uses private, less-hassle and more flexible money, to be strategic, stabilize their circumstances, and move ahead.‘Rise in’ - Home Sales, Consumer debt, DelinquenciesMonth-over-month home sales have been erratic to say the least and year-over-year declines have made the headlines. 2024 will see these numbers reversed, unit sales will ‘rise’ as more optimism enters the market, and people cannot stand still forever. But there will be the other side of this story as the aftermath of a tight monetary policy of higher and higher rates comes to fruition. The credit -rating agency Equifax, recently reported that credit card balances have risen well above pre-pandemic levels, and the amount of Canadians who made the minimum payment also rose in Q3. It’s a strong indication that consumers are using credit to get by, as our household debt rose to $1.82 for every $1.00 we take in. Furthermore, it takes Canadians 15 cents of every dollar we take in to pay down debt.‘Cookie-Cutter Houses’  The federal government went way back for this one, back in 1944 Canada experienced a housing crisis of epic proportions, they set out to build well over 700,000 homes in ten years. Canada Mortgage and Housing’s predecessor came up with a catalogue of homes known as “Victory Houses” (post wartime homes) or “Strawberry Houses”, due to the fact the rectangular foundations were like boxes which held strawberries. This shining example of innovative architecture came with a descriptor of ‘affordable’ and ‘humble’, great labels. I loved watching the press conference when the federal housing minister, Sean Fraser proudly flipped through the old catalogue which had been out of print since the 1970’s. Are these guys kidding me!!!!! Much more goes into this than books full of pretty houses, planning, servicing, infrastructure, building trades shortage, cost of land, red tape, nimbyism, etc.Solving Canada’s ‘Housing Crisis’Wait a minute...’housing crisis’? That was a 2023 word. So much has been said and written about this topic. Our Ontario government flip flopped on their strategy of opening up more land to develop and we all know how that turned out. Can we please allow private and public partnerships to solve this one? The only thing we want from the government is resources and tax incentives to encourage/facilitate housing by the private sector, and the not-for-profit sector to garner investment to build more housing. 5 Words to be Resolute About in 2024Without question 2024 will be filled with opportunity and challenge, factors which will be out of our control, and some solidly within our grasp. The BOC might get nervous about inflation (November 2023 inflation held at 3.1%) and pause on rates instead of rolling them back, variable rates could come down in Q1 or Q2, and set the market on a whole new path. Open bidding may become common place, or a mere flash in the pan. Whatever we’re in store for, it would be those who focus on controlling the controllable who will win the day. So, if you are looking for inspiration to base your 2024 strategic plan around, I have assembled 5 words (phrases) to get you started. Be faithful to your intuition but make decisions after gathering all of the facts. Create a plan and be loyal to it every day.  Change is a constant in our lives and remember to embrace it with an open mind.  Always be steadfast when it comes to your goalsLife-long learning should be one of your most valuable guiding principles.

What Will be the Words/Phrases of 2024?

The Cat's World that is the Real Estate Market in Canada

If I told you November was one of my favourite months would you believe me? It may not be my favourite month, but I will say it seems like it is the fastest month. I’m not sure why that is - is it because of the holiday season in December, and we try so hard to pack so much into the month of November? It’s like December comes and workflows fall off a cliff, and we get into the ‘season’ so to speak. November is my month to plan for the next year and that is exciting for me, but this November is more than just planning for the next year. It is the time to re-think, re-jig, and re-write our business. What? Why now? What is sopivotal about 2024?Next year denotes a theme of promise for me. The last 4 years have been a roller coaster of events that dramatically shaped our lives and our businesses. Some for the better and some for the worse. I dare say that most of our uncertainties are behind us. Yes, there are some major events happening on a geopolitical level which we have no control over, but when it comes to our businesses and creating efficiencies and wonder, we are entering an era which was only imagined a short time ago.I recently attended a technology conference (T360 Tech) in Fort Worth Texas. The keynote was Luke Williams who has forever changed my perspective. His live demonstrations which appeared to be simple and generic, re-calibrated my brain. He spoke to me on a level which opened up a pathway for me intellectually. Luke also used an analogy, which if you know me is near and dear to my heart....cooking. I love to prepare a meal; I enjoy the chemistry of it; I love the creativity of it; I love to put my own twist on it; I love planning it; I love the logistics of putting on a meal, but more importantly it is the way I show my love for the people around me.The Real Estate Industry Has New Ingredients Williams described the world of ideas around abundance. If I had to describe Luke, he’s is definitely not glass half empty, not glass half full, but he is the cup is overflowing. A successful business is all ‘about better recipes’. Two things he pointed out was that growth will come from better recipes. And we, as humans, like watching other people cook. Your revenue model, your brand, your resources.These are all the ingredients. What you do with these ingredients is the magic so to speak...... Back in May I attended a wedding in the Amalfi Coast, and I discovered a Michelin star restaurant in Amalfi called La Caravella (translation - the sailing vessel, made famous by Andy Warhol). I had the tasting menu, and the owner/chef Antonio Dipino, took me on a culinary journey with every course. He recreated a dish which was a deconstructed bruschetta, which his mother created in 1967, and was awarded the first Michelin star for a female chef in Italy. We all know what bruschetta looks like, it’s probably second to the pizza as one of the most recognized snack foods in Italian cuisine. But she created a most elegant dish, with all the ingredients re-arranged, and elevated the dish, as if she was creating a work of art.Our interpretations go through a frame of reference - a crusty slice of bread with chopped tomato and cheese. Our frame of reference tells us what to look for, so when someone re-arranges something that comes out completely differently we see it at another level so to speak. Most ideas are incremental and often follow a pattern, but have you ever thought of writing your ideas down on cue cards, placing them in a bag, and shaking them up and pulling them out randomly? Now place these cards in some sort of sequence or pattern, like you would with scrabble tiles. Like with scrabble you will probably, through luck or coincidence, begin to fashion (a word) a sequence of ideas which can be formulated into a system, but eventually you will draw out a ‘Q’ or a ‘Z’ and your linear sequence will be ruined. This exercise forces us to ‘think out of the box’, and reshuffle the deck, and begin to reconstruct your business.We Need to Avoid Becoming Blockbuster and Kodak Williams points out that we are quick to poke fun at companies like Blockbuster and Kodak, by saying “did they not see their demise coming?” We are so brilliant in hindsight, but the leadership at these two iconic companies were looking at information (data),in the framework of an old idea. If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything around you looks like a nail. This is known as the dominant frame, and the dominant frame is the silent killer to all of us in business. Most whiteboard ideas are incremental ideas, they tend to track with your previous experience or success, and inevitably those ideas are the ones you go with.More ingredients are making their way to our industry every day, and it is up to us to integrate these ingredients into an entirely new recipe.Many of you reading this blog might ask, what has changed that has made Conrad so hung up on this need to re-create our business model? As far as I can see there are two galaxies colliding - one, the class action suits in North America around publishingthe co-operating commission and the other around the rise of AI. Our industry was alway about adding things to our existing model/arrangement, and the notion of this galactic collision will have a seismic result on the current way we operate.The Wonderful World Of AI I believe this is the only time in tech history where we can be asked, “what do you want to be better?” What do you want to be better in all of your aspects of your life, work, and play? There are 52,000 companies doing AI. They will touch almost every aspect of our lives. Remember we used to say “there’s an app for that”? Well, now there is AI for that!!!!Let’s examine one real estate agent pain point. Like lead nurture, there are smart CRM’s which will segment your database and communicate to each person when they want to be communicated to, and how they want to be communicated with, and more importantly, the precise moment that your communication will have the most impact. It will bring your sphere back in front of you over and over, and prompt you to precisely step in when their life moments lead to a real estate transaction. It will be infinitely scalable, and search out other potential prospects who are sharing similar mindsets and milestones. And it is getting so good, according to Ylopo’s founder, Howard Tager during a presentation on his chat bot platform, that “less than a quarter of 1 percent ask if it’s a bot.”AI can create software from a screenshot. Can you imagine what it could do with home search? Upload an exterior photo of a home you like, or a kitchen design you are planning to do to a home search platform, and AI will serve you up listings that match. Generative AI, which is a series of models and algorithms from vast amounts of data, will rank properties by their condition, and create property scores to encourage REALTORS® and their clients to perform proactive activities (buying, selling, offering). With all of this in the palm of your hand, these efficiencies will enable us as real estate practitioners to foster better human relationships.The Real Estate Sky is not Falling So why not get in front of this? As a self proclaimed futurist I cannot sit back and watch without putting forth my opinion. This is not a piece about the sky is falling. We are a traditional business that is decades old, and change is a-comin’. On January 1st, 2024the Manhattan Association of REALTORS® (MLSManhattan.com) has decided to proactively, after 2 years of so called discussions, stop publishing the compensation for the buyer representative. Something that has been a cornerstone of Multiple Listing Services (MLS®) for well over a century. We are a complex, yet adaptive business, and on December 1st, 2023, Ontario is adopting TRESA, the Trust in Real Estate Services Act, which is an update to an act which was created in 2002. There are 2 major changes asI see it: (1) the ability to present open offers, and (2) the clear definition of an unrepresented party (buyer). This will change the way we talk, the way we think, and the way we serve our clients. This is your opportunity to throw out your old ideas and embrace new ones to create a better customer experience and reduce their uncertainty.The Future Of Real Estate Is Bright Bad news alert - Artificial Intelligence won’t do the thinking foryou. What it will do is augment your skills. Kind of good news! AI will not replace what you do, but those who adopt AI will replace those who do not. Our old playbook has become obsolete, and we can’t make progress by simply moving forward, and adding tools and services in a linear fashion. We have to break up the original arrangement. Like a traditional recipe (bruschetta) you are locking down ingredients, and arranging them in a recognizable format. Now we must pull the ingredients apart, and re-arrange them ina way that improves your client’s experience, by increasing your client’s confidence in you as their REALTOR®, and in the real estate market as a whole.If you are not out there distributing great content, be it by videoor some other medium, and if you do not have an incredible on- boarding system for client acquisition, then it may be too late. It is not about the access to AI to help generate content, or nurture your prospects, and your client base, AI has that covered. You need to perfect that last mile where human interaction is paramount by pricing properties with precision, by creating a bespoke marketing plan, and by negotiating a sale price which satisfies all facets of human behaviours and needs.

It's Time to Change the Context of Real Estate

This year I had the pleasure of doing some extensive travel. I started in January with trips to Vancouver and New York City. Then off to Palm Beach, Las Vegas, Athens, Naples Florida, Istanbul, Naples Italy then London and Paris. I still have Fort Worth, and will finish the year in Sonoma. All of my travel was work related, where I attended conferences, presented our brokerage story, and exchanged ideaswith industry leaders throughout the world. I do love the opportunities I get from being part of a Strong Global Brand. The market insight I have been able to gather byspeaking with REALTORS® all over the globe, and what you can purchase in their respective countries (for instance waterfront - oceanfront properties mainly), compared towhat we pay back in Canada, made me reflect on our market values within a global context. The world may be small but when it comes to how far our Canadian Dollar goes, well that’s another story. I researched many different currency lists, which had a variety of methods of analysis and no matter which list I checked, Canada always fell short of the top 10 currencies. Kuwaiti Dinar was always the clear #1; the British Pound was always 5th or 6th; the Euro and the US dollar were 9th and 10th, and Canada always missed the top 10, ranking at 11th or 12th depending on the list, methodology, and time of year. Our dollar seems to go shorter compared to other currencies when we travel, but it also goes shorter when we are home buying or renting a property.....why is that? Are Canadians Really Getting Ahead? Statistics Canada recently reported that our debt compared to how much we earn fell in Q2 of 2023. We saw disposable income outperform debt, while demand for mortgages subsided. So we as Canadians wiped out just nearly 4 cents of debt in approximately 90 days. In Q1, Canadians carried $1.84 of debt for every dollar we earned, and by Q2 it was just over $1.80. But when you look at growth in real estate in Canada for the last 6 months, (particularly if you bought a 2 storey home in January/February), the aggregateincrease across Canada was +5.5% (Ontario +5.3%). Let me get this straight, our debt levels retracted by 2%, while Canadians missed out on a nearly 6% return if they would have gotten into the real estate market at the beginning of this year? Not to mention that if they acquired in British Columbia they would be up nearly 10%. “Are we poor?” View the GIF here. International Home Price Index (HPI) and How Does Canada Compare? HPI measures the prices of residential properties over time. These indices are very important for individuals and households all over the world, and are particularly important to economic policy makers (the BOCand the Federal Reserve). Iwas able to track down a dataset which covers OECD (Organisation for EcomonicCo-operation and Development) member countries, and some non-member countries (stats.oecd.org). This source contains information on real house prices, rental prices coupled with household income per capital. As of Q1 of 2023 Canada ranked 4th most expensive, and in Q4 of 2019 we ranked 15th. Our index ranked above France, Japan, the UK, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Switzerland!!!!! What?! Recently, according to Bloomberg, it was reported that Zurich just blew past London and Paris as the most expensive real estate in Europe. What Do Investors Know That We Don’t? The Bank of Canada just released Q1 buyer composition the other day, and when you compare it with the first quarter of 2020, it reveals something very interesting about the mindset of the Canadian home buyer. Back in January to March 2020, we were clearly in an uncertain market as Covid-19 was upon us. First-time buyers lead the market with 48% of the buying public; repeat buyers represented 30%, and investors were in third place at 22%. It seems that even with the prospect of cheap money, investors were jittery. Fast forward to the first quarter of 2023, where investors now 30%, surpassed repeat buyers (27.5%). First-time buyers dropped 5 percentage points to 43%. With rising rates already a thing, what made investors so confident in the market. They are income driven, and as rates were climbing, they had a tougher time justifying entering the market. How is it that first-time buyers backed off when prices were at a low point, and rates looked like they were stabilizing? First-time buyers can weather the storm better than investors. They can be strategic about the term of their mortgage, budget their expenses, and as long as they have a steady employment, they will be able to carry their mortgages and eventually realize capital gains tax free.A strategy which is emerging as a result of constraints put on buyers as a result of the current rates and increasein housing sale prices is co-ownership. Co-ownership amounts to 6% of the market (according to a recent RLP study). It’s not just families buying together, but also friends. There are a host of tools and agreements which can help make this new emerging buyer sector (ask your REALTOR®) a viable option. Many who were surveyed said that co-ownership bought them more house, and a far better neighbourhood. Why Home Values are Insulated From a Bubble I often get asked why I am so bullish on real estate, given the uncertainties which plague the real estate market including interest rates, the overall economy, high inflation, major labour unrest, job losses etc. For me it all centres around household formation and the formation of housing units. When you have an imbalance between these two numbers you either see a housing bubble (decline inhome prices) or a steady climb in rental rates and housing appreciation. We are in the latter, and this is even more pronounced in immigration hotspots throughout Canada.The interesting thing is that even with the failed Greenbelt Land debacle to increase land to build more housing, Canada has many barriers to development. I have often said even if the land was free, there are local government constraints which impose vast timelines (time is money), from raw land to move-in ready. Not to mention all the soft costs the development journey is plagued with. So far in Ontario housing starts are up for Q1 and Q2 of 2023,at 44,000. Compared to the same period last year weare up just under 12% - far short of the province’s targetof 150,000 per year. Most of these housing starts are remnants of sales which occurred in 2019/20 and early 2021 when the housing market was at its highest. Q3 and Q4 will not make any headway on the targeted number as we see labour shortages and the results of high interest rates take hold. New condo sales went down in the first half of the year in Toronto by nearly 35%, and prices dropped slightly for the first time in over 10 years. Do We Need Mortgage Default PAIN to See Lower Interest Rates AGAIN? Natural population growth has been on the decline (near negative household creation) in countries like Canada. The fact that we lead the G7 in immigration growth gives home owners a level of comfort that there is a floor under home values. Barring extreme job losses, double digit interest rates etc., immigration acts like an insulation against falling demand, and therefore falling property values. Just after the real estate boom of the late 80’s we saw a period in the the 90’s where population growth fell (household creation plummeted) and home values dropped nationally by21%. Our current immigration numbers offer Canadians a hedge on demand. It’s not that we will not see values come off slightly, but our recovery is steadfast due to growing (demand) immigration numbers.The irony of it all is that if first-time buyers continue to sit on the sidelines and postpone their purchase of a property, they will lose buying power. We all saw how a 25 basis point increase in mortgage rates in March 2022 lead to a 25% decline in property values, despite tight inventories and a million new Canadians. Can you imagine whenrates go the other direction, what impact that will haveon home prices? Rising rates may have been the impetus to the decline, but our housing demand fuelled our price recovery. The Bank of Canada’s strategy is a simple one.By raising rates they are hopeful that some Canadians are forced into a sell off. Furthermore, the BOC strategy is to weaken the housing market, and in turn, weaken inflation by reducing construction costs (labour) and consumer (spinoff) spending on appliances and furniture . As a result, with less borrowing to buy homes today, there would be lower rates tomorrow. The Canadian Home-Owner Has Miles and Miles of Runway (the metric equivalent doesn’t sound as good) Let’s stop the blame game. It isn’t immigration, absentee landlords or vacant properties which tipped the scales of housing. We have had periods of higher immigration per capita in the past. In 1914 over 400,000 immigrants came to Canada representing 5% of our population. It isn’t high or low interest rates that are the sole driver of housing prices either. In 2023 we saw many market fluctuations, from buyer to seller, to buyer to balanced, to seller and back to buyer again. All within an historically higher mortgage rate environment. The federal government through CMHC just announced increasing the bond program to fund purpose built rentals from $40 billion annually, to $60 billion. Canada Mortgage and Housing estimates the “core housing need” at 3.5 million new units between now and 2030. By those estimates we would have to double housing starts (250,000 to 500,000) annually, at a cost of approximatelyof hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. So as I see it, the market hick-ups we may be experiencing are temporary, opportunities and market driven growth will rule the day, it ain’t about too many people, it’s about too little supply, and the lack of ingenuity to create more.

Are We Poorer Than We Think?

Renting vs. Buying

The Rodeo that is Real Estate

I hate to admit it but I have had a long life in Real Estate. Being born into a real estate family and emerging as an SOB (Son-of-Broker), I had a front row seat for the intense and sometimes nonsensical realm of real estate technology. Often, real estate markets are defined as being one of three distinct categories: a buyer's market, a seller's market, or a balanced market. Considering how inventory seems to be shrinking within most North American markets over the last 5 years, we seem to fluxuate between a buyer's market and a balanced market within the span of only a few months, and even weeks in some cases.  In addition to these classification categories, markets are often described as being either up (unit sales and dollar volumes increasing), or down (unit sales and dollar values plummeting). How then do we explain the real estate market in 2022, where unit sales dropped 30% compared to 2021, yet the dollar values remained practically unchanged? These definitions need to change. Perhaps a solution can be found in using animal analogies like in financial markets. A Bull market (optimistic), indicated an expanding economy, or a Bear market (pessimistic), indicated a contracting economy. In real estate, I am inclined to think of a much wider variety of animals like donkeys, chickens, and sharks (although those comparisons may get me in trouble). Being a bit of a tech enthusiast I see the markets primarily from a technology and data driven lens. As such, allow me to take you on a brief journey into how technology has shaped how consumers, agents, and the real estate market interact. The Seventies and Eighties were a period of paper...lots of paper. Back then we had a big book which was the size of a phone book (some may not even know what a phone book looked like, so imagine a soft-cover bible). It was called the MLS® Catologue and it contained front photos of homes in black and white, 1 across the top and 4 down, with a description of the property adjacent to the photo. It came out monthly, so by the time it was published, it was weeks old. The primary way we advertised listings was through newspapers. Client marketing was done via mailing lists, and personal advertising was by signs and billboards. In the ‘90’s, MLS® systems were born, desktops ruled the back office, and CMA software was developed. Before we had CMA software, REALTOR®S would carefully scan the old catalogues (which were a separate smaller phone book) for similar properties and make photo copies of those properties to present to the sellers. At that point, neighbourhood farming was all the rage. Contact management was born, and direct mail was how we advertised to consumers. The real estate newsletter was alive and well and featured everything from recipes to decorating to composting. In the 2000’s, IDX websites were all the rage and portals like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com and Realtor.ca ruled the internet landscape. Forms went digital, automated evaluations began their steep climb, and CRM’s emerged, although they were primarily used by emerging mega teams. SEO started to infiltrate advertising, but again only a few savvy realtors began to embrace it. In the 2010’s collaborative search began to take off, and with real time notifications, transaction management began to take hold making the paperless office the gold standard. 3D tours and video became commonplace and dovetailed with social channels as a client marketing tool, and a dominant advertising platform. Then came the 2020's, and AI searches began asking questions like, "If you liked this 3 bedroom 2 bath at 750k in a trendy neighbourhood, how about this 4 bedroom 2 bath in the same neighbourhood for slightly more?". Using data like market predictions, scans of photos, and an address, AI can take that information and generate a complete listing of a home with detailed material highlights, neighborhood attributes, and a predictive market growth in 5 year increments. In fact, AI is now capable of creating several bespoke advertisements and marketing materials for the same listing, which can speak to consumers at any point in their various home buying or home ownership journey. Gone are the days of agonizing over what information to post about your listing or what flowery descriptive words are best suited to that particular home. It is my hope that the AI gods will eventually eliminate the need for every last real estate cliche like 'cozy', 'charming', 'fixer-upper', or the proverbial 'it won't last long' and will instead speak with the depth of predictive analytics.  Will AI Replace the REALTOR®? The quick and self serving answer is...no. AI is currently in its early stages, but has taken a front seat when it comes to game-changing technology. This blog will not be the first, and definitely not the last opinion piece on the merits and controversies of AI. For my current commentary, allow me to label this generation of the technology AI 1.0. If you thought Google was a revolutionary tool when it came to search, and indeed it was and still is, AI will be nothing less than transformational. AI in its current 1.0 form will help us all become more efficient. As it evolves it could replace the mundane in our work lives. AI experts feel the 80/20 rule will prevail, where the AI may account for 80% of what we do but we will continue to be responsible for the last 20%, the polish, or the proverbial icing on the cake. AI has been landing planes since 1991, yet we still have pilots don’t we? Now more than ever, it is critical to reclaim face-to-face time with clients, especially since we were robbed of that ability by Covid-19 for so long. Using AI assisted technologies can help make us better REALTOR®s who are equipped to anticipate the needs of our clients as they continue on their home buying (or selling) journey. Ultimately, AI can help us develop a new gold standard that we all strive for as REALTOR®s: the lifetime family-REALTOR® relationship.  Allow Me To Digress to the Shiny Object Real estate definitely has its fair share of distracting 'shiny objects', or fancy technology that claims to revolutionize the real estate market, but ultimately falls short of their claims. This raises the concern of whether AI is yet another 'shiny object' doomed to join the list, or whether this tool is capable of changing our methods of productivity and ways of communicating with each other. When discussing these 'shiny objects', four recent examples come to mind: Blockchain, Crypto, NFT's, and the Meta-verse. When Blockchain was first being introduced, it was claimed that eventually every single property would be identified in a digital ledger and have a series of blockchains attached to it. Properties all over the world were going to be bought using Bitcoin. It was toted as the so-called currency of choice to purchase real estate. NFT’s - I’m not even sure of how to describe this, besides the fact that everyone was going to have some cartoon of their property which was worth something. And lets not forget the Meta Verse, a parallel universe to ours where consumers would go to invest in properties in various video game-like worlds. In summary, I think AI is a tool that all of us can eventually wrap our heads around and is therefore not just a 'shiny object'. Just like Googling something is now a verb, AI can hopefully bring about the same kind of large scale changes for the better.  Pitching will Never Go Away We are constantly pitching our services and value as agents, and AI will enhance what we do. Remember that we as humans feel first and then we think, our emotional mind makes the decision with the backing of our logical brain centre. Think of how powerful AI can be when we use it to zero in on how clients are feeling in the moment, and respond to those needs and wants with precision and customization. We as service providers will be the purveyors of bespoke information to help our clients make a better decision. In order to do all of that we need the top of the funnel. I hear it over and over again from REALTOR®S, “once I am in front of a client (sellers mostly) I get the listing!” That’s all fine and good but what are your doing to nurture, engage and close. I have always said there are only 2 things our clients ask of us…. ”Are you always thinking of me” (the client) “Are you an expert in your industry”. 1 - AI will provide us with some very powerful tools to help us personalize the experience. Erase the term ‘past clients’. It denotes that they are gone. Think of yourself as an account manager with a book of business that you are in constant communication with. 2 - If you are unaware, this is the ‘pitch’. How are you showing your tribe that you are an expert in your craft, an influencer or a guru? AI can help you create the educational content and expertise, but it is inherent upon you to strategically distribute your message and most of all your brand promise.  AI Can Damage Your Brand When we begin to adopt new technologies, there is always a sense of anxiety and worry, especially in areas like the real estate industry that are notoriously resistant or slow to adopt new technologies. AI is capable of taking what we know of Google searches and put it on steroids, allowing it to shape opinions, conversations, and help us formulate decisions. But it is important to remember that AI is a tool - a utility that can be abused and under- or over-used. It can have an effect on your individual brand, if left to its own devices. For instance, if it becomes your de facto lead nurture tool and is left unchecked, it could affect both new and long-standing client relationships. It is especially important to recognize where the AI is obtaining information, especially when entrusting it to client care. I heard a quote from the MoxiWorks CEO, York Baur recently who put it in perspective for me. "99% wine mixed with 1% crap, still tastes like crap". In other words, if there is one small inconsistency in the information derived from an AI platform that you did not fact check, it could damage your credibility. AI should enhance what we do as real estate practitioners, not replace it. If e-signature adoption rates in real estate are an indication of where AI can take us as an industry, look out.  The Emotional Quotient (EQ) Will Rule The Day When AI takes Over Remember when the internet came to real estate? Many thought we were going to be replaced, yet the usage of REALTOR®S actually increased with the dawn of the internet. The consumer was empowered and we took on the roll of knowledge brokers. Many old school agents weren’t happy when the consumer could access listings on their own devices, as we had always been the gatekeepers of the information, and many a REALTOR® thought that was their value proposition. Back then search was something we did for our clients, but we still did all that great stuff that consumers want, like negotiations, facilitating the process etc. All that happened was that consumers got direct access to the database, which allowed us to shine when it came to interpreting the speed of the market and all the nuances that bring value to a property. AI will up our game, and bring more analysis to the table. It is our role to pick up the slack where AI fails - the intangible 1%. I have always said real estate is 99% emotion, 1% business. The Customer Journey is Where Your Next Client Will See Themselves Let’s all remember the true cornerstone of wealth in North America, and most of the world is home ownership. As a result, anything that we can do to improve that journey will likely result in client referrals. Stop chasing the business and focus on attracting with a ‘WOWED’ customer experience and data driven content. Find your sphere’s pain points, and reinforce the notion that you have the tools, relationships, and know how to admonish their pain, and bring about success. AI is developing predictive concierge services which will identify service providers or guides (as I like to refer to them), which will be there at every point in your client’s journey and beyond, from showing negotiating (real estate agent), due diligence (home inspector), financing (mortgage specialist), and closing (lawyer), plus a roof needing to be replaced in 5 years based on home inspector’s estimate (roofer). AI vs EQ I believe the real estate industry is at a moment of truth, our services will be re-defined and refined. Our ability to work collaboratively with our buyers and sellers will be heightened. Make your bets now, take some risks. Get out of your comfort zone with all things AI. Pick your partners wisely, be it your tech partners, and, more importantly, your service providers, because the customer journey is what is going to define you and your team going forward. AI could be the great equalizer, but your clearly developed EQ will be the beacon by which you are able to ‘WOW’ your client base. Remember, a real estate agent is what you do, and a leader is who you are, so lead the charge and embrace the technology that will make you a better and more responsive agent. Let’s all define this market for our consumers and each other. Its not about balance and unbalance; its not about being in or out of the market, or waiting on the sidelines; its about the fact that our lives change and our relationships with real estate are always evolving. It’s about imparting the best knowledge you can in any market which will fit the needs of your consumers in their moment.  The following are some standouts in AI and real estate, check them out, the future is here! Milestones.ai - Home owner management system LandOnEarth.com - matches consumers with properties Roof.ai - real time consumer sales enablement Likely.ai - Pre-market artificial intelligence

This is a Defining Moment in the Market

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Thank you to everyone who helped make the night a true success and another memorable event!