It’s no secret that Canada is facing a housing crisis. The country is in need of programs and strategies to help build more homes that meet people where they are. It’s a national issue that requires collaboration from all leaders, politically and otherwise.

The Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, is our guest on this episode of REAL TIME, where we discuss Canada’s housing supply goals, where we can draw inspiration from, and how REALTORS® can be part of solutions.

Transcript

Erin Davis: Canada is in a housing crisis. The country is in need of programs and actions to help build more homes that meet people where they are. It’s a national issue that requires collaboration from all leaders, politically and otherwise, to help ensure everyone has a home.

Hi, I’m Erin Davis, and this is REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS®, brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. Today, we are joined by the Honorable Sean Fraser, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, to talk about Canada’s housing supply goals, the challenges we are facing to make them a reality, and how REALTORS® can be part of the solution. Minister Fraser, thank you for being here today.

Minister Sean Fraser: Thanks so much for the opportunity to connect. Looking forward to it.

Erin: The natural place to start is the state of the housing crisis in Canada. 5.8 million homes are needed to be built by 2030 to help restore affordability and address supply. What is currently in place to help with the development and affordability of housing in Canada, both now and in the shorter term?

Minister Fraser: Look, thanks very much for the question. Depending on who you ask, you’re going to get a range of different estimates on exactly what it’s going to take to cure the supply gap. The one thing I think everybody agrees on is we need to build more homes. The housing plan that we’ve put out just in April of this year seeks to do that in three keyways. The first is to reduce the cost of building homes. The second is to make it easier to build homes. The third is to adopt new strategies when it comes to the way that we actually build them. Let’s dig in a little bit on what that means.

To reduce the cost, what we’ve tried to do is look in our own backyard to figure out what we can do as a federal government to directly reduce the cost of housing.

We have removed the GST from new apartment construction and changed capital cost allowances to reduce taxes on home builders, and we’re starting to see that have an impact.

We also create low-cost financing programs, such as the Apartment Construction Loan Program, or something new that’s coming up to build accessory dwelling units to get more supply into the market, which is particularly helpful during a high-interest rate environment.

We’ve got a big project on the go that we’ll have more to say about, I think, in this conversation, including the use of public lands to build more homes.

In addition, we need to incentivize solutions at other levels of government, including zoning and permitting reforms, and, of course, embracing new technologies when it comes to building houses more quickly, such as factory-built homes. There’s no silver bullet. If it were easy to solve, smarter people than me would have decades before. The reality is there’s a number of levers at our disposal that can help build out that supply, which is essential if we’re going to cure the supply gap and ultimately resolve a reasonable level of affordability in the housing market in Canada.

Erin: The existing programs are certainly a great step forward, but we also need to acknowledge that the reality is hitting those housing supply goals is a difficult task. We’ve heard some rhetoric around development cost charges. Minister, can you fill us in on how or if those are affecting our ability to not only build homes, but build affordable homes?

Minister Fraser: Certainly. I’ve got a particular perspective on development cost charges. For those who may not be familiar with the issue, it’s a tool that municipalities use to raise revenue. In my view, it’s one that does so fairly inefficiently because it raises all the revenue on new housing. When you increase the cost of something, you tend to get less of it or you get some of it with a higher price point.

From my perspective, it risks both impacting the housing output goals that we’ve set as a government and the housing affordability goals, because developers, despite the fact I believe most of them are in it for the right reasons, want to help provide solutions, they’re also running businesses. We can’t expect that businesses who incur larger costs simply to eat all of those costs. Now, to a degree, community versus community, it may happen in some and not in others. What we’re trying to do is to understand, why are municipalities feeling the need to increase development cost charges? I don’t believe it’s because any community wants to increase the cost of housing. It’s because municipalities are cash-strapped. We need to deal with the very real challenges that cities are facing in this country when it comes to now dealing with the costs of certain services that traditionally may have fallen within, particularly at the provincial level of government, including community housing, including dealing with homelessness in their communities.

When you have municipalities incur these increased costs and they have limited access to revenue tools, they go in the areas where they think they have some political space to play.

The solution is going to be to increasing, from other orders of government, the level of investment in infrastructure that currently development cost charges are being used to build out. We’ve put $6 billion on the table for housing-enabling infrastructure. In order to access it, we said, “You have to freeze your development cost charges.”

For those who don’t wish to abide by those terms, we have created a new product through the Canada Infrastructure Bank that will provide lower-cost financing to build out that infrastructure, but we want to ensure that if you’re going to be using federal dollars to build out municipal infrastructure, you’re not simultaneously increasing the cost to housing in your community.

Development cost charges are one of the hurdles we need to overcome. We’re seeking to do that by tying access to federal infrastructure money to policies around freezing the cost of development cost charges when that policy was released in April of this year.

Erin: What are some of the frustrations that you’re feeling in regards to hitting the housing supply target?

Minister Fraser: There’s no shortage of things to become frustrated about, but I try to focus on the opportunities that we have to make a difference. That said, there are certain potential obstacles that we’re going to need to overcome, that the impact of our policies remains to be seen. Now we’re starting to see very good output when it comes to building permits, for example. We have seen some encouraging numbers when it comes to the latest data from CMHC on housing starts in the month of May of this year. If I look forward two, three years, and I ask myself what bottlenecks are we potentially going to hit if we can’t resolve them today, the productive capacity of the Canadian economy is one of the very serious obstacles I think we’re going to need to overcome.

We’re producing homes close to the record level of production, but when I talk to builders in different markets in Canada, some are already experiencing a labor shortage that’s preventing them from growing their home-building capacity. We also see an opportunity to overcome this not just by training the next generation of Canadian workers, but by incentivizing new construction methodologies that pull from a different labor pool, specifically modular housing, penalization, mass timber, potentially even 3D printing, that don’t necessarily rely on the same pool of skilled tradespeople that traditional home builders may. By bringing in new solutions, we can overcome that obstacle.

The other piece that is a big question mark is the involvement of other levels of government. I think the federal government can say sincerely, “We’ve put our hand up and want to play a leadership role, but we need others to join the fight.”

Province to province, the ambition and appetite for change varies significantly. We can’t do this alone. We’ll need provincial governments and municipalities pulling in the same direction.

The third and final, potentially the most important bottleneck, is capital. Making sure we’re creating an opportunity for money to come into the housing sector by creating a set of circumstances that makes it more appealing to invest in Canadian home building than it does for investors who may be targeting industries in different parts of the world.

Crowding in that private capital, working with provinces, and growing the productive capacity of the Canadian home-building workforce are the three big things that I believe will pose a bottleneck if we don’t sort out the policy solutions today that will reveal themselves over the next few years.

Erin: Minister, you used the term “legalize housing” last fall and it left some people curious. What did you mean by legalize housing?

Minister Fraser: This is not a concept that I’ve invented. This is something that becomes readily apparent to you when you start to engage in the obstacles to getting more homes built today. Thankfully, we’ve legalized a lot more housing than was the case even six, eight months ago.

What I meant when I used the phrase legalized housing was simply to point out that most kinds of houses are not legal to build as of right in most communities in Canada or in most neighborhoods in Canada. There’s a lot of restrictions on what you can build and where you can build it. For example, a lot of suburban neighborhoods, frankly, a lot of neighborhoods altogether make it impossible to build a small apartment if you don’t go and get a zoning change or a special exemption at your local council. That process can add months, sometimes years to the process of just getting an answer saying, “Yes, you are allowed to build the thing.”

By the time you actually get permission to build it, when you have that lengthy process of getting an approval, the math that justified your investment in the first place may no longer take hold. We’ve seen this in a significant number of communities across Canada as we’ve dealt with a challenging interest rate environment over the past few years. A lot of projects that were approved after they got that special permission from council are now dealing with a higher rate of interest than they baked into their pro forma when they were deciding to go forward with the project or not.

When we can actually change the rules so a developer, a small builder, whoever it may be understands that they can build something without having to go through that lengthy process, that kind of housing will have been legalized in communities. When you make something illegal, guess what happens? You get a lot less of it. We should be making it easy for people to contribute solutions to the housing crisis. My own view is that if someone has land and is willing to make an investment, we should not forbid a person from advancing a solution on their own property when we’re in a housing crisis. If we legalize housing by changing the rules to permit home building during a housing crisis, we’re going to see more houses, and that makes sense to me.

Erin: I’m glad you mentioned land because land availability is often a key talking point when discussing housing supply, something that came up in episode 51 here when we were talking about Alberta. Can you speak to how government land could be used to address the supply crisis, Minister?

Minister Fraser: One of the things that you’ve got to realize, and we led off with this, it’s become very expensive to build homes in this country. The cost of land, labor, material, supplies, interest, it’s all gone up in the last few years and we have to look at what tools we have that can bring the cost of building down.

I’m never going to say that the home-building sector should reduce wages of workers in the home-building sector. In fact, I think if we paid people fairly, we’d see even more come into the industry in different parts of the country.

That said, land is something that we actually can potentially control the price of to some degree when we’re dealing with land that the federal government owns, or the different levels of government own. If we can reduce from the input cost of construction the price of the land on which a building will sit, the cost of building is going to go down and the opportunity for developers to pass on those savings to residents when we get supply and demand balanced out will become much easier.

One of the things that we’re doing that’s a unique approach compared to the historical practice of previous federal governments is embracing a new strategy to make land available for housing. Rather than selling off land to the highest bidder, which will not provide a level of affordability necessarily to the homes that are built upon that land, we’re going to enter into long-term leases for those who will commit to certain affordability goals when it comes to the housing that will actually be built on that land.

In exchange for those affordability outcomes, we’ll be able to negotiate significantly reduced cost, potentially even for as low as a dollar, for a long-term lease on the land that will last at least the life cycle of the asset or the building that’s constructed.

When we make that land available, we can remove one of the most expensive contributing factors to the overall cost of home building. If we bring that cost of building down as we grow the supply of housing in this country, we can potentially be dealing with rents or home prices that are much closer to what a middle-class worker in a given community can afford as compared to what would happen in the free market on private land or on government land that is sold at market prices.

This is an enormous opportunity. As the largest landowner in the country, the federal government has a role to play. The path that we’re charting and that will be revealed over the next few months, I believe, will have an enormous impact on the housing supply crisis facing the communities in every part of Canada today.

Erin: Part of CREA’s advocacy efforts, as recommended by REALTORS®, has to do with growing the skilled labor force. You talked about labor there just a moment ago to help build the supply that we’re missing. What does this look like, Minister Fraser? I know you spoke about this at a CREA conference last fall, but would you refresh our memories please?

Minister Fraser: Certainly. I’ve identified the capacity of the Canadian home-building labor force to produce homes as one of the potential bottlenecks that we’re going to hit. Even if we have a perfect municipal zoning policy in place, perfect financial policies in place, there is a limit to how many homes the Canadian economy can produce today, and we want to grow the outer boundary of that limit.

There’s three key areas where I think we can do this. One is by increasing the investment in training for skilled workers. We need people who have the trade and the qualification to practice that will actually be able to increase the pace of construction for existing home builders, including traditional home builders who simply need more people to grow their business.

By investing in training, we can significantly increase the capacity of the workforce over time, including by tapping into traditionally underrepresented groups in the skilled trades. Thinking about investing in programs that will bring more women into the trades, thinking about programs that will bring more racial minorities and indigenous peoples into the Canadian home-building trades, and just generally increasing the overall pool of labor supply by investing in training more broadly.

We also need to embrace targeted immigration programs that will ensure that we both align the housing output with our overall immigration numbers, but simultaneously use those immigration programs in a targeted way to bring in more skilled trades people who have the capacity to help contribute a solution to the housing crisis.

The third thing is not necessarily about growing that same pool, it’s about embracing new technologies. By creating incentives to scale up home-building factories, and by incentivizing the purchase of a piece of equipment that will allow one to build more efficiently, we can significantly increase output and build homes faster by comparison, in most instances, to traditional home-building strategies.

The other advantage, in addition to just becoming more productive through the embrace of technology and the use of equipment, is the fact that you’re not necessarily competing in the same labor pool. The skill set to build homes that are built in a factory and assembled on site are not perfectly aligned with conventional home-building strategies. By tapping into a pool of labor that may not come from that same skilled background, at the same time we train more skilled tradespeople in this country, we’re going to be able to build that overall capacity to produce homes, which will be key if we’re going to hit those supply targets.

Erin: Where does the education begin then? Are we talking like getting students coming out of high schools and going into skilled labor? You talk about the immigration adding to that workforce. How far back do we have to go and start planning for this increase in skilled labor?

Minister Fraser: There’s things that we can do in the short term, for example, by embracing some targeted immigration programs. We made a change over the course of the last few years to have a category-based selection model within the express entry system that targets five key areas, one of which is the skilled trades. We’ve seen a fairly significant increase in the number of skilled tradespeople who’ve come in as a result. That can have an impact within the first year of a policy change. Not necessarily enough to solve Canada’s housing crisis in one fell swoop, but enough to make a difference.

There are other things that will take, admittedly, a little bit longer to reach maturity. When you enter into training, for example, you might have a cohort of people who starts their training tomorrow, but they may take a couple of years before they get that designation. That means we must do it, but we have to be patient for some solutions to reach maturity as compared to others.

When you ask how far back do we need to go, when I talk to a lot of my friends who work in the skilled trades, though they may have only started their formal training after they finished high school, very often they grew up on a construction site working informally alongside a family business. They’ve been turning wrenches in garages their whole life, growing up working on bikes. That’s the kind of community that I came from. You see that implementing a culture change in addition to the formal training initiatives that incentivizes and demonstrates respect towards people who have those essential skills in the trades is something that can help shift the proportion of people in a country who work in a given sector over time.

Again, by investing in home-building factories and incentivizing changes with more productive equipment or processes, we can very quickly scale up new players in the sector. There’s employers I talked to who are recruiting from a broad range of industries, but not targeting people with any particular skill set, but who are willing to put in an honest day of work. They actually find training old habits out of certain skilled trades can be more challenging than having somebody start fresh who doesn’t come with a particular formal skill but has a willingness to work. There’s many solutions that we have to embrace, and we do have to embrace them all simultaneously.

Erin: Housing supply issues won’t be solved by one person or party alone. We’re realistic. We know that. It’s a national issue that requires leaders, and not just political leaders, to work towards a meaningful solution together. Minister, who needs to be involved in the housing conversation outside of political leaders? Are we talking like CREA, Cooperative Housing Federation of Canada, for example, developers? Who would you like to see at the table as we build a house around that table?

Minister Fraser: Look, it’s an excellent question. One of the things I’ve learned that I believe more than just about anything else in nine years in politics now is that decisions are not going to be made effectively if they’re made behind closed doors on Parliament Hill. They need to be made in full engagement with the people and organizations who are going to be contributing solutions and to be informed by the people who need those solutions.

When you ask who should be involved, private developers and home builders should be involved. Non-profit organizations who understand the needs of specific communities can be involved. People with lived experience should be involved. Advocacy associations who understand the perspective not just of the executive director but of an entire membership of an industry need to be involved.

Groups like CREA would provide an excellent example of the opportunity to engage an entire industry in a more effective and efficient way by sending representatives into these conversations. There are academic experts who’ve been studying their lives to understand the solutions to some of the challenges we’re facing today. Let’s borrow from all of the knowledge base that the different players in the sector have to contribute. I want to point out that it’s not just for formal organizations to contribute solutions. I’ve had the opportunity to stream a number of different local council meetings when they were debating the measures baked into their Housing Accelerator Fund agreements with the federal government and I was blown away by the perspective, particularly of young people, who were showing up at council meetings, explaining to their local councillors what these policy changes could mean for them if it would create an opportunity for them to live in the community where they grew up.

Ordinary citizens have an opportunity to advocate to their local councils, to send letters to their MPs, to their MLAs, to raise awareness as part of the need to embrace new solutions to contribute to a better housing sector a few years from now than we have today. It’s not just to be left to those who have an opportunity to build massive apartments. Individual citizens can contribute solutions in this process at a local and national level as well.

Erin: Yes. I love that you mention councils because we’d like you to talk about the importance of working with cities to help create affordable housing solutions, Minister.

Minister Fraser: This is where the rubber hits the road. In a lot of communities across Canada, the success or failure of housing initiatives will be determined by a willingness of the local level of government to embrace solutions or to sometimes bow to pressure to avoid the reforms that we know will have a positive impact. I’ve seen extraordinary leadership at cities across the country.

Though I’ve been in the news a couple of times for having a disagreement with a municipal government here or there, I found over the course of the past 11 months that I’ve been in this position that there’s an awful lot of cities who want to be incredible partners out there. I’m yet to meet a single one who doesn’t want to build more homes for members in their community who are underserved when it comes to housing. Some are willing to go the extra mile.

I think about mayors like Cam Guthrie, who is advocating for ambitious reforms. I think about Berry Vrbanovic in Kitchener or Dorothy McCabe in Waterloo who are implementing these kinds of reforms that are transitioning vast employment lands into residential lands, who are embracing new zoning practices.

The City of Kelowna, who has been ahead of the curve, not only in zoning for four units as of right, which has seen an uptick in the construction of fourplexes, but also in using AI in order to identify faster processes for issuing building permits.

There are incredible leaders and if we understand the best practices from the cities who are experiencing success, we can share those lessons with other levels of government and in fact put financial incentives on the table through a program like the Housing Accelerator Fund, which has led to what is likely the largest upzoning in Canadian history over the course of the past year.

Some of these changes are not just going to have an impact in the short term, as the money we put on the table is used to support more housing growth, but in perpetuity as the systemic reforms that make it easier and faster to build homes and get permits take hold and create a new culture of home building in the cities that have made those important changes. We have to work with cities.

Thankfully there are many good partners across the country who share the desired outcome and are willing to make some of the changes to turn that desire into a reality.

Erin: Looking outside of Canada for a minute, Minister, we’ve seen countries and areas that have implemented programs or policies that have helped address similar supply and affordability issues. Is there anywhere that we can draw inspiration from to help within our own borders?

Minister Fraser: Certainly. Look, there’s no shortage. Some of the work that’s been done around building design which is able to withstand very serious safety threats, but nevertheless embrace a single-stair egress, creates opportunities for more efficient, effective building designs that will allow you to fit more home into each building, if that makes sense.

It’s not limited to any one country. I think about the work that has gone on in Finland when it comes to more or less eliminating chronic homelessness by adopting a housing-first approach. I think about zoning reform in Auckland, New Zealand, Minneapolis or Austin, Texas, that has led to an explosion of multi-unit residential growth. Factory-built homes have become more or less the norm in countries like Sweden.

I had the opportunity to spend a year studying a master’s degree in the Netherlands. Though I didn’t live in the biggest city in the country, I nevertheless benefited from a serious public transit system where I was able to walk or take my bike to classes every day that was just as efficient as driving through the city.

There’s incredible lessons we can pull internationally from zoning reform, from investments in non-market housing, to modernizing the home-building industry, to investing to solve homelessness. There are so many examples to pull from and I think about the successes and failures that others have experienced as we sit down to develop our own policy track.

Erin: Many people think that building homes is strictly about single-family homes, which are important, too, of course, but there are many other types of housing that could address Canada’s supply crisis, right?

CREA’s asks in its pre-budget submission are all related to supporting the entire housing continuum, including the stimulation of prefabricated housing.

Can you talk a bit, please, about how modular and prefabricated homes could be part of the solution, like automation as well as 3D printing, all helping Canada to reach its housing supply goals?

Minister Fraser: We need every kind of housing manufacturer to be building more housing, whether that’s traditional contractors doing stick-built homes, whether it’s modular housing, whether it’s panelization, mass timber. We did mention 3D printing. It’s got a lot of ways to go before the sectors mature and can be counted on for the kind of volume that we need, but we need to embrace all of it.

I think the advantage right now, though on a cost basis, depending on the building design, you can be competitive. You don’t see enormous savings when it comes to manufactured homes. Some kinds of designs could even be a little more expensive, but for multi-unit residential, depending on the scale of the building, you can be cost competitive, but you can build sometimes twice as fast. When you have an opportunity to build more quickly, time can be money based on the terms of financing or the interest rate environment you may be dealing with. You have an opportunity to create a solution much more quickly, and though the cost of building may only be on par, it can help address some imbalances between supply and demand in the market more quickly.

There’s a few things we’re doing to incentivize more use of manufactured homes in this country. The first is directly incentivizing the uptick of new technology or processes with a hundred million dollars in contribution through both one of our supercluster initiatives and through the regional development agencies in Canada who understand the more localized opportunities to scale those factories.

When I actually talk to those in the sector, they tell me though incentives are appreciated, what they need even more is orders. If they’re going to justify a factory expansion, they needed to know there’s a pipeline of projects that will justify a bigger facility, the new piece of equipment, staffing up, whatever it may be. We’re trying to do that in two key ways. One is to carve out a $500 million tranche of the apartment construction loan program just for homes that are built in factories.

The second is to use our public lands initiative, and this is still under development now, to create greater opportunities for manufactured homes by figuring out how we can commit to a certain scale of factory-built homes when it comes to the public lands initiative to incentivize growth in the sector at the same time we get that housing output.

There’s a number of different opportunities that I see, but these tools that we put on the table as part of the National Housing Plan, I expect, are going to have a significant impact.

Erin: We can hope, and hope is what this is all about. Why should Canadians be hopeful moving forward in regards to housing supply and affordability, Minister, when this is clearly a daunting problem to solve? Are you hopeful?

Minister Fraser: I am, and it’s not out of a sense of blind optimism. I’m hopeful because I’m actually seeing solutions implemented at a local level that I believe can be scaled up and replicated at a national level.

When I see the extraordinary uptake of the Housing Accelerator Fund, for example, in six months we’ve reached deals with 179 partners across the country. Following it, we’ve seen remarkable upzoning of cities across the country. In April, the most recent month for which I’ve seen the data, we set a record for the issuance of building permits in this country. We didn’t do that by snapping our fingers and creating a new tool altogether. We borrowed from the best practices that were already being implemented in cities right across the country, and created an incentive for everyone else to implement those practices as well, and we’re seeing change. When we removed the tax from new purpose-built rentals in this country, we saw a number of provinces join forces with us, and then most of those provinces have seen a positive impact when it comes to starts this year as compared to last year.

In my own home province of Nova Scotia, where we’ve removed the tax on both the federal and provincial tax on new apartment construction, we’ve actually seen growth this year compared to last of more than 100%. It’s remarkable what we’re seeing in certain provinces, but this is not to say the job is done. We have a long way to go, but we are starting to see the early signs of success of some of the measures we’re putting in place.

The reason that I’m optimistic that we can continue to see these measures taken up is I’ve never seen such alignment across party lines, across levels of government, in the desire to solve a problem like we currently see with the housing crisis.

We’ve seen the federal government put out what has been billed as the most ambitious plan in half a century to build homes in this country. Provinces seem more than live to the issue and are implementing a lot of measures on their own. Cities are waking up not just to the need to build more homes, but the opportunities for their communities if they can accommodate the people who want to move in and call those city homes and contribute their talents to the local economy and local community.

The political will is there across levels of government, across party lines. We’re starting to see signs of success, and we’re even seeing the latest rate cut from the Bank of Canada demonstrate not that we are where we need to be, but that we’re trending in a positive direction.

I’m filled with a sense of hope and optimism. The scale of the task before me is not lost on me, but I do understand what can be done when you have three levels of government working together, and I think we’ve got that in every region of the country.

Erin: Okay. How can we use those wins to continue the momentum?

Minister Fraser: Success begets success. What has been incredible to me is, again, pointing to the experience of the Housing Accelerator Fund, though there were some challenges with some of the measures we were inviting cities to adopt in the outset, nothing created more momentum than a neighbouring city adopting those changes first.

When we were able to stand up and announce that City X was going to receive several million dollars to make certain kinds of changes, City Y next door decided they wanted to do the same. Then City Z took similar measures, and we saw that the competition actually became not just a competition for the federal money that was on the table, but making sure that they weren’t to be outdone by their neighbours, knowing that that would actually potentially pull people from one community to another based on housing availability.

When we demonstrate that certain measures work and can be done within the political context of a given community, it creates a level of courage and ambition at a local level, I find, right across Canada, to say we can solve this problem.

My sense is the political temperature has reached a stage where leaders will ignore the housing crisis at their peril. There are solutions that are being made evident in communities across the country, not by the most rigorous or recent study that’s been performed on them, but by the policies that are being implemented that were informed by those studies 10 and 20 years ago that are having an impact today.

We can continue to increase the level of ambition by rewarding communities who are adopting policies that are making a difference. I have full faith that when those solutions prove their merit, the momentum will continue to snowball. We’re seeing that with zoning, we’re seeing that with multi-unit residential construction. My hope is we can see that in the home-building industry with more factory-built homes.

There’s no shortage of solutions, but once communities see that they start to work somewhere, they’re willing to try them in their own backyard more often.

Erin: Can you tell us why initiatives such as the Cooperative Housing Development Program are going to help Canadians?

Minister Fraser: Certainly. If you’re going to understand how we can help, you have to understand that there is a problem first. Separate and apart from the housing affordability challenges we have in the market, there’s an enormous challenge when it comes to the lack of social housing, affordable housing for low-income families in this country that is subsidized by governments.

The reason that we have a shortage of non-market housing in Canada, and by the way, we have about 4% of our total share of homes in this country exist outside of the market, the average for developed economies in the world is about double that, and the number of people in Canada who live below a low-income threshold is between 10% and 11%. There are going to be people who fall through the cracks. If you have more low-income people in your country, then you have houses that are designed to support people with low incomes. The cost, by the way, of a shortage of affordable housing is not revealed just in housing costs. You see increased health costs as people run into challenges with the mental health system and emergency room more often. You see more challenges in the legal system when people have challenges with the police or the courts. You see people less often fulfill their economic potential because it’s awfully hard to look for a job when you don’t have a place to go to bed at night.

When we have investments like the partnership we’ve made with the Cooperative Housing Federation, or like the increased contributions through the Affordable Housing Fund, or a new acquisition fund to pull low-cost housing from the market into a non-profit setting, we can correct that imbalance between low-cost housing that’s subsidized by governments and the number of low-income Canadians that live in this country. It’s been 30 years without any serious investment by the federal government in affordable housing. Conservative governments and liberal governments have both chosen to pull back. We changed that in 2017 with the introduction of the National Housing Strategy. We’ve increased the ambition with the latest plan to solve the housing crisis, but these investments will help specifically target the needs of low-income Canadians and therefore benefit not just the people who live in them, but the entirety of a community’s population on the basis of those costs we won’t incur and the opportunities that more people who have their housing needs met can create in the communities where they live.

Erin: Nobody knows their communities better than REALTORS®. There are more than 160,000 in Canada, a collective that continues to be a strong voice for housing supply and affordability issues in Canada. Do you have any tips for them, Minister?

Minister Fraser: Look, I won’t tell anybody else how to do their job. I’ve got enough people telling me how to do mine, but there are a few points maybe I’ll make in response to your question.

First, I’m grateful to REALTORS® who put the interests of their clients first. This goes without saying, but I trust the industry to ensure that they’re well informed on what policy tools may be available to their clients who are trying to save up for that down payment, who are considering whether they want to avail themselves of a 30-year amortization period. Make sure you understand what policies are on offer. You will be better than me at guiding people through the process of buying their first home in particular, given your wealth of experience. Continue to put the interests of your clients first, and continue to be aware of the tools the government has on offer to make it easier to become a participant in the housing market or a homeowner.

Finally, don’t assume that governments know what your experience is. It’s been extraordinary for me, before and after my time in this position, the wealth of information and experience that REALTORS® have shared about my own market in my own community, my own province of Nova Scotia, or nationally.

I should give a shout out to Susan Green, my friend, neighbor, and REALTOR® who’s been involved with advocacy campaigns with CREA for a number of years.

Don’t be afraid to show up at that council meeting. Advocate strongly if you believe in zoning reform, because in the absence of voices explaining how it will make a positive difference, there will be people who are afraid of change in their community.

If you can demonstrate through your experience, your knowledge, your training, that we can invite new solutions to communities who are not accustomed to them, and the world doesn’t end. You can live in a community that creates a vibrant and dynamic place to live for a next generation of people who may call a community home. Don’t be afraid to participate in the debates as they play out at a local level. Inform folks like me and my counterparts provincially about your industry’s point of view. Make sure at an individual service level you continue to support people by making them aware of what tools are available.

I’m grateful for the work that you do to help guide people through the home buying process, and very grateful for the opportunity to connect today.

Erin: We’re very grateful as well, Minister. Thank you so much for your wisdom, your insight, and your time. Thanks a lot.

Minister Fraser: A pleasure, as always. We’ll look forward to our next conversation.

Erin: You bet. Thanks again to Minister Fraser for taking the time to be with us today. We all know this conversation isn’t going away, and the REALTOR® community continues to roll up their sleeves and take action.

Of course, if you liked this episode, please tell us by giving us a rating or review on your preferred podcast platform. We always appreciate it.

REAL TIME is brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA. Production courtesy of Alphabet® Creative, with tech support from Rob Whitehead. Thank you so much for listening. I’m Erin Davis, and we’ll see you next time on REAL TIME.

On June 5, The Bank of Canada announced its first rate cut in four years. This could be the sign many were waiting for to come off the sidelines and step into Canada’s housing markets. But, what does that look like across the country and how do other economic factors play into the decision making process?

On the latest episode of REAL TIME, we hear from Shaun Cathcart, Director and Senior Economist, Housing Data and Market Analysis with the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), Ann-Marie Lurie, Chief Economist with the Alberta Real Estate Association (AREA), and Jason Mercer, Chief Market Analyst with the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB), as they share insights on the current state of Canada’s housing market from a national, provincial, and local level, exploring everything from the need for more supply to interprovincial migration to pricing.

Transcript

Erin Davis: It finally happened. On June 5th, the Bank of Canada lowered the interest rate for the first time in more than four years. Could this indicate the beginning of a shift in the Canadian housing market? If so, what can we expect at a national, provincial, and local level? I’m Erin Davis. Welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS®, brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. Now, who better to speak to the state of Canada’s housing market and economy in general than our three guests today?

Joining us are, Shaun Cathcart, Director and Senior Economist, Housing Data and Market Analysis with the Canadian Real Estate Association, Ann-Marie Lurie, Chief Economist with the Calgary Real Estate Board and formerly with the Alberta Real Estate Association, and Jason Mercer, Chief Market Analyst with the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. Welcome to REAL TIME. What does the Bank of Canada’s most recent announcement mean for current and potential Canadian home buyers? Why did this change happen now? We’re going to start with you, Shaun.

Shaun Cathcart: Sure. Let me take the second part of that question first. The reason it happened now is because the Canadian economy is not doing that well. Inflations and the Bank of Canada’s favorite BFFs, CPI-common, CPI-trim, CPI-median have been well-behaved, as they say, for four months and it just seemed like the right time. They were a little bit worried about the housing market doing it in the middle of the spring market, but they did it anyway.

What it means for current home buyers or current homeowners, if they’ve got variable rates, their payments will go down. If they’ve got fixed rates, that their renewal date is looking better, whatever that is out into the future now that this rate cut cycle has started. If you’re a potential home buyer, if that’s the signal you were waiting for to jump into the market, there you have it.

Erin: It really has a psychological element to it, doesn’t it, Shaun?

Shaun: Very much so. If you think back to last year when buyers jumped into the market with both feet in March and April, basically anticipating rate cuts, and all they got was rate hikes, they weren’t going to get fooled again this year. That camp has probably moved over into the, I’ll believe it when I see it, and now they’ve seen it.

Erin: Ann-Marie, how about your perspective on this?

Ann-Marie Lurie: For our market, it’s a little different. We’re already in really tight conditions. Any change in rates is just going to bring even more demand into our market, especially for people who were priced out to a certain extent. What we’ll be closely watching is what actually happens on the bond yield? Are we going to see this transfer into declining five-year lending rates on the qualification basis? Those are the things that we’re looking at. Again, it’s just going to further tighten and increase demand even more so than what we are already experiencing.

Erin: Because you’ve already seen pent-up demand and activity even before the rates moved, right?

Ann-Marie: That’s right. Our market has been performing very differently than what you’re seeing in some other major markets in the country. We’ve seen extremely strong demand, we have limited supply, we’re in seller market conditions, and we’ve had strong price growth. This has been happening all the while, while we have very strong or very high interest rates.

Erin: Jason, your take on this. Do you think it’s about time or what do you think?

Jason Mercer: Certainly, if you look at the GTA experience, it’s been quite a bit different than what Ann-Marie was describing out West in Alberta or Calgary in the sense that, we did see a very real impact when the Bank of Canada hiked rates through 2022 and 2023. A lot of would-be homebuyers moved to the sidelines. It’s not to say that most of these people don’t want to purchase a home. In fact, most of them have every intention on making a purchase as we move forward.

Our public opinion polling done by Ipsos suggests that there’s a lot of these homebuyers that maybe this first move on the part of the Bank of Canada may see some of them start to get back into the market. In reality, we probably need to see 100 basis points, 150 basis points before we start to see a real marked acceleration in sales activity. We’ll see stronger activity in the second half of 2024, but even more so as we move into 2025.

Erin: Predicting is hard, we know that. What do you think July’s interest rate announcement could bring?

Jason: Sure. I think the Bank of Canada stated that they’re going to be watching all the various economic indicators. I think that’s the case. I do believe that if we continue to see slower growth in the economy and moderate growth in the employment market, then I think there is, at least, a chance that they could bring on another cut as we move into July. It’s probably 50-50 at best at this point.

Erin: Do you think a lot of people are holding on now? We’re selling a house, so this may be a little bit personal interest here, but I’ve got you here, I might as well ask. I’m sure that there are people who are very interested in what’s going to happen. Do you think that people are going to see the June rate drop and then go, “Okay, why don’t we wait until July?” What do you think, Shaun?

Shaun: I think the first one is really the big psychological one. Rates aren’t any lower. To Ann-Marie’s point, this was already priced into five-year mortgage rates well before, back a month or two ago. It’s really the psychological element at this point. To Jason’s point, there’s a lot of people that if it’s the actual rate itself that you’re getting that you’re waiting for, a lot of them are going to be waiting for maybe 100 or 200 basis points lower than what it is now. For people that are just wanting to be sure, unlike last year where they got burned that the loosening cycle had officially started, that the Bank of Canada is going to wave the green flag on that. I do think that there’s some segment of the market that will jump, and I expect to see it showing up in the first little bit of June.

Erin: What are your ideas on it, Ann-Marie? A July drop, what might happen?

Ann-Marie: Again, I think that it depends on how much this actually impacts the overall lending rates. I think it will encourage some people to reconsider getting back in that potentially couldn’t. In our market, it’s going to depend on if they have supply available to them. We’ve seen that there’s been a shift towards more affordable product. It hasn’t necessarily entirely curbed our demand, but we have seen that shift towards more affordable product. What we could start to see happen is a pickup in some of the higher-end product in our market as rates start to come down.

Erin: Interesting. All right. Let’s put into context some of these pricing peaks and valleys. If you’re looking at housing prices in a vacuum, whether it’s locally, provincially, or even nationally without context, it can be hard to see a way out. Is there any context to be added to the discussion around housing affordability that could put things into perspective, Shaun?

Shaun: Sure. I think the biggest impact on housing affordability is the fact that the Bank of Canada is expected to move rates back towards much more normal levels or what would be considered neutral by them, which may be 3%-ish from the 5% that we were at for so long. That’ll make a big difference for affordability. If you’re expecting a lot more in the way of price declines, the biggest price declines were really in 2022 from quite frankly, a very short-lived peak.

People have bought basically, between October of 2021 and March of 2022. Other than that, a lot of markets are already stabilized near those levels that we had before and since. It depends where you are. Quite frankly, I would expect to see some moderate price growth creeping back in as all this demand comes off the sidelines.

Jason: Every market is different. If you look at the greater Toronto area, we have seen a pretty marked uptick in available listings. Initially, as people move off the sidelines and back into the market, start to take advantage of lower borrowing costs, there’s still going to be quite a bit of choice out there. There will be negotiating power for buyers. Eventually, we’re going to eat through, we’re going to absorb some of that standing inventory.

When that starts to happen, there’s going to be more competition. You’re going to see more interest in a given home. That’s when you start to see upward pressure stocking exerted on home prices. We will start to see that, later on, this year and I think even more so into 2025, especially if we don’t see any meaningful additions of that to the housing stock. I’m sure we’ll talk more about that.

Erin: We will. We’ll also look across the country too, but, of course, when we’ve got Ann-Marie with us from Calgary, which is such a fascinating market to begin with. What’s your perspective on that in terms of the prices? What’s going on right now, or what you can expect, and what you’ve seen, Ann-Marie?

Ann-Marie: First of all, our market is obviously very different. We are relatively affordable when we look at other markets in BC or Ontario in comparison. We have gone through periods of price adjustments. We’ve been always known as this boom and bust market. However, I want to remind people that even though we’ve gone through some adjustments, our prices are rising again, and we still have a lot of catch up to do. We’re still quite a significant spread compared to some other larger markets in the country, so it is a little different here.

Now, that’s been one of those factors that has attracted people to our market, and it’s why our demand has stayed relatively strong throughout this time frame, and it’s why we’ve seen some really strong price growth. It wasn’t so long ago that we saw prices actually, at least, say stable or somewhat slide. I think, again, a lot of that is to do with how we add supply and how much supply we can add. A little bit of a different scenario here. Like I said, prices have been rising pretty steadily for the past two years, but when you look at that spread, we’re still far more affordable.

Now, people in Calgary don’t necessarily feel like it’s affordable after the price jumps that we’ve had, but, put some number of perspective to this. We still have product available like our typical apartment condos in the $350,000 range. People can still purchase detached homes in the 700,000 range. Very different market conditions here and for us, our affordable is a little bit outside of Calgary where we still have more options in all types of home options.

Erin: We’ll get into the whys and wherefores of that as well, Ann-Marie, but let’s talk about interprovincial migration. Alberta knows a few things about that. There’s been an increase in interprovincial migration in the last few years, of course, Alberta being one of the country’s hotspots and it’s not just because of great hockey. What might be causing this? Let’s get all your opinions on this. We’ll start with you, Ann-Marie. What makes Alberta so different?

Ann-Marie: I think our relative affordability has been a draw because when we look at our interprovincial migration; the majority of people have been coming from Ontario, followed by BC. These are the two markets that we’re seeing a lot of people come into the city. Again, our affordability is, we’re far more affordable relative to those two markets. That’s been one of the factors that have attracted people here. Further to that, especially we did have supply going into some of this. Now, obviously, supplies become a bit more of a challenge now. Other than that, we’ve also been creating a lot of employment. Employment has actually been improving here and really a lot of professional and technical jobs, which tend to be in a higher pay grade. This is another factor that’s really contributed to it. It’s not just the relative affordability, it’s also the positive employment situation. Even our economy has really been outperforming some of the other provinces in the country.

Erin: Shaun, your take on the interprovincial migration?

Shaun: That’s been an interesting one to track. As Ann-Marie said, a lot of Ontario to Alberta, and a lot of that is the younger set, 25 to 35, looking for employment, but also home ownership where that’s become very difficult in Ontario. There is even some evidence in the demographic data that the 65-plus boomer parents are following their kids and grandkids out West because what’s the point of having your big Toronto home if no one’s going to visit you? Another trend is the older Gen Xers moving out East for their retirements.

I guess maybe the 60-years-old, they got called back to the office to make that Toronto commute and said, “You know what, I’m going to sell my big house and move out there where I can get a place for 300 and retire early.” Lots of interesting trends. I think we have a tendency to blame COVID for a lot of these. Certainly, COVID was a turbocharger of a lot of things there were, but up and out to be able to afford a home has been going on for a very long time.

Erin: Ann-Marie, you mentioned the tech sector. Is that one of the parts of the growth of Alberta where people can move to be at home, be working from home? Has that added to the attraction in Alberta?

Ann-Marie: I think that does come into play. There’s no question that sector has been growing here. Alberta has been able to attract a lot of investment into even venture capital. That’s been one factor that has supported some of our growth. The majority of our industry is still in the energy sector and spin-offs from the energy sector. I think that ability to work remotely has increased the appeal, especially because of our relative affordability.

That if you’re not having to go into the office and now you can, all of a sudden, purchase and get into homeownership, as Shaun was saying, we had product available in all price ranges for several years. I think that for a lot of people who really desire homeownership, Alberta is really a good option for them, especially if they’re not having to go into the office. We’ve improved our connectivity in terms of airlines. We’re seeing growth in different industries that we haven’t seen. That’s really speaking to some of our diversification that’s happening in this province as well.

Erin: Jason, we all heard during the pandemic about people who were living the dream, going up to the cottage, staying at the cottage, working from the cottage. Is that still happening? Is that still a thing or Is that bump? Are we over that and it’s back to normal thing? What are you seeing in terms of that remote working now?

Jason: It’s interesting. If you think about the movement out of the GTA property to surrounding areas, it could be cottage country, it could be other smaller metropolitan areas in the greater Golden Horseshoe like the Kitcheners and Hamilton’s of the world, that’s a trend we were already seeing prior to COVID in the sense that people didn’t want to leave Ontario to say move to Alberta, but they were looking for a place that was more affordable that they could purchase a home in Southern Ontario. We see that, we look at our members’ activities. It used to be that the great, great majority of transactions reported through TRREB’s MLS system were within the traditional GTA boundaries.

Now, you’re looking at more than a third of those transactions are actually in other centers in Southern Ontario. People’s clients have started to look further afield to purchase a home, and our membership has been helping them out. If you think about, though, whether those people are being replaced, they are. We’re not seeing a hollowing out of the GTA, it’s just from a different source. We’re the single greatest beneficiary of immigration into the country. People want to move to the greater Toronto area to take advantage of a diverse labor market and what have you, but it impacts the housing market differently, rental versus ownership.

Erin: How does interprovincial migration, we will get to immigration, Jason, but how does interprovincial migration affect any housing market? Are there areas popping up as hot spots that might not have been considered before? You talk about the general spread, Jason, into the Golden Horseshoe or even East to Port Hope, Trenton, all of the places that used to seem so far from Toronto, but now people are finding they’d rather drive for two hours than sit in traffic for two hours. How does this migration affect the housing market? Shaun, do you want to address that first?

Shaun: Sure. I guess the biggest impact would be that it’s spreading, whereas it used to be that it was Toronto and Vancouver were expensive and most other places weren’t. When you’ve got all of those people moving out into those other places, once Toronto and Vancouver were in some sense limit to how far those prices could go up and how many people you could jam in there, it spreads across the country, including during COVID, where it was disproportionately to the East Coast, places where they were considered very affordable before. It’s a double-edged sword because it’s nice to have that home price growth and that activity level in places that were pretty sleepy for decades. If you’re a local person in Fredericton, for example, and you’re looking to buy that starter bungalow, and you’re now having to compete with a retiree couple from Toronto who just sold a place for $1.7 million, that’s where the double-edged sword comes in.

Erin: We’ve touched on this a little bit so far in terms of demographic. Shaun, you mentioned retirees from Toronto moving to Fredericton and people also wanting that particular house coming from different income brackets. When it comes to location popularity, can you see anything or tell us about anything that you’ve seen and the contributing factors that you’ve noticed?

Shaun: Sure. One of the things that’s going on in demographics all around the world, quite frankly, with the hockey stick of population that popped up after World War II, is that most of those people are still around and just aging through time. In that middle-aged space, you’ve got now your boomers, your Gen Xers, your Millennials all in that space at the same time. We stopped building the traditional low-rise single-family home about 20 years ago.

A lot of those, not to make accusations, but a lot of the empty-nester boomers are stuck in those big homes. A lot of those bedrooms are collecting dust, whereas a lot of young people are looking to start families and can’t do that in a 600-square-foot condo. As we mentioned, they’re moving out further. I don’t know whether that makes those other regions popular. It’s mostly because they’re more affordable to get a place that’s suitable for, say, a family of four.

Erin: Ann-Marie, what are you seeing? Are you seeing more retirees, or you’re seeing the younger end of the demographic coming in and trying to really start something?

Ann-Marie: I would say we’re seeing younger demographics increase here. That’s what’s attracting people to our city. Again, part of that is because we do have that supply of detached homes that are larger that can house a family, as well as other product types and in affordable ranges relative to other larger markets. We traditionally find that our interprovincial migration tends to be younger people that are coming here. We continue to see that trend play out.

It’s been the largest growth in terms of our demographics, and a lot of them are coming specifically into Calgary. Again, that has to do with that future opportunity as well. What does that job prospect look like? In addition to that cost of housing, we are relatively affordable, especially given our salaries here tend to be a little bit higher than some of the other locations in the country.

Erin: Also, Ann-Marie, as you well know, of course, Alberta has this spread out factor as well, where Okotoks, and Longview, and Turner Valley, and Black Diamond, and even Airdrie were places that were so far from Calgary at one time. These places are just a drive away now and not a huge one. What about the spread-ability of Calgary? Has that worked to your benefit? Is the market taking advantage of that geographically?

Ann-Marie: It does. Yes, for sure. I think one of the differences is in our market, is that we can add supply when we need to. Traditionally, throughout every cycle we’ve seen, whenever we run into these extreme shortage scenarios, we see the new home industry is able to really expand. Last year Calgary had a record level of housing starts in the Calgarian region area. We have to remember that we are not like Toronto where our surrounding communities, or surrounding cities, or towns are a very long commute. We have markets like Airdrie that it’s actually a closer drive if you work in the North part of the city than it would be if you lived in South Calgary.

I think that that’s an important distinction as well in how our market’s a little different, is you’re not driving that far out for affordability. It is a little different. We still have land available within the city limits that can add significant homes. We’re seeing construction happen and respond to basically the supply shortage that we’re currently facing. I think that’s always been the difference in Alberta, is because we do have a lot of land.

In fact, I think that now we’re starting to see some shifts as well, not just from Calgary, but in Edmonton, who last year recorded price declines. They’re starting to see a bit of a shift as well that more people are considering Edmonton, which is relatively more affordable than Calgary. I think that there has to be a lot of perspective in the difference about how you can add supply. That’s something that our province has been really good at doing, but part of that is because we have that land supply available.

Erin: In 2023, Canada’s immigration numbers were much higher than we’re accustomed to, putting more pressure on an already stressed Canadian housing market. This added pressure on the market, it also affects supply and affordability. How have you seen this play out in the Canadian housing markets? We’ll start with you, Shaun.

Shaun: Sure. Just for anyone that doesn’t know, it’s a combination of immigration, which we have a target for, and non-permanent resident arrivals that add to that population growth, typically in the 300,000 to 400,000 person range, sorry, from about World War II until about 10 years ago. Last year it was 1.25 million. That’s a huge jump in people. Everyone needs to live somewhere. I think what’s amazing is that we’re really not seeing much of an impact in the ownership market. It’s all flooding into the rental market, which was already struggling beforehand. We do expect to see some flow out of the rental market, into the ownership market, even in the absence of big rate decreases just because for a lot of people, it’s going to start to look a lot more just relatively favorable to buy, even at very high rates and prices, than to stay at a rental market that’s increasingly expensive and maybe precarious too in terms of being able to stay in your unit.

Jason: It’s interesting. We’ve done a lot of polling around immigration, and certainly, our last round of Ipsos polling found a couple things. There’s a short-term and a long-term story to this. When we’re seeing record levels of immigration into Canada and certainly, drilling down to the GTA, a lot of that initially is pointed at the rental market. We’ve seen very tight rental market conditions over the last number of years. At the same time, when you look at people’s propensity to purchase a home, we actually find that newcomers to Canada, the period to move from renting to owning is actually shorter than for households that were born here.

If you think about that, the last couple of years, we’ve seen record immigration that’s really impacted the rental market, but these people are actually going to be moving in fairly short order into the home ownership side of things. Putting interest rates aside, just the simple fact that we’re seeing this strong population growth on the back of a population cohort that has a higher propensity to buy, that really provides a longer-term view that we’re going to continue to see strong demand for ownership housing.

Erin: That’s fascinating. All right. You’ll remember that CREA’s pre-budget submission includes recommendations on how the affordability and supply issues can be addressed, just what we’ve been talking about today. From your individual perspectives, what types of housing are needed to solve the housing crisis? We’ll start with you, Shaun.

Shaun: Sure. When we were advocating for more supply, it was more of everything. You can choose the number you want to look at, whether we need an additional 1.4 million homes per the PBO just to catch up by 2030, or whether we need another 3 1/2 million per CMHC by 2030, which is a tall order, given the fact that we’ll be lucky to make the 2.3 million baseline that that needs to be added on top of.

You really need more of everything. It’s not one or the other, but it may have to be one or the other in terms of capacity constraints to build. I think our more recent submission does encourage the government to look at a modular housing of factory built penalization, mass timber, and some of those new technologies where there may be some really big opportunities going forward to do things better, more energy efficiently, faster. It does have some challenges, which is why it hasn’t taken off yet.

Erin: Jason, the missing middle, tell us about that.

Jason: I think it’s a really important concept. It jumps off something that Shaun said earlier about more aged households living in a home that’s way too big for them. It’s not that a lot of these people want to live in this large home, it’s that they want to live in their current neighborhood. They don’t want to move away from friends, they don’t want to move away from the amenities that they’re used to, and they simply don’t have other housing options that would better meet their needs.

If we’re able to see a greater diversity of home types, not just more housing in the aggregate, in a lot of built-up neighborhoods, but also in new subdivisions and developments that are being put up, I think you’d see an easier movement through that housing continuum over time, from renting, to owning, to buying your second home, et cetera. People would be more easily able to find a home that meets their needs. What you’d see then is more churn in the marketplace and less of these tight market conditions, some of which are due to the fact that people don’t believe they’ll be able to list their current home for sale and find something else that meets their needs.

Erin: That sounds brilliant. I love the idea of that, staying in your neighborhood but downsizing at the same time. What is the big obstacle there? Is it NIMBY, where there was a 4,000 square foot house if it turns into a multi-family like six or even just row houses for three families? Is it NIMBY? What is it? What do you think is the main obstacle there?

Jason: I think certainly, when we first started banging the drum on the need for more housing supply, it was thrown out by some policymakers as a bit of a red herring. I think over the better part of the last decade, there’s really been that realization that housing supply has been a problem. We’ve got a housing supply deficit that’s built-up over time. We’re also not building enough homes to account for the record levels of population growth we’re expecting to see over the next few years. With that in mind, I think there’s been a real positive shift on the part of all levels of government that A, we need to see more housing supply in the aggregate, but we also need to see a greater diversity of home types brought online.

I think that started to permeate down to the neighborhood level. I think more and more people are seeing A, yes, we need more housing supply, and B, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to oppose it. I’ll tell you, we did a study looking at what the art of the possible is for missing middle types of housing, both in existing built-up neighborhoods, but also in new developments. Some of the options look pretty cool. I think there’s an educational component as well. If people that are initially opposed to new types of housing in their neighborhood looked at what some of the possibilities are, I think there’d be a lot less resistance.

Erin: I love the thought of that. Ann-Marie, Alberta, what’s going on there?

Ann-Marie: First of all, we’ve only really seen a struggle to keep up with supply over the past two years, and that’s just because of the sudden influx we’ve had of migrants. I think that’s just some of the differences that, again, our market has had. Now, with regards to adding supply, there’s no question. I think we need all different forms of supply. Now, our newer communities are quite diverse. They do have a really good selection of your typical detached homes to your semis, and row, and apartment properties. I think that because we have still a lot of new community development, we’re seeing that good mix in all of our newer communities.

Now, when it comes to the existing communities, sometimes that’s where there is some challenges. Often the challenge in our market is not that the redevelopment can’t happen, it’s what type of pricing are you coming in at? The biggest challenge that we’re seeing in our market is development of affordable type of ownership properties. Again, affordable is always relative to each market, but for us, it’s how do we get that product available in some of those lower price ranges? We traditionally saw even apartment style product, we used to have product available in the 200,000s. Now that’s disappearing. Where we’re finding the biggest challenge to add supply is in those lower price ranges.

That’s where we’re seeing supply actually decline. I think that for us, it really comes down to what are those options to increase that land supply available to develop on? That’s something that is another thing that tends to influence our market, is that ability to unlock that land for development. We’ve seen land costs rise significantly, especially when there’s been some boundaries placed on new development within the city limits and outside of our city. Those are things that we’re looking at on a policy basis, but I think that the biggest challenge that we’re facing today is having supply come in some of those lower price ranges where we traditionally had supply.

Erin: What impact does our REALTOR® advocacy have on the current state of the housing market? We’ll start with you, Shaun.

Shaun: We’ve got 160,000 voice strong membership. We have a very strong presence up on Parliament Hill, a lot of connections and meetings that are happening all the time, PAC days here in Ottawa, where we basically meet with every MP in the country and with the REALTOR® representative from their area. We also have PAC at home where members meet their MP where they live. We’ve got a really, really, very, very strong advocacy voice here in Ottawa. I think that the things that we’re advocating for are being echoed by other organizations as well. It’s everything on the supply side. I think that all political parties are on side with that. It really is a front burner issue in Canada. A big part of that is been that we’ve been out there for the last few years saying this is what you need to be focused on.

Erin: Jason, you’ve been talking about supply as well, of course.

Jason: Thinking about government relations at all levels of organized real estate, whether you’re thinking about the board level, the provincial associations, or CREA at the national level, there’s been a great partnership there. I think that’s in realization that it’s all three levels of government that have a role to play in housing policy and certainly recently making things work from a supply perspective.

I think we’ve really seen the benefits of that cooperation over the last number of years as the feds, the provincial government, and local government, certainly in the GTA and across the country have come up with some unique new policy stances and platforms that hopefully, we’ll see more housing supply come online. I think the next couple of years, we’re going to tell this tale because we need to move from the policy paper to getting actual shovels in the ground.

Erin: Oh, thank you, Jason. I love that you talked about the future here because it’s a perfect way to begin our wrap up to this Episode 51. What is one thing that ®S should pay attention to this year? We’ll go local, and provincial, and nationally. Jason, let’s start with you, again, on this one.

Jason: I think at the local level, if you look at a region like the GTA, every neighborhood can be different. Whereas in some parts of the GTA, even in this environment of higher borrowing costs, some neighborhoods have been very tight. If a listing comes on the market, you’re seeing a lot of competition for it. In other areas, it’s going to take some time to see market conditions pick back up. Of course, then that dictates what your strategy is going to be as a buyer or seller. A REALTOR® that really knows what’s going on in a local area is, obviously, going to have a lot of value to bring to that transaction.

The other important thing I’ll note is just the value that REALTORS® in general bring to the overall economy. We’ve estimated that every transaction that gets reported through TRREB’s MLS system results in another $70,000 worth of expenditure in the local economy. There’s billions of dollars of economic benefit and associated jobs and tax revenues that’s associated with REALTORS®’ work.

Ann-Marie: For us, I think the key thing is to understand that we are different than sometimes the national trends. Again, looking at it on what are those local factors that are driving our province and our overall economy? Are we going to continue to attract people from different parts of the country? Is our migration numbers going to stay strong? That has a significant impact on our housing market. I think that understanding some of those different trends really come down to some of the fundamentals that are driving our provincial economy versus what you might be seeing in other parts of the country. I think it’s going to be very important for both buyers, and sellers, and REALTORS® to really understand some of the dynamics within our market. Again, what we’re seeing is very differing trends in the lower price ranges, and different product types, and as well as by location. Our market is still a seller’s market condition, and that’s not really expected to change over the short-term until we see some shifts in supply.

Erin: Last word to Shaun Cathcart. Shaun, what do you say about what’s coming up?

Shaun: I guess the big one would be, think about boring costs coming down. They could come down faster than people think. Think about how much pent-up demand there was beforehand, how much pent-up demand there’s been the last two years when the market’s been very quiet, and how much additional demand is coming through population growth. It’s not a database that we can measure, but we know that there is a record number of people out there on the sidelines ready to go. You’ve got increasing turmoil in rental markets, pushing people towards the ownership market, and when boring costs drop, be prepared to get a lot busier maybe faster than you think.

Erin: I love that note on which to end. Thank you. Thank you all so very much for sharing your wisdom here with us all today. Best of luck to you in the second half of 2024.

Shaun: Thank you.

Jason: Thanks very much.

Ann-Marie: Thank you.

Erin: That conversation certainly gave us a lot to digest. If you want even more context or to keep up with how things play out, visit creastats.ca for the latest housing market analysis. Of course, if you liked this episode, please tell us by giving us a rating, or you can review us on your preferred podcast platform. We always appreciate it. REAL TIME is brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA. Production is courtesy of Alphabet® Creative, with tech support from Rob Whitehead. Thank you so much for joining us here. I’m Erin Davis. We’ll talk to you soon on REAL TIME.

From websites and ads to social media, newsletters, and podcasts, content is everywhere and has the potential to be a powerful business driver.

But how do you consistently create good, creative content?

That’s where Melanie Deziel comes in, a creativity coach and leading voice in content marketing. With clients including Google, Netflix, The New York Times, and others, Melanie joins REAL TIME to share her framework for systemizing creativity, making it easier and faster to generate content that stands out and connects with your audience.

Learn more about Melanie and her book The Content Fuel Framework at MelanieDeziel.com.

Transcript

Erin Davis: Web pages, social posts, newsletters, podcasts; content is everywhere, but do you need to be too? I’m Erin Davis and welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS® brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. Joining us today is Melanie Deziel, a creativity coach and one of the top voices in content marketing. Hitting a wall with your content? Not sure which channels are best for your business? Let’s delve into what makes a strong content strategy with our guest today.

Well, thank you for joining us today on REAL TIME, Melanie. I’m so excited about this discussion. Let’s start with the basics. What is content marketing and why might it be an important tool for entrepreneurs?

Melanie Deziel: Content marketing is a really broad term and it can be used to include a lot of things. I think for our purposes, we want to think about any time we’re intentionally using content to communicate with our audience. That could be the copy that’s on your website or the copy of an email, it’s the content you’re putting on social media, it’s the videos you may record. All of that is really the content that we’re talking about here, things we are constructing as REALTORS® to try to really convey a specific message to our audience.

Erin: One of the phrases you use, and I love your books and I’m so glad we’re going to be focusing on one of them today, is random acts of content. Now let’s look into that a little bit. What do you take that to mean?

Melanie: A lot of times what happens is you have this vague understanding that I’m supposed to be on social, I’m supposed to create content, and without putting a ton of strategic thought into it, because that’s not what we were trained for after all, you just do your best. You throw something out there, but you haven’t put enough thought into whether that serves your business, whether that serves your goals with who you’re trying to reach, whether the audience is correct. That’s where we end up with the random acts of content. You’re using all of your resources, your time to create these things, but they may not be serving your overall goals.

Erin: Okay. Most REALTORS® would agree it’s important to have a social media presence, obviously, but what other channels are cornerstones, Melanie, of a strong content strategy?

Melanie: The content strategy specifics are going to be different depending on what your priorities are and, as we’ll talk about later, I’m sure, how you like to create content, what kind of content you create. What we do know is that social media is important, so is your website. If you have a web property where you are sending people, you want to make sure that there’s stuff there worth seeing. Not just your listings, not just your background professionally, but maybe some helpful blog posts, maybe some articles about common challenges they may run into, maybe other helpful content that’s going to allow them to be a better client for you and allow you to better serve them. Thinking about what you can offer on your website as well as what you’re offering on social media is a really good way to do that. We also want to consider the role that email plays in helping us to build that relationship, but also to sustain it over the long term.

Erin: Okay, let’s talk about the frequency and cadence of emails. There’s a meme going around that says, “Hey, I know I bought a toaster from you once. It doesn’t mean I want to hear from you every single day.” How do you measure that? How do you find not only your comfort zone, which could be every day because we’ve always got something to say, but what you think that the person seeing it in their inbox is going to say, “Okay, I’m going to click on this.” What do you think, Melanie?

Melanie: I love the meme example that you shared. We have to put ourselves in the shoes of the toaster company for a minute here and think about, for our audience, for the relationship we already have with them, what is a frequency of hearing from us that they would expect and then tolerate, right? Because what they expect may be lower than what we ideally need to do, but what we don’t want to cross is that tolerance threshold, where they’re like, “Oh my goodness, get out of here. Mark as spam, delete, unsubscribe.” We’re trying to avoid that at all costs, so you want to think about that. It’s going to be different.

For your established clients, folks you’ve worked with who already know, like and trust you, you have a little more leeway. You can talk to them a little more frequently. I think every day is still pretty strong. I think we’re probably looking at once a week or every other week is really a great place to start to establish yourself and then to test from there more or less frequent. Anything less than every two weeks and people kind of forget who you are when you do pop up. Anything more than that and you have the possibility that, as we mentioned, you may be showing up a little bit more often than they’d like to have you.

Erin: Okay. What might a REALTOR® consider when choosing content channels and formats? Because there are so many out there, Melanie. How do we choose that?

Melanie: There are so many and it can be really stressful. There’s a lot of pressure, I think, on us to be everywhere, do everything, be super active on all these different platforms. I would really encourage you to think strategically about a couple different things. The first thing you want to think about is where your audience is. Because if you’re showing up every day on TikTok, getting millions of views for your amazing dance moves but none of your audience is there, that doesn’t do anything for you. That’s a lot of time and effort that you’re spending that could be better served actually reaching your audience.

You want to think about that. Where is my audience? The answers to that you can find by looking for the basic social demographics of each of the different platforms. That information is usually pretty easy to find because they want their advertisers to know who they’re reaching. As a general rule, if you’re going after, high-income professionals, for example, LinkedIn is going to be the best place for you to reach that audience. If you’re looking for moms, families, Facebook and Pinterest are going to be two great options for you. Instagram also has a lot of really great demographics that you can dig into based on the data they share and try to identify where are these folks. You could always, of course, pay to reach them through ads, but ideally, we’d like to make sure we’re showing up in the places where we could reach them organically. That’s the first thing to think of. That’s the first one. It’s like, where is my audience?

Erin: Right, fish where the fish are.

Melanie: Exactly. We don’t want to be fishing in an empty pond or fishing in a pond full of something we’re not allowed to catch.

Erin: Right.

Melanie: The other thing you want to think about, though, is like in our analogy here, what kind of fishing do you like to do? Are you a fly fisher? Are you a deep-sea fisher? Are you just a casual shore fisher for bass and trout? That’s about as far as my fishing analogy can go here. You want to think about, what is your favorite way to create content? Because here again, I’m coming back to TikTok, if you decide– you discover that your audience is on TikTok, but you are absolutely averse to being on video, you don’t want to be showing your face, you don’t want to be dancing, you don’t want to be doing lip syncing, then that’s not a good match.

What we’re looking for is kind of a Venn diagram overlap of, where is your audience and what kind of content do you like to create? How do you like to communicate? Hopefully, we find something that’s really in the center there that allows you to create in the way that’s comfortable for you and effective, but also allows you to reach the ideal audience. If that overlap isn’t as big as you’d like it to be, that’s a time to think about the tools or the talent you can add to your team to try to fill that gap.

Erin: That’s a great point. Don’t feel like you have to do it all yourself. You, for example, are an amazing communicator. I love your speaking and everything that you do, but you don’t love, say, the nuts and bolts, the cutting, the editing and that sort of thing. That’s where you say, hey, somebody has to be the star of this and somebody has this other set of tools, so you go about finding who has the other set of tools, right?

Melanie: Absolutely, yes. A lot of times the folks that we look to, especially on social media or in marketing, the folks that we’re looking to as examples and saying, “I want to create content like that,” that person very well may be using a professional photographer. They’re not shooting photos on their iPhone. That person may have a whole video crew set up to make their videos look incredible and you may not have access to that. It is important to take a look at who are we setting as our standard, and are we working with the same resources, because tools and talent can make a big difference if you are trying to fill that gap. Hopefully, you’re able to find the way you like to communicate. You’ve got the support of tools and talent that help you do it, and you’re able to bring that content into an environment where your audience is ready to consume it.

Erin: Yes, that comfort zone is so important because if it’s not comfortable for you, it’s not organic and it feels like a drudge, and I think that the audience can pick up on that. What do you think about that?

Melanie: Absolutely. The reality is we got so much to do. Nobody has time to be doing things that make them absolutely miserable because there’s something to be said for that. When you show up in a video or in a podcast or in some other environment, you need to bring your whole self. You’ve got to dial your energy up a little bit. You’re a little more animated, a little more movement, a little louder than you might normally be. If you’re not feeling it, that’s going to come through really quickly. It’s going to be obvious that you’re not having fun, and that’s not a whole heck of a lot of fun to watch or listen to somebody really uncomfortable or really clearly doesn’t want to be there.

We want to make sure we’re bringing good energy, and sometimes that means we have to change the way that we create content, we might have to change how frequently, and really tapping into, when does your energy work best? Just as a personal example, I know for me, I’m not a morning person. I love coffee; still doesn’t help. I’m not a morning person. If I need to show up on video, I need to be animated and wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, morning is not going to be it for me. I’m going to be looking to schedule that filming, hopefully, sometime in the afternoon where I know I’ve had breakfast, I’m ready to go, I’ve warmed up and I’m feeling a lot more alive. Those are all things that you want to consider too. When do you do your best writing, or when are you your most alive and animated? Because that might impact when you decide to create the content.

Erin: Melanie, what’s the best way to truly find out where your audience is, or do you just put in the work and watch what happens? How do you find that perfect pond, to go back to the fish analogy?

Melanie: All right, we’ll do fishing for a little more. The greatest thing to do is to take a look around. If you’ve got other fishermen, other REALTORS®, other folks in your space who are targeting the same audience you are, they’re trying to catch the same fish, take a look and see where they’re fishing. Where are they dropping their bait? Where are they spending time? If they’re having those conversions, they’re having that engagement, that’s a good indication that, hey, maybe that fishing hole over there might be perfect for the fish I’m trying to catch, for the audience I’m trying to reach.

The other thing you could do is– I don’t know how far our fishing analogy goes here. Maybe the Fish and Game website has some data about what fish are in which ponds. Our equivalent being you’re going to look and see what you can find about that demographic data to see who are the users of these different networks, who’s present there, who can you expect to reach. There are some tools that can help you do that too.

A great tool that I love to talk about is SparkToro, Spark T-O-R-O. It’s a tool that allows you to plug in some keywords or an account or two on social media that you know is reaching the right audience. Then it will show you the related accounts, the related hashtags, the related podcasts they listen to, all of those different things, to give you a sense of where do these people hang out when they’re talking about these key terms that are really important to me.

Erin: Okay, how hard is it to use SparkToro and is it free?

Melanie: There’s a free– there’s free search access, so you could start and test it out for free. Then you can also go ahead and upgrade if it’s a tool you decide you want to use more regularly or more intensely. What I will say is it’s a lot more reasonable than many of the enterprise tools that are out there. You can, of course– I mean, there are whole agencies you can hire to do social listening and sentiment testing and all kinds of stuff. That’s really too much for most of our purposes. A smaller tool like SparkToro that’s going to help you identify those audience overlaps is probably just the right size for what most of us are doing.

Erin: Excellent. Okay, I’m going to give it a go. I am. You’re known for coming up with creative ways for businesses to engage their audiences. This is what you get hired to speak for, large groups. Now, what would you say to someone who says, “Look, I’m not creative”?

Melanie: First of all, I’d probably take a break and have a little cry because it breaks my heart to hear folks say that. Because the reality is when we’re young, when we’re kids, there’s no fear of not having a good idea. You see your kids– if you’ve got little ones, you know they come home with the wildest drawings, the craziest ideas, the best outfit combinations that they’ve picked all themselves, no fear of embarrassment, no worries about whether it’s a good idea. Through schooling, through socialization, we start to become more self-conscious and we start to believe that there are negative consequences for bad ideas. The reality is the stakes on what we’re talking about here are very low. We should feel safe to come up with ideas, to talk things out with our team, to discuss the different options without fear of humiliation or professional downfall. We’re talking about something that should be fun, communicating with our audience, which we do know how to do.

Most of the time, if we can get through the therapy phase of helping make sure that everyone feels comfortable, it’s also about having the right prompt. A lot of times we just focus on– we have a hang-up like that, “I’m not creative,” or I’m just the, blank, person. You focus on just this one thing and you reinforce that idea for yourself. Instead of focusing on why you can’t do something or why you’re not well-suited to it or why you’re not creative, let’s switch up the prompt and ask yourself something like, what could I teach my audience? What have I learned that my audience would want to hear? What could I do that would make their lives easier? What kind of information is my audience trying to find or what questions are they asking? Those questions are going to get you to the same result, which is something you can create that they will value, but hopefully it’s not sort of digging into those same insecurities that may come from a place of being concerned about the quality of your ideas.

Erin: That would make it a whole lot less scary just to rephrase the prompt, what does my audience want to know? Then you use the tools and stuff that you’ve mentioned and maybe even like chambers of commerce and the things that are so local and important to the people in that area or where your client is. That’s brilliant advice. Yes.

Melanie: Thank you.

Erin: You’re welcome. Now, I know as a writer, you’ve probably had the writer’s block, but what about people who get caught up in a creativity slump? Then how do you nudge us ahead?

Melanie: If we’re stuck and a new prompt isn’t working, like we just talked about, then sometimes it’s helpful to just switch things up entirely. I know that sounds a little scary, but there are little things you can do that data and studies have shown us actually help your creativity. Small, simple things like try taking a different route to work in the morning, driving a different road. Try brushing your teeth with your wrong hand. What we’re trying to do is get our brain out of a rut and get new inputs for our world. If we’re consuming the same things, seeing the same things, it can be hard to come up with new ideas because there’s a lot of sameness around us. Even just little ways to expose yourself to new information; listen to some new music, watch something on Netflix that’s a totally different genre than you’d normally watch. Just find a way to spice up your inputs a little bit so that you, hopefully, make some new connections between different things that are going to inspire you to create some content.

Erin: All right, how about cutting back on the frequency of it? That can feel like a vacation. If you take away the having to do it, the obligation, then something can become more of the joy that it was meant to be.

Melanie: Absolutely, yes. There’s a lot of burnout and fatigue that you can encounter, especially if– I talked about earlier that once a week or every other week is a great starting point because that’s less likely to lead to overwhelm. If you, right out of the gate, commit, “I’m going to do a new episode of my podcast every single day,” there’s a really good chance you’re going to burn yourself out quickly and it’s not fun anymore when it becomes an obligation. Yes, absolutely. If what you’re feeling is sort of overwhelm and burnout and it’s just not fun, that’s a good sign that maybe take a step back, take a break or reevaluate the way that you’re doing it to see if you can make it a little more approachable and a little more enjoyable again.

Erin: All right. What I’m really getting from this message is if you’re a content creator and you pick a day like, say, St. Patrick- no, Cinco de Mayo. Let’s pick Cinco de Mayo, and everybody and his dog is posting something about, how do you make a margarita? What’s your favorite? How hot do you like your nachos? All that kind of thing. Is there some way that you can flip around something that everybody’s posting about and make it unique, make it matter to the person who is digesting or receiving that content, Melanie? What would you do?

Melanie: Absolutely. Those types of posts that you talked about, they can feel like a lot of fun because we tend to get responses, but what they’re not is really differentiated. If everyone’s out there posting, what’s your favorite topping for a taco, or what kind of nachos or margarita are you having today, we kind of blend in in this sea of content sameness and that’s not what we’re looking for.

The thing to think about is, what makes my perspective different? What is it about your perspective that can change the way this is? Because only you have lived your life, only you run your business, only you live in the place that you live, only you know the people you know. What you might consider is what if you were to poll all of your clients and ask what their favorite Mexican restaurants are in the area. That would be very unique. That’s something that no one else can do. They don’t have your clients, they don’t live in your area. Even if they do live in your area, bring your own flavor into it. What are your favorite places to go around the neighborhood? What is the best meal you’ve had in a particular food genre that you can speak to and speak to folks who are in your neighborhood? Because the best place to take your kids for all-you-can-eat tacos in the neighborhood is so much more relevant to your neighbors than which of these toppings can you not live without on your nachos.

Erin: That’s fantastic. When you think about it, if you were at the dog park and you just sat down on a bench next to someone, you wouldn’t turn to them and say, “Hey, what’s your favorite margarita today for Cinco de Mayo?” You might seem a little off, to say the least. You would ask something of the person you’re connecting with on social media just as you would in-person and maybe reframe it like that?

Melanie: That’s right. Yes, act like a human. The example you gave is actually perfect. If someone sat down next to you at the dog park and they turned and said very robotically, “What is your favorite topping on nachos?” He could be like, “Who is this robot, and which of my neighbors have they replaced here?” It doesn’t feel natural. Yes, think of it that way. What’s the conversation you would have? If you did run into a client and you were talking about that holiday or that topic, what would that conversation be like, and try to have your content align more closely to that.

Because the other thing you don’t want to do is have all of your content giving out a certain feeling, a certain vibe, a certain emotion that doesn’t align with how you actually show up in the real world. Just because everyone else is posting about margaritas doesn’t mean that you have to be the party gal posting the same thing if that’s not how you are, if that’s not what you’re interested in. Maybe you’re someone who really likes history and you want to talk about the history of the holiday, or you want to talk about maybe someone in the community who has had a huge impact because of something having to do with that holiday. There’s ways for you to look at it through your own lens and not feel like you’ve got to show up looking like everybody else because you’re not.

Erin: You’ve given us so much food for thought so far and actually made us hungry at the same time. Thank you very much. I’m wanting nachos. Of course, you’ve written a couple of excellent books that are also filled with all kinds of great information, including Prove It, and the one that we’re discussing today, The Content Fuel Framework or How to Generate Unlimited Story Ideas. Now in it, along with all kinds of great insight like we’re hearing today on content and creativity, you share a system for creative brainstorming. Okay, how does the system work?

Melanie: It’s a really good question. What I find when I’m working with clients, when I’m working especially with folks who are doing their day job and don’t have to spend as much time marketing their day job, the idea of coming up with content can be really challenging. It feels like a foreign concept. It’s not our day-to-day. Most often what I find is people get stuck because they’re trying to think of too much at once. They want that one strike of genius, that one lightning strike, light bulb moment, the muse and just the right amount of coffee and to have something just magically happen in full.

What a content idea really is, is it’s actually two things. When we break it down to its smallest parts, it becomes a lot easier for us to tackle that challenge of coming up with an idea. That first part that we want to think of is the focus. What is this content about? What is the story, the theme, the topic, the message? Those are all synonyms you might use. What are we actually trying to communicate here? Once we have that answered, then we can ask the question, what’s the best format to bring that to life?

The example I like to give here is the reason we start with focus is because we’ve all gotten a package in the mail that the item inside was nowhere near the appropriate size for the box that was chosen. Somebody decided how to deliver that to you before they decided the content of what was inside, and the mismatch was really obvious to us. It creates a lot of waste, a lot of filler, and we don’t feel good about it at the end of the day. We can do the same thing with our content if we’re not careful. If we decide, “We got to do a video. It’s going to be incredible. What are we going to say? I don’t know. We’ll figure that out later,” then the video we end up with probably has a lot of filler, it’s probably not very focused because we’re deciding on the package before we decide the content.

When we start with our focus, what are we going to say, then we ask what’s the best package to put this in so that we’re going to deliver it effectively to our audience. Whether that is a video, a podcast, whether it’s an infographic or something else entirely.

Erin: I will think of you every time I open a box and there’s another tiny box or it’s just filled with packing peanuts or airbags. Just filler–

Melanie: I don’t know if that’s good.

Erin: No. No, it’s not, but it’s a brilliant analogy, Melanie. Thank you. The book also walks readers through 10 different ways to bring your stories to life and the formats that they could take. Okay, so let’s explore that a little bit too, like the base prompt.

Melanie: That’s right, so the focus being what’s our angle here. There’s a lot of different angles that you could take, and as you said, in the book, I walk through 10 different ones just to give you some options to start. Some that are really common and that would work really well in this space would be people-focused content. Looking around to say, not just myself, I don’t want only content that focuses on myself, but who are the people around me that I could create content about that would help me communicate my values, my job, my community to my audience. It might be people on your team. It might be the mayor of the neighborhood. It might be the person who’s been running every morning for 20 years and knows the nature in the area better than anyone else. You know who those people are. That’s the question to be asking. Who are the people that I could tell stories about that help convey this idea?

People-focused content is some of the most relatable stuff. It’s not the only way to tell stories. You could tell stories about the history of a particular topic or an area, you can give people instructions on how to achieve something. There’s lots of other options, but I think if you start with people-focused content, you’re going to be on your way to creating some really engaging, really interesting and relatable content.

Erin: That’s amazing. Okay, and to get a little bit more black-and-white about it, how about maps? What about using maps to do this?

Melanie: Absolutely. Maps are a really cool option. I think most of us default to writing written content or video if that’s where you’re comfortable, but there are some other formats that are so, so valuable. Maps is one that I think is really underrated, and given our expertise here, it’s a perfect vehicle for us to deliver content.

We made the example before for Cinco de Mayo that we were going to highlight some of our favorite Mexican restaurants in the area, our favorite tapas places. We’re going to really spice it up. Well, most people would probably think to just deliver that as a written list, but how much more valuable would it be if it were delivered as a map? Even just a basic map that shows where these places are, it’s going to be a lot more valuable for our audience when we’re talking about geographic content all of the time.

The same could be true for that people-focused content. I mentioned the person who runs laps every single morning in the neighborhood. I bet you they could create something really cool. Here’s a two-mile trail. Here’s a five-mile trail. Here’s a 10-mile trail. Describing that step-by-step would make for some really boring content, but if it were on a map, it suddenly becomes something that’s really useful.

Erin: Yes, digestible in a whole different kind of way. You mentioned briefly, history. What about our own histories? What about writing blogs kind of about yourself, not going into too much minutia or self-aggrandizing, but letting people know just who you are so they feel a connection with you, Melanie?

Melanie: Absolutely. At the end of the day, this is a relationship business. We’re trying to build relationships with clients that hopefully last them through even more than one home. We want to be there for those important moments. In order to do that, they have to know and like us. We’ve got to be able to help them understand who we are and what’s important to us. Being able to talk about the things that are important to you, your hobbies, your interests, your values, help them understand not just the services that you offer, but who you are as a person.

A great example of this is the REALTOR® that we worked with in buying our first home, Lois. We were looking at REALTORS® in the area and a lot of sameness, like we were talking about, a lot of similar content about how to look for your first home or whatever the case may be, but Lois’ specialty was she talked about things to do for families. She specialized in helping families find their first home. My husband and I had a little one, and so seeing her content, knowing that she’s focused on what’s important to her, family bonding and family time, helped us see that she was a little bit different than the other options out there and she was the right fit for us. She’s out there sharing content like- not happy spring or it’s the first day of spring, but a great spring activity is picking berries with your kids. Here are my favorite berry-picking orchards in the area that are great for kids under 10, that they’re very walkable, for example. That is so much more valuable than just a generic happy spring graphic. What can I do with that? Nothing.

Finding a way to tap into what makes you special. If you’re a dog person, find a way to work dogs and dog parks and dog-walking trails and whatever else into it. If you’re a music person, talk about the history of music in the area. There’s ways that you can examine the areas around you, the people around you and the work that you do through the lens of what makes you truly special. That’s what’s going to allow people to connect with you on a deeper level.

Erin: Wow. Elevating your personal brand, if you will, and going deeper at the same time. Just brilliant. Okay. How can we ensure, Melanie, as entrepreneurs and REALTORS®, that we’re creating content strategies that connect with people and support our business goals and not just content for business sake? I think you’ve touched on many of them; make it personal, use a map. I think the message has to be not me, me, me, but what do you need from me? What do I think is interesting to you?

Melanie: Absolutely. Yes, the example I gave of Lois is thinking, what do my families need? What do families in our area need? That’s the driving force behind a lot of the content that she creates to connect with families who may be looking for homes in the area. You can do the same thing. Really focus on, what is it that your clientele are looking for? What are the challenges that they face? What are the problems that you can help them overcome? What are the questions that they have? If you’re keeping your audience’s needs at the center of the work that you’re creating, it’s a really good chance you’re not going to get too far off-track and too self-serving.

If you do need some sort of formula, if you’re a rules person, the 70-30 rule is something that comes up a lot. The idea of that at least 70% of your content should be for your audience, and then you can allow 30% to be for you, more self-serving, more of a call to action for your business. What we want to do is provide enough value that it’s okay that we ask for things for ourselves on occasion. If we are only doing that me, me, me, there’s not a lot of reason for folks to stick around. What are they getting out of the exchange? That 70-30 balance, if you need a goal, is a good place to be.

Erin: That is so brilliant, the 70-30. Give, give, give 70%, and then the 30% can be a gentle ask. It’s so smart, and it works in real life relationships too. If you only call somebody when you want something, pretty soon they’re going to see your number and go, “I’m busy.” That is just a great lesson. Thank you so much for that, Melanie.

Okay. Now building long-term relationships with clients is critical in real estate, obviously. You’re still in touch with Lois and you bring her up. How can REALTORS® be intentional with their strategies to not just attract new leads, but to help nurture and convert those leads and then ultimately retain them as clients? How do you do that?

Melanie: I think we’ve mentioned a few different approaches to creating content, talking about what your audience needs. It’s also really important to feel comfortable talking about things that are not directly related to what you do. Coming back to that 70-30 rule. Most of your clients, once they’re done working with you, hopefully, assuming everything goes well, they may not need to work with you for a while, and so those direct, ask-focused content might not be what they’re looking for, it might not be the right time. You need to be providing enough value that it’s worth sticking around.

I know we talked earlier about that threshold of, like your toaster company, how much is too much to be in the inbox. If your tools give you the option to segment your audience, to separate between you’ve got your hot leads, maybe your active clients, and then you’ve got your just warm ones, the ones that are kind of in the background simmering a little bit, that tiny burner in the back, the simmering ones, we just need to keep it warm. Reaching out to them less frequently with more audience-focused content is a great way for you to stay top-of-mind without overwearing your welcome, and making sure that they don’t forget who you are, but they don’t get bugged by you too much either. That’s one option is to treat those audiences differently. Who are you maintaining in that simmering burner in the back, and who are you actively trying to fire up to make that conversion?

Erin: How do you think content marketing can help REALTORS® to build trust and credibility? I mean, rampant consumer skepticism. It’s something that we discussed actually with Nature of Things, Anthony Morgan, in Episode 47, and it is real.

Melanie: Absolutely is. The environment that we are all operating in as REALTORS® or even just as business owners, it is some of the most skeptical consumer experiences that we have ever had. The data shows time and again that year after year, unfortunately, the world gives our customers a lot more reason to be skeptical, a lot more reason to doubt what they’re hearing. Just look at your latest- your email inbox or your missed calls list, maybe your text inbox these days, and you’ll see the spam, you’ll see the reasons that they’re not trusting.

That could be upsetting, but there’s a way to see it as an opportunity. That in this world that our clients are operating in and our prospects are operating in, everyone around them is giving them so many reasons to doubt, and we can use our content to show that we are who we say we are, that we do what we say we do and that we can be trusted to help them with this problem that they’re trying to solve.

Content gives you a chance to communicate the truth behind your business claims, the ability to really show that they don’t have to take your word for it, you’ve got testimonials to back it up, or they don’t have to take your word for it, they can see it themselves. They don’t have to take your word for it, you’ve got accolades to prove it. Really finding ways to use that content to say, “I’m bringing you the evidence. I’m bringing you the receipts. I know there’s a lot of reasons to be distrustful, there’s a lot of reasons to be skeptical, but I’m going to help ease those concerns so you know you can trust me.”

Erin: Terrific wisdom. Thank you so much, Melanie. All right. What three things do you want people– what three toppings? No. What three things, Melanie, do you want people to take away from our discussion today?

Melanie: Three important things for you to remember is at the end of the day, your story matters. People work with you because they want to hear what you have to say, they want to connect with you and they want to work with you specifically, so bring yourself into your content. It’s so incredibly important.

I also want you to remember that your content should serve your audience, not just your business needs. We want to make sure that the stuff is for our audience, that it’s adding value to them so that they see us as someone who adds value to their life.

The last thing I want you to remember is that have some fun. This stuff is supposed to be fun. If it’s feeling like a drag, if you’re dreading doing it, it’s a good indication to you that maybe something isn’t quite right for you strategically. Change up your process, change up your content, try recording in a new way or a new day, and really just find a way to bring that spark back. Because when you’re having fun, that’s going to be obvious in your content.

Erin: Oh, that is so good. It reminds me of something a trainer told me once, that when you were a kid at the playground, did you stay on one machine for 30 minutes? No, you didn’t. You ran around and tried all the machines and you just had a great time. I think your message is such a great reminder to bring the fun back into it and come from a place of joy where you can.

Melanie: Absolutely. It makes it a whole lot more fun because if it feels like a drag, man, it’s just, why are we doing it, right?

Erin: Exactly. What a great conversation. Thank you so much, Melanie.

Melanie: Thanks for having me, thanks for chatting.

Erin: Oh, so much great content there from Melanie, so many messages on how to get your messages across in really unique ways, ways that resonate with you, ways that are about you.

REAL TIME is brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA. Production is courtesy of Alphabet® Creative, with technical support from Rob Whitehead. For more real estate resources, tools and insights, visit us anytime at CREA.ca. If you like this conversation, our 50th, if you can believe it, why not explore the rest of our episodes, from the art of negotiation, to AI, sustainable business practices and more. We cover all things Canadian real estate with a wide array of exciting guests. Don’t forget to rate or review the show. This is where the 30%, where we’re asking you to do something, we always appreciate it, so thank you.

I’m your host, Erin Davis. Thanks again for joining us and we’ll see you next time on REAL TIME.

Spring looks different depending on where you are. Your region may be cloaked in a curtain of drizzle, but when the sun is shining, it’s hard for gardeners to stay inside and not make inroads long before the May 24 weekend (generally accepted as a frost safe date!). Here are some things you can do now to prep your gardens for the most beautiful, productive summer ever.

1. Start Seeds 

Create a spreadsheet of what seeds to start, arranged by date, or organize packets week-by-week in an accordion file or recipe-card box. You can start seeds for veggies like eggplants, peppers and tomatoes indoors six weeks before the last frost date in your area (here is a calculator that will let you know what’s the date for your region). If you are sowing seeds directly outside, plants like peas, lettuce, carrots and radishes can be planted before the frost date, while zucchini and cucumber need to be planted afterwards The seed packet will tell you when to plant based frost dates, soil temperature or plant hardiness zones.

2. Harden Off Seedlings

Seedlings that have been grown in cushy controlled conditions indoors will need time to adapt to the outdoors. Whether growing a vegetable, herb, or flower, seedlings need to be acclimated to the outdoors gradually. Start by putting them outside for an hour, and build it up by an extra hour each next day until they can withstand a full day of sun.

3. Clean Up Beds

Gently remove matted leaves to unearth early spring ornamentals first, like tender emerging spring bulbs. Trim battered leaves from semi-evergreen perennials (which shed their foliage for a very short time in late winter) such as hellebores, heuchera and ornamental grasses. If you have a compost pile, turning it over will help it break down faster.

4. Prune (Judiciously!)

Wait until the risk of frost has passed before starting to cut back plants, because hard frosts penetrate the fresh cuts and can cause damage. To gently shape the shrub, remove dead, diseased, damaged stems, weak branches, and stems going in unwanted directions or crossing other branches.

Summer-flowering shrubs like butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii), Russian Sage, hardy fuchsia, spirea, and potentilla, should be trimmed in spring. Prune vines such as wisteria, clematis and climbing roses. Cut raspberries canes that have borne fruit, and any that are thinner than a pencil, and shorten the remaining young canes by at least a foot.

To trim back ornamental grasses like miscanthus, fountain grass, and feather reed grass, gather the stems and foliage in a clump and cut back to around 6-12 inches from the ground. Do this after the risk of frost, but before the new shoots emerge from the base.

Prune shrubs that bloom on old wood (like Hydrangea macrophylla or Big Leaf hydrangea, which have big, ball-shaped mopheads) or lace cap florets after they have finished blooming. Similarly, wait until spring flowering shrubs like lilacs, forsythia, and weigelia have bloomed before pruning or you will remove the flower buds. You can cut back paniculata hydrangeas such as Limelight, climbing hydrangeas and Hydrangea ‘Annabelle’ because they bloom on new wood.

5. Divide

Most perennials grow by sending up new stems from their underground parts and form clumps that can  die back in the centre, producing a “doughnut” effect. Perennials that bloom after mid-June are usually divided in early spring (late April or early May), as soon as a couple of inches of growth are showing. Chose a day that is cool and the ground is moist so the roots don’t dry out quickly, and make sure the plant is well watered before you begin.

To divide a clump-forming plant, lift the whole plant by digging up as much of the root ball as possible then shake or tease off the soil from the roots to reveal the roots and crown.

6. Add Some Color 

Craving instant color? Maybe your bulbs are slow to show, so hit the garden centres for pots of pansies or violas for spring planters. You can augment them with flowering branches like forsythia or pussy willow.

The post 6 Ways To Get Your Garden Ready For Spring appeared first on House & Home.

Everyone’s been put to the test in their career. On this episode of REAL TIME, we invite two members of the REALTOR® community, Anu Joshi-Mehendale and Dusko Sremac, to reflect on their top lessons learned in real estate as they approach a decade of experience in their respective practices.

Get advice to help you minimize mistakes, set yourself up for success, and stay motivated in your own practice – new or established.

Transcript

[music]

Erin Davis: Question: What do you wish someone would have told you when you were starting out your career? Would you have done anything differently based on their advice? I’m Erin Davis and welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS®, brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association.

Our guests today are Anu Joshi-Mehendale and Dusko Sremac, two very different REALTORS® from two very different backgrounds. What do they have in common? Like any entrepreneur, they’ve both experienced their share of trials and victories building a business in real estate. Are you ready for some lessons learned? Let’s dive in.

[music]

Erin: First off, thanks to you both for joining REAL TIME. Let’s do a quick round of introductions. Who are you, where you’re from, and how you got your start in real estate?

Anu Joshi-Mehendale: Thank you, Erin. My name is Anu Joshi-Mehendale and I’m a real estate broker based out of Caledon, Ontario. Just finished 10 years in the industry, so very happy to be here. Got started out fairly early. I actually interned at a property management company the year after high school, and I was going to be starting university. It was a suggestion from a parent to go ahead and get my real estate license. Here we are 10 years later.

Erin: Okay. In this case, father knows best. It was your dad, right? He’s the one who suggested it?

Anu: Yes, it was. That’s right.

Erin: Okay. I’d love to get into a little later on why he suggested this for you, but we’re going to meet our next guest now. Dusko, go ahead.

Dusko Sremac: Hey, my name is Dusko Sremac with the Real Estate Partners at Real Broker here in Calgary. I have been licensed for almost seven years. The way that I got into real estate was we started investing into real estate about eight to nine years ago. By trade, I’m a journeyman electrician. I was always around real estate and fell in love, and then I ended up quitting my job and going full-time into real estate.

Erin: Okay. Nice to meet you both. I love that you’re both at just about the decade mark or thereabouts. We’re going to explore not only how you got here, but where you’re going. I’m really excited about this conversation today. Caledon, Calgary, it’s fantastic. It’s just very organic today. Let’s dive into it. Anu, as you mentioned, it was your dad who suggested to you that you get into this. Why? Why did he suggest it for you? Was it something in the family or what led you there?

Anu: Yes. My dad actually got his real estate license several years ago, and that’s still on his docket for an eventual retirement career. Now I’m happy to bring him into my team. He’s actually working with me now. I don’t think we saw all of that when he first suggested that I get my real estate license. I think there’s a lot of things in the real estate industry that are attractive to a lot of people. Obviously, the promise of flexible schedules and the ability to earn, great potential for earning amongst many other things. I think there was a lot of things that led him to invite me to get my license and it’s been a really, really steep learning curve since then for sure.

Erin: Dusko, you didn’t come to real estate just like it was in the family, like Anu. As a matter of fact, I love the story of you being at the airport and just as you put it, blowing up the bridges. Tell us that story because that’s one of what Oprah used to call an aha moment. Tell us how you got there.

Dusko: At the time I was involved in real estate for a few years, picking up rentals, looking at building infills. I had a business partner, and I remember after Christmas break 2017, it was January 7th, 4.30 AM, I’m in our terminal. My bags are checked in and I just sat there for about 15 minutes thinking, “This does not make me happy. If I’m going to do this, I have to go all in.”

I remember asking security to get my bag back, got my bags, called my girlfriend, now wife, and I said, “Hey, where are you?” She said, “I’m just pulling into the driveway.” I said, “Turn around, come back. I need to come home because I quit.” That was the TSN turning point for me.

Erin: No kidding. Okay. That was a real moment for you. I love that it came out of the blue as you got your bag back and all of that. It’s a fascinating story. We’re going to be talking now about what do you wish someone had told you when you were starting out? Is there anything that you would have done differently? We’re going to start with you, Dusko.

Dusko: I think just having realistic expectations of what it takes to build a steady, consistent, strong business. I think it’s so easy to get caught up in social media and the way that our industry has shifted where there are models that are less sales and more recruiting. Now you get sold on this vision of success and what success means to you or what it should mean to you. It doesn’t really matter what fields you’re coming from and the level of experience. It does take a long time to build a strong, consistent business. I wish someone would have told me from day one because my expectation was to go from zero to 100 sales in year one. That’s just not realistically how it works.

Erin: How did you get that impression? Where did you get most of the ideas of real estate that you had when you asked for your bag back?

Dusko: I think like many agents now, social media. You see all the sales, you see the upside, you see the income, the freedom, but you’re not seeing the 10 years of experience and sleepless nights and working 24-hour days for years and years of building it in the background.

Erin: Okay. You were also around someone who had bought a bunch of properties too and that led you to believe, well, I can do this, right?

Dusko: Yes. I remember my first boss when I was 21, I think at the time he owned 50, 60, 70-plus units, duplexes, commercial spaces. I just saw the amount of wealth and opportunity that was built. It took him 20, 30 years to get there. I just knew that this is something that I want to do long-term and no regrets, that’s for sure.

Erin: Good. Okay. Anu, what did you go in thinking when you started this? You went to school for this too, right?

Anu: I actually went to university for communications. That’s what I joined in. I ended up switching my major to political science. That’s led me to participate in organized real estate right now. I participate at the local, provincial, and national levels, the public policy angle of things. For real estate, at the time, we had a real estate college and every REALTOR® getting licensed in Ontario at the time went through the same program. It was six courses to get your license. I did do that while I was in my, I think, first year or second year of university.

I started pretty early. In terms of expectations and stuff, I don’t remember even following agents on Instagram. It wasn’t a big thing back then when I was first getting started. Instagram was, but not the REALTOR® profiles and the flashy agents and stuff. When I got into it and started doing it seriously, I realized that there’s a lot more to it. Just like any other business, if you want to be successful in the real estate industry, you have to put the work in. My colleague here mentioned, the 20-hour workdays and all of that, that was not something that is readily available information.

We learn a lot on the job and a lot of that comes from experience, actually doing the deals. When I was 19 and had my real estate license, nobody was giving me their house to sell. I spent a lot of time working with mentors, with senior agents, just following around my broker of record to see what he was doing at the time. Just to learn more and more about transactions, more about the industry, and get all of that experience even before I touched my first deal. Nobody told me that it would be that much learning before I started, even in the realm of earning anything.

Erin: Yes. I think that it’s almost like anything, right? Dusko, you come from an electrical background. You can read all the books that there are, all the manuals, but until you actually get in there, any career, and I come from radio, you could study radio all you want, but it’s not until you swear on the air that first time that you learn that you’re not supposed to do it. You know what I mean. You have to make your mistakes and learn those things.

Dusko: The one difficult part is when we’re looking at even the trades, electrical, when I left, we had a 50-person crew, and it is life and death when you’re working on large gear, big voltages, but you always have the support and supervision of those that have a lot more experience than you.

In real estate, you get licensed, whether you have 10 years or no experience, you can do the same amount of transactions. You have the same power to do the same deals. I think this is a very difficult industry because there is nobody looking over your shoulder to help you through a transaction. Brokers are there, of course, but no one can guide and lower the liability except for you, the agent.

Erin: If I’m hearing this correctly from both of you, it’s your responsibility to find someone who is going to show you the ropes. Were you able to do that? We’ll start with you, Anu.

Anu: Yes, for sure. I’ve actually been very lucky to have mentors in my life at various points in my career. I’m a firm believer in the saying that once a student is ready, the teacher will appear. I’ve been lucky. Obviously, I had to seek out those opportunities, but they did show up in accordance with my hard work and my dedication. I think that holds a lot of weight.

What you’re putting into it, you will eventually get out. Maybe not right away, but eventually, yes. For me, that did come in the way of mentors, people that showed me right from wrong. Even now in my career, I have people in my life that will tell me, “Anu, that’s a stupid thing to do.” I’m thankful for that. It’s not so great to hear it in the moment, but that professional experience that somebody else has, someone senior to me in experience and in the industry, can guide me.

I am extremely lucky to have that. Even to new REALTORS®, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s all right. None of us did. We learned on the job. The capacity to learn and the capacity to adapt and the willingness to learn, I think, will make your trajectory better. It definitely did that for me.

Erin: I’m excited to tell you, we have a Working REALTOR® episode in the works right now about mentorship coming up. You’re preaching to the choir here, Anu. I see that Dusko is also nodding his head there. I think you want to add to the conversation about mentorship.

Dusko: I think as a whole, as an industry, we need to come together and help one another. If I’m receiving an offer, even, and I know that there’s things that are being left out, I’m still going to advise and help out that other agent and say, “Hey, maybe look at these two sections. They were left blank. Maybe consider adding A, B, C,” or guiding them in the right direction as to who they should be speaking with.

Again, it’s super tough. Like Anu said, you have to strive and go out of your way to find that mentorship. Thankfully, I was able to join a team where I think that I probably saved three to five years of struggling. My education was very much fast-tracked.

Erin: Anu, interestingly, and I mentioned this right off the top, how differently you’ve chosen to go your routes. You’re not into the large team idea. You know that you’re better off alone. That’s a really powerful thing to realize, isn’t it?

Anu: Yes, for sure. I think that came through a lot of exploration on my end. It didn’t just hit me one day. I had to go through all of– well, I started off as a solo agent. I did end up joining a team. I learned a lot from that and the team lead became one of my mentors for several years after that as well. I learned a lot there. I realized about myself, the way that I work, the level of professionalism that I expect from myself and from others, the best way sort of forward was for me to be a solo agent.

That comes from reflection. I think that the business model for a team is fantastic and it works for a lot of people. I think solo agents, that model also works for a lot of different people, but it really comes down to who you are as a person and what kind of business it is that you want to build. A lot of our personal traits show up in our businesses, whether it’s positive or negative. Having that sort of self-awareness of who you are, what you bring to the table, what your weaknesses are too, what you can’t do and bringing in people that can eventually serve your clients because at the end of the day, that’s what it is.

We’re not in a house-selling business. We’re in the people service business. How can I serve my clients to the best of my ability? How can I facilitate transactions? How can I help them make comfortable decisions with often the biggest purchases of their life? A lot of it just comes down to a lot of self-reflection. Who do I want to be? How do I want to show up in my business? It’s not just a business question. It’s more of an existential question. Asking it early on will make the rest of your business building smooth sailing.

Erin: Dusko, what do you have to say about that?

Dusko: Very different businesses. The day I got licensed, I already knew I did not want to be a solo agent. I wanted to grow a team and that was since day one. Looking at it from a business standpoint, it’s more what is scalable and I can’t scale myself. I recognize that it is a people business and I do have a fiduciary duty. At the end of the day, nobody cares if I’m busy or sick or having a bad day. People need to see homes and deals need to get done.

For us, we started our team when I had less than 12 months of experience and we’ve gone from having two agents to over 30 agents. Obviously, six years later, we do about 500 transactions a year in our local market. A big part of that growth was just finding the right people and building a very strong culture.

Erin: Now we’ve talked about the first 10 years, starting out, building, as you say, Dusko, and learning and making mistakes, Anu, you referred to. A little bit of truth or dare and we’re all out of dares. How about some truths? Tell us, if you don’t mind, about a big mistake. This is not to embarrass you but to make sure that other people learn from it. Go ahead, Anu, I’m going to ask you to go first.

Anu: I had a near miss, it felt like it could have gone really, really negative, but luckily it didn’t, so there’s a happy ending to the story. I was selling a condo to a friend of mine and they were looking for two parking spots, which is sometimes very difficult to find. We ended up finding a place with two parking spots and forgive me for getting a little technical, but one of the parking spots was titled and the other was exclusive use in a condo.

What happened when it was, I believe it was the day of closing, they called me and said, “Anu, I thought we had two parking spots and our lawyer is saying we don’t have the two.” I was like, “What are you talking about?” “We looked at this, we looked at the status certificate together. We went through this together, you have two parking spots.” They at this point were panicking because they spoke to the property manager, they spoke to the lawyer and they were like, “No, we don’t have two parking spots.” I said, “Okay, you know what? Give me an hour, we’re going to figure this out.”

I hung up the phone with my client and immediately started crying. This is not something– I mean, I can laugh about it now, seven or eight years later, but at the time, it felt devastating because there was an ever so slight possibility that I may have missed something or we may have done something incorrectly or what have you. I spent that hour going through the status certificate, tears in my eyes and trying to find where is this exclusive use. The property manager at the time for the building that they bought was new, so they didn’t necessarily know what was going on.

I did end up finding it, found the deeded spot, found the exclusive use spot. It ended up that they did have the two parking spots, everything was resolved, the client was happy, everything was taken care of. That was a very, very close call. That taught me that always, always, always be very diligent. To this day, due diligence is first and foremost the most primary thing that we have to do for our clients.

Erin: Good. I’m glad it turned out okay for you. Jeez. All right, Dusko, what about you?

Dusko: The appropriate ones, okay? Two really quick ones. One is ask for help early. I remember writing one of my first offers, someone walked me through it. Amazing. That weekend I’m writing another offer, but not on a detached home, now it’s on a condo. I spent hours writing it up, trying to save it, buying titles, getting everything submitted. I end up submitting the offer and I get this phone call from the listing agent. She has about 20 years of experience, I have about 20 days of experience.

She goes, “Hey, is this your first deal?” I’m like, “Yes, it is.” She’s like, “Yes. You wrote this on the wrong contract.” Now I’ve wasted four hours. Next time, definitely after that, I asked for help very early on the process.

Tthe other one is double-check with your clients if they’re joking or not. I had a home inspection, the client’s looking out in the backyard and goes, “Wow, a trampoline. I wish the trampoline was staying in the deal.” I’m like, “Oh, mental note.” I call the agent after the home inspection. We waive conditions, but I go, “I’m going to buy that trampoline for my client from the sellers.” I buy it. Possession day is here. We’re doing a final walkthrough.

The client goes, “The trampoline’s here.” I’m like, “Yes.” He’s like, “Why did they leave that here?” I go, “Why do you sound so disappointed? You were so excited that during the home inspection, I bought it for you. That’s your trampoline.” He goes, “What am I going to do with a trampoline?” It was the most uncomfortable one minute of explaining to him that he now owns a trampoline ever. Now I always double-check and I go, “You’re sure you want the trampoline? This is not a joke.” It’s like, “No, we want it.” Moving forward, I double-check with everybody. I asked for help very early in the process.

Erin: Okay. Oh, the good old saying, if you lose, don’t lose the lesson, but your heart was in the right place, even if the trampoline, it turns out wasn’t. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Let’s flip it over to the positive. What was a big milestone for you? They ask movie stars, when did you know you’d made it, but what was a milestone and it doesn’t have to be material. It could be something spiritual. It could just be like, “I’m on top of the world.” How about you Anu, what was your milestone?

Anu: I’m not great at celebrating my achievements. I’ll just say that right off the bat, but something that was life-changing for me in my career, as I know it is in my first year and a half or so, I was actually doing a full-time job in marketing. During that time, I was trying to do real estate part-time, but I had this epiphany and I truly believed that if I was going to give this my all, that’s the only way I’d ever succeed.

That summer, I still remember when I said, “Okay, you know what? I’m going to let go of this job and I’m going to go headfirst full-time into real estate. It’s just going to be swim or sink at that point. Sink or swim.” I’m still swimming. It wasn’t easy, but making that move really early on my career really helped. Of course, I was living at home at the time, full disclosure, I was still at home at the time. I didn’t have to worry about a mortgage payment or a rent payment or anything like that, which was huge.

With that support from my parents, I was able to take that leap. If I hadn’t taken it, then I probably would have been stuck debating between this part-time full-time situation, but I’m so thankful that I was able to do that and everything that came after that. I’m a very big proponent of doing real estate full-time, also any business full-time, a lot of respect for people that do side hustles. That’s just my personal mentality that go all in.

Erin: Yes. Dusko, your milestone moment.

Dusko: I think it was just over two years ago, my son was born. I think that really changed perspective and priorities for me and my business. I’m extremely competitive in everything and anything. I cannot play games with anybody because I’m the worst loser as well.

I remember the first four, five years of my career, the only thing that mattered was making the top producer list and where our team would rank. That’s the most important thing every single month. As soon as my son was born, it shifted towards, “Okay, how do we grow the business, but how do we also prioritize family time and our families?” At a similar time, my business partner also had his first kid.

We were going through the same transition at the same time, which is good. I can honestly say in the last two years, I don’t remember the last time I looked at a top producer board. I don’t care about what other people are doing. I’ve gone all in on just focusing in on our families and our business. You’d think that business would fall, but each year we’ve still had growth.

Erin: I just love the stories that you tell of taking the leap and there’s the bridge for you in both very different ways, but Dusko, having a family and changing priorities does not necessarily mean changing the goals, does it?

Dusko: No, and I think you can change the schedule up. There’s ways to become more efficient and prioritize the important events at work and at home. For me, for instance, we don’t do lunches anymore, meaning we’re not going to take random coffees or lunches with other agents because again, at the end of the day, what is top priority? Top priority is running our day-to-day business, taking out clients and family time. There’s very little that we sacrifice on the family side. We just have to be extra efficient. We’re still working long days, there’s still 20-hour days, but we’re always making time for family every single day.

Erin: It would seem to me, Anu, that that would be one of the real benefits of being part of a team of a brokerage. How do you manage that? How do you handle when something happens in your own personal life or you decide you want to do something or go away or just have some Anu time? What do you do? How do you handle that?

Anu: Absolutely, a great question. Here’s where teams do come in. Full disclosure, I do work with buyer’s agents. I work with my partners that will take over certain parts of my deal. I have a virtual assistant. I have a grassroots assistant that helps me with certain things. It’s a very different team setup, but I agree with Dusko that the business that we built, scaling is an issue.

I ran into that much later in my business, about halfway through when I was realizing I reached my potential. I couldn’t replicate myself. I couldn’t show more than six clients a day or what have you. There is a cap for an individual. The natural next step is to build a system. Build out a system, have team members that participate in executing that. I know Dusko does that very well on a very mega level with his very large team. I do that on a much smaller level. It looks a little bit different for me, but yes, there is delegation involved.

There is other teammates that have that expertise that step in. At the end of the day, my job is to service my clients. How I do that, how I facilitate that is going to be up to the system that I build. I think Dusko brought up a great point as well in terms of family time.

Early on in my career, and even until very recently, I found myself working very, very long hours. That is something that I think in real estate or in any business to be successful, you have to be agreeable to that because that’s what you’re signing up for. I think you can be an average agent, you can be an average business owner, you can be an average anybody, but if you want to reach the top, you want to reach the heights of success, whatever that might mean for you, it might mean crazy transactions. It might mean higher gross commissions, what have you, whatever your measurement is to reach that, you need to be putting in work.

You need to be putting in the effort, the time that it takes to learn that art, I can call it an art now after 10 years, that all takes a lot of effort right off the get-go. If you’re willing to put that in, I do think it’s extremely rewarding. One of the things that we talked about earlier is the promise of this industry is, for example, flexible schedules. Some agents, maybe not as experienced, would say, “Oh, you get to make your own schedules and have your own time.”

If you want to be doing a certain number of deals, you’re earning a certain amount of money, you actually have to work a lot more than is expected, a lot more than the average agent will tell you. If you want to be productive, whatever that means to you, you have to put in the work. Eventually, there is an output. Eventually, you will have flexibility, you will have stability in your business, you will have all of these things, but it does take time to build that. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of learning, and a lot of inputs to be able to achieve that.

Erin: You both talk about starting basically in the past decade or so, and you’ve got all this experience now and wisdom under your belts with so much more ahead of you. Looking back, what opportunities do new REALTORS® have, new ones that might be become harder as you get more established? What do you think, Anu?

Anu: I think that new REALTORS®, the biggest thing that they have is that they’re not yet committed to any one thing. I used a lot of my time up front when I was new in the industry when I was learning. All I was doing was learning. I barely transacted in my first two years. I was just learning and learning, learning different things to do. I used to shadow senior agents. I used to hold open houses for them. I used to do paperwork for them. I was literally learning everything grassroots.

My colleague and I, we talked about doing the door knocking, doing the online legion. There’s so many ways to get business in our industry. Learn as much as you can and then figure something out that makes sense to you, that works for you, and that you can commit to, and then take that forward. I think a lot of agents and we meet agents all the time on the other side of the deal or at professional events and whatnot.

It happens to everyone. It’s human nature. There’s this stagnation, not just of themselves and their business, but also sometimes their mindset. “I’ve been doing this long, I know what I’m doing,” that kind of thing. I am a lifelong student. If there is something new in the industry, there’s constantly changes happening. It is my job as a real estate broker to learn about it, to figure out how to implement that in the best possible way to serve my clients because, at the end of the day, that’s the game that we’re playing.

I think that that takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of reflection and it also takes awareness that even though you know everything up until this point, technology is changing. The industry is changing. People are changing. The way we do business is changing. Marketing is changing. Online lead gen is changing. The only thing that is guaranteed is that change. If you’re able to keep up, like Dusko mentioned it before, this is where the agents that are in it, full-time, full effort, get to shine because we’re doing this every day. We’re reading the news. We know what’s happening in other countries, other regions. We are using all of that knowledge together to help us achieve our end goal of servicing our clients.

Erin: Dusko, what experience can a newer REALTOR® have that helps you as you move on that you might not have now at this point in your career?

Dusko: First off, Anu looked at my notes and she stole my answer. I have very little to add now, but I’ll expand on what Anu said because I agree with her 100%. I think the luxury that a newer agent would have, there’s two. One, you should not have very high overhead. You’re not going to have an admin, you’re not going to have the desk fees, the advertisement budget that a senior agent would have.

Second thing is time. When I’m looking at what my open schedule looks like day to day, I have very little time now. When I first started, I was three to four hours a day on Tom Ferry or on YouTube trying to learn scripting and how to be better. I was asking senior agents. I was door-knocking. I was trying to do online legion shooting videos. If I could go back or if I could advise a new agent is figure out what you like to do because everything works.

Door-knocking works, online legion works, social media works, but it’s like what do you want to do and what will you stay consistent with? Because I find a lot of agents, they’ll say, “Oh, well, I saw Anu door-knocking and she did 10 deals off of that. I’m going to door-knock.” I would rather do no deals than door-knock. I’m going to tell you right now. I’m door-knocked out and same thing with social media. You’re starting to see this huge push. We saw it for a few years on TikTok and Instagram. Now it’s shifted towards long form and YouTube. What’s next? Again, it’s what you’re going to be happy with and what you’re going to be consistent with.

Anu: Those were so great. Honestly, I will tag onto that. In terms of finding out what it is that you can commit to, I think that’s a great point. I think people that are new in this industry put too much weight on what’s out there. Also, going after the new shiny thing. TikTok was really shiny a little while ago. Every agent was on TikTok, and before that, it was something else, and before that, it was something else, and tomorrow it’ll be something new. We have to find a balance between keeping up obviously with the trends, but building your business based on you knowing where you can show up and how you can show up.

Dusko: I remember when I started, I looked at– we had one of the top teams in the world, in our marketplace, and we still do. I saw, well, he’s doing billboards and he has this type of website and this is what he’s doing, so I’m just going to replicate that. Well, if you have 50 to 100 agents in that budget, you can replicate that and you’ll have somewhat similar results, but not really. I get phone calls weekly of agents asking me about what websites we run, what we do for PPC, what we do for SEO.

In the back of my head, I’m like, this is a 7 to 30-year play. When we’re making a business decision, we’re not making it for ROI three months from now, three years from now. I’m thinking, what’s the return in 5 to 10 years on all these big decisions? I feel like so many people just think three to six months, but they need to be thinking three to six years because that’s what really compounds a strong business.

Anu: I agree. There are two different hats. There is the hat as the registered REALTOR®, there’s the agent, and then as the business owner. As you start to scale and you start to grow, I think you have to also balance what– I mean, you mentioned that your schedule’s all booked up. A lot of it is going to be your business growth tasks, maybe not your client servicing, maybe that’s where the team comes in. I think that there are those two hats. Again, lot of potential in this industry, but you do get out what you put in.

Erin: What keeps you motivated as you move into your second decades, both of you in the phase of say, a setback or challenge, and how do you make sure that you’ll learn from it and set intentions to apply what you’ll learn in the future? We’ll start with you. Well, let’s start with Dusko.

Dusko: Looking forward, the next, let’s say, even five years, the way that we lay things out is financial growth of the business. We have a fiduciary duty to our clients, but we also have a duty to our agents and our staff and employees. If you include the backend staff, the admins, and our partners, we’re really responsible for 50-plus people because there’s other sub-industries that rely on our business as well and we take that very serious. When we’re looking at growth and investing, we’re at a point in our business where now we’re starting to diversify into other asset classes as well because we don’t want to have all of our eggs in one basket.

Erin: Okay, and Anu.

Anu: In terms of setbacks, I think as time goes on, I think we become more resilient. we’re more knowledgeable, we know how to bounce back from something better. I think things do get easier. More so, we get more capable of processing them and coming back from them.

The other thing also, is your purpose for why you’re in this business has to be abundantly clear, both to yourself and to all the partners that you’re actually working with. There has to be this vision for what you see for your future. It may not be just a monetary goal. I actually think that money is the least motivating factor. For a lot of people, I know it’s a push. When we get into really thinking about how we want to show up in our business, that purpose actually stems from something deeper inside of us, who I am, what I want the contribution to the world to be. I think asking those kind of questions.

Some criticism is, “You’re just a REALTOR®. What’s the big thing?” No, I’m actually interacting with people’s families, with people’s biggest financial decisions. Advice that I give could set them on a completely different wealth trajectory for generations to come. We do hold a lot of that responsibility, and showing up with that sort of purpose in mind, whatever it may be, and it varies from person to person, but having a purpose, I think, fuels your movement forward and it makes it easier to get past the little bumps.

For example, in my first couple of years, probably my three or four first years, I actually wanted to quit real estate. Over and over, I just wanted to quit. Every deal was too hard. Every client objection was too difficult to deal with. I couldn’t do it, and I hated it, and I wanted to quit. Eventually, we got through that, I got through that, and a lot of that came from reflecting. “What kind of business do I want to build? What kind of person do I want to be?”

A lot of that has helped how I approach clients, how I approach problems because the problems keep coming. More money, more problems. As you grow, you will get to encounter different types of problems. You’ll have different types of responsibilities. All that comes with growth. Having that clear purpose moving you forward I think makes it easier to deal with these setbacks.

Dusko: Just to add to that too, I mean how many agents do we know or do you encounter day-to-day that say that they’re burnt out?

Anu: Oh, yes. For sure.

Dusko: I feel like a lot of that burnout comes over time. I remember my first few years, I’d lose sleep over the tiniest little thing. Over time, you get a bigger gas tank, and you learn how to manage that stress and responsibility a lot better. You’re right, 100%, the money is not a factor after you become consistent. You start saving money and you’re covering costs. That’s not going to keep your business going. You’re going to get burnt out. You need to have a greater purpose and good to keep that going. Can I just say? I very much appreciate that you snuck in “More money, more problems,” into that response too. Very much. That has to get clipped.

Erin: That will be in our Best Of if not on our social media. For sure. There was something that I’ve heard you ask in interviews, Dusko, too, which really just underlines what Anu said there. You ask a question about money when you’re interviewing somebody,

Dusko: Real estate attracts people from all different industries and walks of life and levels of experience. One of the first questions I ask is, what prompted you to interview us? Why do you want to get into this industry? What’s the big factor? I would say 99% of them, if they’re not willing to say it, I’ll say it for them and I’ll say, it’s the money. It’s the promise of potential income and quick income. It’s good and bad because a lot of people come into this industry. Ideally, you want to have 6 to 12 months of savings saved up. Very few are going to have that.

We call it commission breath. It happens in every commission-based industry where people, maybe they start making decisions or maybe they start getting extra stressed and not making the best decisions themselves because they need a paycheck. Unfortunately, that’s going to happen in every industry that’s commission-based.

Erin: What is the best advice? You’re giving such great advice in this episode and we can’t thank you enough. The best advice that you ever got and that you actually took to heart? I’m going to start with you, Dusko.

Dusko: The best advice that I got was to partner with someone. I was fortunate enough to find a business partner that had a different level of skill sets than I did. At the time, he was not a registered REALTOR®, he just got licensed recently. His strengths are tech. SEO, PPC, or marketing, and mine were sales. That has helped us greatly. I love having now partners that I can bounce ideas off of because sometimes I come up with terrible ideas.

I feel like the reason we’re able to scale and build a very strong business is because we have a very open and honest relationship with one another in our inner circle. We can bounce terrible ideas off of each other and we can call each other out because that’s a relationship that we have. I feel like when you’re a solo agent, or maybe when you’re a solo team lead, there’s nobody there at that same level to say, “Hey, you need to stop because this is a terrible idea.”

Erin: Okay. Anu?

Anu: Fair enough, Dusko.

Erin: Best advice.

Anu: I do have mentors that call me out all the time. You know what? I definitely see the value of having a strong partner that’s in there with you. That’s definitely important. Honesty between partners is important, but also honesty with yourself; who you are, how you want to show up. We’ve talked about that theme a lot. One of the best pieces of advice that I have received as a REALTOR® is if you have a choice that you can make in one of those situations, you’re going to lose the transaction, and the other one, you’re going to lose the client, lose the transaction every single time.

To this day, it has informed the way that I deal with my clients, the way that I service them, the way that I make decisions in my business. They’re always, always client-oriented, never transaction-oriented. I found myself saying this to my clients, “If you don’t close on this house at this price today, it doesn’t matter to me. What matters to me is that you’re happy, your family is secure in this decision because there’s a lot more there that’s at stake than this particular deal or this particular transaction.”

That consultative approach of always, no matter what, keeping clients in front of me and just that is who I’m servicing, right? If you have a choice between losing the transaction, losing the client, give up the transaction every single time.

Dusko: To put a dollar figure there and put things into perspective as well, each deal should be actually good for eight other transactions. That includes future deals plus referrals. A lot of the agents that are like, “I just need to get this deal done,” I’m 100% with you, Anu,” I’d rather burn 30 deals a year than burn one client a year because the ROI in the future of having that strong relationship, rapport, and referrals is priceless.

Anu: I agree.

Erin: That was that advice. All right. You got one thing you want people to take away from this podcast and what would it be today? All right, Anu, to you.

Anu: Yes. For any new REALTORS® or anyone that’s in the industry, thinking about maybe scaling up wherever you are in your business, just make sure that you’re being honest with yourself, why you’re in this, what your greater purpose is, and allow that to help you build a business that works for you and for whatever it is that your priorities are. It may be your family, it may be your other goals and ambitions in life.

Be all in and allow yourself to be purpose-driven because that is important and that’s what’s going to keep you from burnout. That’s what’s going to keep you from fizzling out like many agents do. It’s not an easy industry, but it is an extremely rewarding one.

Erin: Dusko.

Dusko: Anu keeps looking at my notes, and I just have to call her out. Mine would probably be whether you’re licensed for one month, one year, or 10 years, if you’re lacking consistency in your business, it’s lacking the consistency of you putting in that work. What I mean by that is even after being licensed for almost seven years, getting a lot of referrals, I still every single day am very consistent in reaching out to past clients, future clients, and trying to build my name and better rapport with people.

It’s not easy, but I can promise you it does not matter how long you’ve been in this business. If you’re lacking consistency in the amount of deals you’re doing, it’s just a lack of consistency of you working on your business.

Erin: Excellent. Thank you both so much for everything that you’ve brought to the table and the conversation today. We wish you both just great success from Caledon to Calgary and into your second decades. Best of luck to you both. Thank you so much.

Anu: Thank you so much, Erin, for having us.

Dusko: Thank you, Erin.

Erin: I just love how those two lanes are pointed in the same direction, fulfillment, balance, and a sense of purpose as REALTORS® in Canada. REAL TIME is brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA, production from Alphabet® Creative, and technical support from Rob Whitehead. If you want more real estate resources, tools, and insights, you can visit us anytime at CREA.ca.

If you liked this episode, please do explore our other episodes, including more from our Working REALTOR® series. Whether it is growing your business or balancing work and life, you’ll find thoughtful advice from REALTORS® across the country. Oh, and don’t forget to rate or review the show because we always appreciate it. All right. I’m your host, Erin Davis. Thanks for joining us. We’ll talk again soon on REAL TIME. Bye for now.

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