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Erin Davis: Hi, there. Welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS® It’s brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association or CREA. Let’s talk REALTOR.ca, shall we? It’s Canada’s most popular and trusted real estate platform, developed and operated by CREA. On behalf of its REALTORS® members, REALTOR.ca keeps REALTORS®, you, at the heart of the real estate transaction, while providing the most comprehensive collection of listings to help guide property buyers, sellers, and renters.

On this episode of REAL TIME, we look at the future of Canada’s real estate landscape. Not only that, we are peering into what’s coming in the world of tech. It’s fast-paced and the stakes are high. Tying these two together, we asked, how can REALTOR.ca secure its relevancy in this increasingly competitive space? Joining us today as we examine what kind of vision has gone into shifting REALTOR.ca from a not-for-profit association-driven product to a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary of CREA, what does it all mean, and how will it expand its potential for you, for REALTORS® and your clients? This is going to be a fascinating chat. Here we go.

Let’s start by introducing who’s joining us. First, we’d like to introduce, also from the West Coast, Jill Oudil. Jill, welcome. Tell us about yourself.

Jill Oudil: Hi, Erin. Thanks. Nice to be here. My name is Jill Oudil, as you said. I am the current chair of CREA, the Canadian Real Estate Association. I can also say that I am proud to be a realtor and I have been for, I want to say, well over 30 years, actually. I’m a second generation too.

Erin: Wow. Okay. Nice to have you here. We also have Patrick Pichette. Everybody knows Patrick, but go ahead, Patrick, make the introductions.

Patrick Pichette: Thanks, Erin. Nice to be back. Patrick Pichette, Vice President REALTOR.ca. Consumer and realtor technology is one of our pillars at CREA, so I’m responsible for the roadmap of our various technology products. I also have the privilege of leading a very talented and enthusiastic technology team.

Erin: Excellent. That includes REALTOR.ca. That gentleman sitting next to you, we all know Andrew. Andrew, go ahead.

Andrew Jackson: Hey, Erin. Hi, everyone. My name’s Andrew Jackson. I’m the head of business development for the Canadian Real Estate Association. It is great to be back.

Erin: It’s nice to have you back, all three of you, Jill, Patrick, Andrew. Now, I know I go to REALTOR.ca when I’m searching for real estate, and frankly, that’s far too often for my husband’s liking, because I get the itch, or even when I’m in the mood to browse. Honestly, you want to see what’s going on in your neighborhood, what’s happening with all the listings, but I’ll be honest, I’ve never really given much thought to its operations, so we’re going to open the curtains here. Jill, perhaps we can start there. What role does CREA’s board of directors have when it comes to REALTOR.ca?

Jill: Sure. Thanks, Erin. Well, our board of directors actually provides strategic oversight to the whole organization. We have a great board. We really care about what’s best for REALTORS®. Our strategic plan has three pillars, actually. One of those is technology, which includes REALTOR.ca.

Erin: What are the other two pillars?

Jill: Actually, the other two pillars are advocacy and also REALTORS® reputation. I can tell you that our strategic plan is supportive of innovative tools. As long as we’re providing things to REALTOR.ca that helps REALTORS® remain relevant with consumers, the decision to turn REALTOR.ca into a for-profit subsidiary of CREA was a result of our strategic planning process in the last couple of years. We want to make sure that we ensure REALTOR.ca continues to bring value to both REALTORS®, but also, of course, as well as the consumer and our clients.

Erin: Yes. Continuing to bring value to REALTORS® and consumers, I can understand the underlying importance of this move. Now, Andrew, give us a little bit more of a look behind that curtain that I mentioned. How is REALTOR.ca managed and funded?

Andrew: Absolutely. REALTOR.ca, for many years, actually, has been managed and operated within the Canadian Real Estate Association, which is a not-for-profit organization. REALTOR.ca is one of, if not, the most valued member benefit enjoyed by Canadian REALTORS®. It is primarily funded through their membership dues. However, there are also some revenue streams from services such as DDF, which stands for Data Distribution Facility. It’s actually a mechanism by which REALTORS® can have their listings distributed onwards into partners that are connected to REALTOR.ca.

Erin: Okay. Well, it’s clear that REALTORS® are embedded in the platform’s mission, you get that from its name, obviously, but Jill, as chair, how does it add value for REALTORS®?

Jill: Well, we make sure that it adds value for REALTORS®. I think that what is really important is that what’s good for clients and the consumer is what’s good for REALTORS®. It’s actually both. It does provide other things. There is a listing stats app that’s related to that, that our REALTORS® can provide information and direct correspondence and statistics to the clients, which is amazing. Then also, of course, REALTOR.ca helps REALTORS® be top of mind with our customers. It’s so important that we have that connection.

Erin: Absolutely. Patrick, what do you have to say about this?

Patrick: Just to build on what Jill was saying, just to paint a picture of the relevancy of REALTOR.ca in the marketplace. It has a 48% market share, meaning 48% of all Canadians who use real estate sites and apps have REALTOR.ca as one of their destinations. That’s a monthly percentage where there are some months where we’ve hit over 50%. This rarely happens in any industry where you have a market leader that has that kind of market presence.

Also, there are some major companies that have aligned their brands with REALTOR.ca. I think my favorite example is probably Apple. When they launched iOS 15, they included the REALTOR.ca app as part of their promotion. There we were next to Ted Lasso and Justin Bieber. There’s many other examples. TD is another one that comes to mind. If you visit the TD Bank website and you look up the mortgage affordability calculator, and you use that tool, you put in your information and it spits out an ideal range for you, as part of that result, it will show you listings that fall within your range from REALTOR.ca. To see the full listing, you have to click through to REALTOR.ca, and that lead goes directly to our members.

That kind of visibility, you can’t buy that. It’s earned. It just speaks to the strength of the REALTOR.ca brand and how much credibility it has in the marketplace. Even my friend at ChatGPT agrees. I must have tried 20 or different queries about where to find real estate information. Every time REALTOR.ca is number one. I don’t know if you’ve all tried it or not, but it’s scary actually how smart it’s getting over time. Just to add, again, to what Jill was saying, we’re quite fortunate to have this powerhouse brand that’s out in the marketplace. At the end of the day, it’s generating business opportunities for our members.

Every year we send over five million leads back to REALTORS® in the form of email and phone leads. This comes at no cost above and beyond membership dues. This is something that’s unique anywhere in the world, that the market-leading platform is owned by REALTORS® it’s exclusive for them, and they get to benefit from the leads without paying any additional fees.

Erin: Wow. Then maybe, Andrew, you can address this. Why the shift to a for-profit structure?

Andrew: The shift to a for-profit structure is fundamentally about allowing us to grow revenues and to access new levels of funding, funding that’s really needed for the business and needed to make into different areas for investment. Really I think of four main areas. The first and foremost is the talent, the team that’s required to build this. We’re constantly needing to retain, but also attract new talent. The roadmap that Patrick speaks to, needing to deliver to that roadmap, but also to accelerate delivery to that roadmap.

Also, we just talked about ChatGPT, and there’s lots of examples of emerging technology in the 10 years here that Patrick has seen. I’m sure you’ve seen lots of emerging technologies, Patrick. Really, we need to make sure that we’re on top of that and that we’re always leveraging what is appropriate for us to stay on top of there. Then last but not least is really about making sure that our visibility and our reach is always there. Even if you have a leading position you can’t take that for granted. You can’t rest on your laurels.

Now, I will say that, obviously, not-for-profits have strict limitations on things, whether that’s things like the revenue model or the types of revenues. Even the timing of revenue and when you can recognize it and when you can spend those revenues all come with constraints in a not-for-profit context. Really why we’re creating this now is to create a for-profit subsidiary that really frees up some of those constraints so that CREA can better fulfill its mission. We also like to think that it’s actually a little bit more than that. It’s also about really building here a PropTech contender that is realtor owned and that is there to fight for a future that is friendly for our members.

Erin: Patrick, do you have anything to add to that?

Patrick: Oh, absolutely. As Andrew mentioned, I’ve been here for 10 years now, so I’m really excited about this move. REALTOR.ca is no longer just a website, it’s evolved into a very comprehensive platform. It has a web version that’s accessible through desktop. It’s got one for your mobile browser. It’s got standalone apps for Apple and Android. As Jill mentioned, there’s an app that is exclusive for members. By the way, if you’re a realtor and you’re listening to this podcast, if you don’t have the version of the REALTOR.ca app that’s for agents and brokers, go to your app store, do a search for REALTOR.ca and look for the version with the black R icon.

The red one is the regular REALTOR.ca site. Hopefully, you’ve got that one on your phone as well, but grab the one that’s for agents and brokers. That will allow you to do a few really useful things. First of all, it will allow you to see your listing stats for REALTOR.ca, as well as all your DDF destinations. It also allows you to share some really slick reports with your clients. You can fire those off through text message or email. You can manage your leads as well, so have a look.

Just to come back to the platform conversation, Erin, Andrew mentioned DDF, which is part of the platform as well. Also, we’ve built a platform now where other solutions have integrated into it. For example, we’ve got about a dozen different video and 3D virtual tour applications integrated into REALTOR.ca. There are three different realtor rating tools that also integrate REALTOR.ca. We’ve built this platform that makes it easy for tools that REALTORS® use on a day-to-day basis to integrate with. I think it’s really important to highlight the fact that we’ve evolved from a website to a platform.

Andrew is right, there’s so much capital and innovation coming into our industry. There’s about 450 known PropTech companies in Canada alone, about 5,000 across North America. All this innovation is great news for REALTORS®. It’s great news for consumers. It means better tools, more useful platforms, but it’s also imperative that REALTOR.ca still be relevant in this ecosystem, and not just for the next few years, but the next few decades.

Erin: It strikes me as you talk that it seems like a gathering place, one-stop shopping, if you will, for REALTORS® and consumers alike, who can find what they need without having to look at all of these different PropTechs and everything that are out there right now. Honestly, I find it mind-boggling, but just to be able to go someplace where it’s all been verified and the best have been chosen for people to use. Am I reading this right, Jill, as a realtor and the chair of CREA, are you excited about this place as that one-stop shopping, if you will?

Jill: Absolutely. It’s an amazing site. I think that we’re competitive. There’s so much innovation in the tech space right now, and we want to make sure that we continue to be in this race. I would say that we’re not only fortunate really, but there’s been a lot of hard work that’s come up to where we’re at today. I have to give CREA’s staff, Patrick, a good thing it’s a podcast or you’d be blushing maybe, but they’re amazing, honestly, to keep us at the level that we’re at now. Andrew said it very well, is don’t rest on your laurels.

The fact is, is we’re not lucky, we worked hard to get here, but we want to make sure that our site continues to have the mission of ensuring that REALTORS® remain at the heart of the real estate transaction. It is important and we absolutely have to make sure that we stay in this race.

Erin: Yes, by looking down the road and seeing what the future holds. As much as that’s possible, Andrew, what will be important for REALTOR.ca to get right as it shifts to this new structure?

Andrew: Of course, with Patrick and Jill here, I think that there’s lots of assurance to make sure that we are going to get things right, but I would reflect on really the following things, and they’re actually things that helped, I think, lead us to this current position of market leadership. Really four different things in my mind. The first, again, is team. Patrick and I both have a background in technology companies and we believe in the importance of getting the right talent into the right positions at the right time. That has been the philosophy and will need to continue to be the philosophy. In fact, even more as we look to grow the team and add in new dimensions of capabilities for the next journey.

The second is really about resourcing and access to resources. It’s really critical that the new REALTOR.ca have access to funding and funding models that it’s going to allow it to really accelerate things like the roadmap or other investments. One of the things that’s obviously critical is oversight and governance and a governance that continues to be supportive of the vision that involves experienced individuals who have experience in a growth journey similar to this one, for example, and of course, free of conflict.

The last one, which we keep coming back to but I think it’s really critical here is alignment. It’s really critical that REALTOR.ca maintain its alignment to its core mission, which you’ve heard from Jill and from Patrick, which is to keep REALTORS® at the heart of the real estate transaction.

Erin: We’ll be back with Andrew, Patrick, and Jill in just a moment. It includes some outstanding news on what’s going to be getting a test rollout at REALTOR.ca in the months to come. It is so exciting.

When you’ve got some time, why not check out CREA Café on REALTOR.ca? It’s a great place to peruse everything from stories about interest rates and their effects on your life and work to some fascinating pieces like “5 Questions Your Client Should Ask a Condo Board Before Buying,” how CREA WEBForms can help your business, and even some of the most unusual bylaws in Canada that you should know about, from the length of the grass to whether your client needs to check out the rules before owning a parrot. It’s all there. Spend some time with us at CREA Café right there at REALTOR.ca.

Now back to this REALTOR.ca-focused episode of REAL TIME with our guests Andrew Jackson, CREA’s head of business development; Jill Oudil, chair of CREA; plus the VP of REALTOR.ca, Patrick Pichette. Patrick, you talked about being number one in market share, I’m going to open the curtains a little bit more here. If you would, though, can you share your REALTOR.ca secret sauce, so to speak? Please tell me it’s keto. No, I’m kidding. What is your secret sauce?

Patrick: Well, we wanted to validate this recently, so we did some comprehensive consumer research, which we do on an annual basis, but this year we wanted to have a laser focus on why has the public rewarded REALTOR.ca with the top position. If we look into what the research is telling us, the consumer has chosen REALTOR.ca as a preferred platform for three key reasons. The first attribute will be trust. Trust that’s been earned throughout the years by providing a full, accurate current view of the market, quality of the information, and also consistency of the user experience.

You could be looking at any listing anywhere in the country and the experience is fairly consistent across the board, which is something that users really value. Also, as I mentioned earlier, REALTOR.ca is accessible regardless of what device you use. There are very few real estate brands that actually provide that level of connectivity. The second attribute would be transparency. Along those same lines, Canadians appreciate the transparency of the information that they get from REALTOR.ca.

There’s no account needed. Although you can set up an account to save your preferences and set up your notifications, you don’t have to set up an account to simply see the listing information. Also, where possible, we’ve been adding more information like sold price history. In certain places, we now have the status of a listing. For example, if a listing is conditionally sold, there will be a label on the listing that will indicate that. That kind of information is very, very appreciated, and it’s expected by consumers.

The third quality is the fact that REALTOR.ca is unbiased. It represents all REALTORS® across the country and their listings. Consumers recognize the value of having that one single source where they can see the entire inventory. Definitely, having all the listings is a strong part of the value proposition. What has driven the growth, like I mentioned earlier, from 25% to 48% market share, that kind of growth over the last 5 years, what’s driven that growth has been the focus on trust, transparency, and remaining unbiased.

Erin: I think that, Jill, you can speak to this, no matter what the market or even the economy is doing at any given time, just how important it is that mutual trust. You must experience this every day as a realtor.

Jill: Well said. Mutual trust is really important with our clients because that’s the foundation of our business. We want to do what’s best for our clients and help them through the whole process.

Erin: What this is, is just building on that. Thank you, Jill. Things are good. You’ve captured people’s attention. You’re the market leader as we’ve been hearing you say. Tell me this, why is this the time to make this shift? Andrew.

Andrew: Actually, I think you’ve just laid out the reasons to make the shift. It’s precisely for those reasons. It’s much better to lean into this sort of a change from a position of strength and leadership. We know we’ve done really well competing in the so-called portal wars, as I like to call it, but the battlefields ahead are different. We need to be able to maintain our success into that next chapter and for years to come for REALTORS®. Again, we can’t rest on our laurels and assume that the success that we’ve had from this past decade just automatically secures our future.

I love that Patrick has shared all of the wonderful insights that we’ve gained over why consumers and how consumers have rewarded us with that position. We are very data-driven, and we’re always looking for the story beneath the story, really. As such, we know which consumer segments in which we are historically strong, but we also know in which ones we’re not. We know where we have achieved, let’s call it consumer preference, but we also know where we have yet to achieve consumer loyalty. These are the sorts of things that really drive us and drive the team to say, “We believe that now is the time to take that next step and not get complacent.”

Erin: The ditches are full of the remnants of companies or organizations that thought they had it and were able to sit back and put their feet up. How about some of those companies that got obsolete? Do you and Patrick have any insight so that we can look at those and go, “Yes, not us”?

Andrew: I feel we could play Bingo with them.

Patrick: We have a Myspace, but you’re right, Erin, history is filled with companies who had a comfortable lead, became complacent, and then lost market share or disappeared altogether. One that’s top of mind for me is I grew up in Hamilton and a company nearby, Blackberry RIM, had such a lead and then had Apple reinvent that whole space. To Andrew’s point, never take your lead for granted. You have to pay attention to the data, you have to pay attention to early signals, and you have to get ahead of it because once you lose that lead, you never get it back.

Andrew: Just to build on that, the other reason for that is in the technology industry it’s constantly reinventing and lines are being cast in new areas and new ways. Like I said, the portal wars, portals were a category for the past 10 years or so, but will that remain? Where will the lines be drawn now? We’ve seen that happen time and time again where in fact there could be a whole category of independent vendors that all of a sudden the next year it’s completely erased because one of the major platforms has added some new capability into its system and so that independent category no longer exists.

We know that the technology industry, PropTech included, is constantly reinventing, and we know that a victory in one lane does not mean a victory in the next. That’s what we’re building here, is making sure that this is a strong and vibrant, and nimble technology company that can sustain through those transitions.

Erin: To carry on with that metaphor, the intersection of opportunity and preparedness is where success is met. Jill, I think you can speak to this and the readiness of leadership to do this thing.

Jill: Yes, absolutely. Our leadership on our board is ready. It’s been talked about for so many years moving in this direction. Actually, there’s many other boards and associations across the country that also now own for-profits and have done similar things. Our clients are looking at other sources for information. Information is needed now. They want the information, and there’s lots of innovation in this space. This is great for our industry, but we need to make sure that we’re continually the trusted source and the one that consumers want to go to to get their information and their data.

Erin: Yes. As much as computers and ChatGPT is really entering the conversation, it’s that human connection, that human trust that you have built up for as you say your three decades as a realtor now and, of course, as chair of CREA. That human touch will never be replaced. Andrew, I do have a question for you. Are we going to expect to see banner ads everywhere?

Andrew: Oh my goodness. Yes, really. No. Thankfully it’s not 1995. First of all, the serious answer to that question is why would we begin to do things that go completely against what led us to this point of success? We just wouldn’t do that. We don’t need to, it doesn’t make sense. With the market share numbers that Patrick just shared, we have a core audience that is highly engaged, and that’s something that these other sites may not necessarily have. Our job is not to replicate the models of those sites, it’s really to find new ways to bring value to our existing core audiences, that’s both REALTORS® and consumers.

That could be either from value that REALTOR.ca delivers or via a selection of brands or providers that we choose to facilitate access to. I’d like to give you an example if that would be helpful.

Erin: Sure.

Andrew: Okay, cool. For example, one of the popular areas on REALTOR.ca actually is a blog, a blog that we call Living Room. It’s got lots of great lifestyle content. This is an area very popular with consumers. Of course, when you think about it, it would be a very natural area for us to explore promotional partnership opportunities for with, for example, other lifestyle brands. Maybe another example as well is that we’re frequently approached by PropTech companies looking to offer innovative products and solutions to REALTORS®. Many of them really make sense to do that with.

It would make sense that we would have a program or a marketplace that would allow us to vet those and really work with those vendors to refine offerings that make sense for our market and facilitate their exposure. This is actually the kind of thing, I’m thinking, Patrick, we’ve done this on an ad-hoc basis in the past successfully with companies like Matterport or even RealSatisfied. I know that we’re currently working on some things with open offers that would fall into this category as well. Those are some examples of everything but banner ads, Erin.

Erin: I love that it sounds so organic, especially when you use the example of Living Room, which is just a comfortable, cozy place to go and to feel like you’re learning stuff and getting other opinions all in one place, so good. If you can do that, more power to you. I think it’s a great idea. Now, Patrick, you talked about consumer data, what else do you see trending when it comes to real estate transactions in Canada? What tools and technologies or innovations are we expecting to engage with in the future, going to do some crystal ball gazing here, my friend, to enhance the buying, selling, and listing experience?

Patrick: I love this question, Erin. Two things come to mind. First of all, I’m very bullish on virtual and augmented reality and the impact that these technologies will have on our industry. It’s still the early days. We’re just scratching the surface right now when it comes to leveraging this tech to remotely visit a property, get a feel for the neighborhood. Just imagine walking into a house and using your phone or your tablet, using that screen to start moving furniture around or knocking down a wall. I think these technologies will become a common way to interact with listings.

The second big trend. Information is going to continue to become more and more accessible. More transparent. Consumers always get what they want. They are undefeated in the history of business. You know what, that’s okay because what consumers value most from a REALTOR® is not information. What they’re looking for is a trusted advisor. Earlier on we talked about transparency initiatives. Something new that will be coming to REALTOR.ca in the next few weeks, something very exciting, will be the ability to see offers tracked in real-time on REALTOR.ca.

We announced a partnership with a company called Openn Offers last May, open with two Ns. Now they’re in the final steps of their due diligence work. They’ve onboarded several brokerages who will participate in a pilot in Ontario and British Columbia. We’re looking to address the perceived lack of transparency in the sales process that many consumers, governments, and REALTORS® have been vocal about. We want to do this in a way that will continue to keep REALTORS® at the heart of the transaction.

Erin: Okay. I’m catching my breath here as somebody who likes to look at real estate and properties around me and also find out what houses have done in areas that I’ve moved from, just because I like to look at those numbers and think, “Oh, what if I’d held onto it?” Tell me what this means. What does this mean to me as a consumer? Can you give us a little bit more insight into this? I think it’s fascinating.

Andrew: Erin, I’m just going to jump in. It’s Andrew. You know what, that you just self-described, there’s actually a large cohort of people that are just like you.

Erin: Oh, yes.

Andrew: We know that not everybody who goes onto REALTOR.ca is actually imminently buying or selling a property. There’s actually a whole cohort that go on there routinely just to see how they’re doing, or to see where they stand, or just to make themselves feel confident about where they stand. Anyway, I just thought I’d interject.

Patrick: It’s all good. I think we could do a whole podcast just on this whole offer process and how it’s coming to REALTOR.ca. Maybe I can address one of the key concerns that comes up when we mention this. The question that we’ll get is, “Well, why are you launching an eBay kind of auctioning service?” This is not at all the plan. This doesn’t replace the current offer and acceptance method of buying and selling real estate. It just automates the existing process.

The beauty of the Openn platform and its integration with REALTOR.ca is that there’s still going to need to be a REALTOR® on both sides of the transaction. The Openn platform provides buyers with the opportunity to see how much competition exists and where their offer stands in the negotiation process. On the flip side, for sellers, it builds confidence that they’re getting the most that they can from current market conditions.

Erin: I’m super excited about it and cannot wait. As someone who lives in BC, as you do, Jill, as well, as a REALTOR®, how do you see these things, these opportunities, translating into your future day-to-day?

Jill: Excellent, the way you put that as opportunities. I think that it’s crucial that we remember that we need and want to provide amazing data to our customers, to our clients. That starts with the REALTOR®, I know. I am a REALTOR®. I know how hard it is and how much work that goes into providing the information that goes into those listings that end up on REALTOR.ca. REALTOR.ca, in essence, it ends up becoming a connection, really, for us, between us and our clients.

Through the leads that come through REALTOR.ca, through us as REALTORS® providing the data and the data being in the site, it enables us to continue to provide that complete data to the customer or our clients as well. I have to say, it’s crucial that we keep providing the best tools to support our clients in their journey, which is the long journey it can be through both the buying and the selling of real estate. It’s amazing that, of course, REALTOR.ca is owned by REALTORS®.

Erin: Let’s end with a little out-of-the-box thinking now, shall we? It’s 2033, 10 years from now, they’re still talking about the slap at the Oscars, and you’re on REALTOR.ca. Tell us, what do you see? All right. We’re going to start out with Andrew.

Andrew: First of all, I’m still trying to get over 2033 as a concept, Erin. Those numbers don’t even make sense in my brain right now, but I can think about it in terms of decades. Like we’ve said, the past 10 years felt like there was the great portal wars. I think that the next 10 years are going to look very different. I think that the position that we’ve gained is phenomenal, but we have to be mindful of what we’ll have to do in order to maintain the equivalent position moving forward because the lines perhaps are being drawn differently now.

For example, there’s a lot more verticalization happening, meaning that banks, for example, are building or acquiring brokerages. The solution stacks are deepening as everybody is trying to be that one-stop shop so the real estate consumer never has to leave their site. It’s like whereas, in the past decade and beyond, real estate portals were a standalone market, it feels like that’s less likely to be now. Our plan here, though, is to create a strong and really well-supported and nimble technology company that can be around and help REALTORS® prepare for that next chapter of the journey.

Erin: What about you, Jill? What are your thoughts on this heading to 2033? Keep in mind, we’re already almost at the quarter point of this century, which is enough to blow your mind, but let’s look at the third point at 2033. What do you think, Jill?

Jill: I guess time flies. 2033 sounds so far away from now, but when I think about 10 years ago, I used to have to go drive to rent a movie. Ultimately, I think that what we want to make sure is that REALTOR.ca stays the leading platform that it is today and making sure that REALTORS® can continue to do what they love and continue to do their job in serving customers, helping them buy and sell real estate. Ultimately, that means keeping REALTORS® top of mind with all Canadians. Having said that, that makes REALTOR.ca our best tool to continue to defend that position.

Erin: Absolutely. Patrick, your thoughts on where we’re headed for the future?

Patrick: I agree with everything that Andrew and Jill said, but I’ll go in a bit of a different direction. I think 2033, when you’re on REALTOR.ca, first of all, it’ll be a much more personal one-to-one experience. Whether you’re a young urbanite like my son who’s in Montreal right now looking for his first apartment, or you’re somebody looking to downsize, regardless of who you are, you will feel like REALTOR.ca understands your needs. The other thing is, it’s going to be a much more immersive experience. Earlier I talked a bit about augmented and virtual reality and that kind of technology.

The other thing, I’m pretty confident when I’m on the site or on the apps, anywhere on the platform, in 10 years from now, I’m still going to see a lot of REALTORS®. Technology tools are going to come and go, and it’s hard to forecast exactly what kind of bells and whistles will be on the platform, but I’m pretty confident that there’ll still be REALTORS® because Canadians will continue to need that trusted advisor. Regardless of how technology is going to come support that journey, there’s still going to be a role for a trusted advisor.

Erin: Thank you all for your time today and continued success as you look to the future, holding on to your integrity and what you have already built and just making sure that everybody gets the best experience from REALTOR.ca. We’re grateful for the illumination today. Thank you so much, Jill, Patrick, Andrew.

Andrew: Thanks, Erin.

Patrick: Thanks, Erin.

Jill: It was great. Thanks.

Erin: Our guests today have been CREA Chair, Jill Oudil; VP of REALTOR.ca, Patrick Pichette; and Andrew Jackson, CREA’s head of business development. I’m Erin Davis. It has been my pleasure once again to host REAL TIME, a production of Alphabet® Creative with Rob Whitehead and Real Family on the tech side. Thanks for listening and we’ll talk to you again soon on REAL TIME.

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Erin Davis: Welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS®
and all of us who are fascinated with the buying, the selling, the great storytelling. My name is Erin Davis, and you’re going to love this episode number 35 because it’s about influencing social media; getting your name, your brand, your story out there, and you don’t have to be a Spielberg or even a Kardashian to do it. It’s a hyper-digital world. Many brands are finding success tapping into and nurturing niche communities.

On this episode, Shannae Ingleton Smith joins REAL TIME to help you as a REALTOR® build a niche of your own. Shannae is President and CEO of Kensington Grey. It’s a boutique influencer agency rooted in diversity, and she’s an expert in content creation and brand storytelling. In addition to building a niche, she also has valuable advice for you on what platform fits you personally, on how to strike an effective balance between telling your own story and having others, like influencers, champion your brand for you and even what you might expect it to cost you. Let’s dig in.

Shannae, thanks so much for joining us today on REAL TIME. For those who may not be familiar with you yet, and it seems from your numbers like not too many are unfamiliar with you, let’s start with a quick backgrounder on you, could we?

Shannae Ingleton Smith: Yes, of course. I started off with a background in big media, working for one of Canada’s largest media conglomerates. Over time, things started to move from traditional media, so like television, radio, print, et cetera, to digital and then to social media. As my career evolved, so did my passion for social media. In Canada, we’re very fortunate enough to have a year off for mat leave.

While I was on mat leave with my daughter Kensington, the concept of the agency, Kensington Grey, was formed. Shortly, about a year and a half after returning to work after having her, I left my job and started Kensington Grey Agency, which is an influencer management agency that focuses on diverse creators, particularly Black creators. It’s my life’s passion and something I’m really proud of.

Erin: Wonderful, and to have it named after your daughter too, Kensington. That’s so beautiful.

Shannae: Thank you.

Erin: What is your business mission then, Shannae?

Shannae: Our business mission is to empower Black people, to empower Black voices, and to ensure that Black creators in particular are at the top of their game from an education perspective, and to ensure that they’re not leaving any money on the table, and they’re being paid fairly and equitably. With my background in media, as well as my passion for this space, I’d sort of married the best of both worlds.

Erin: It sounds like it. I was looking at some pictures on your Instagram feed, and there was a mug there with quite a striking message. Do you remember what it said?

Shannae: Yes, pay me fairly and don’t just use me for diversity clout.

Erin: Diversity clout. I thought that that was just perfect. How do you think your message is getting across? Do you feel like you’re really breaking through with your push for diversity?

Shannae: Yes, absolutely. Diversity is definitely not a trend for me or for anyone at our company. We’ve believed in diversity and have been touting diversity, whether it be literally or figuratively, I feel like, my whole life. With everything that happened in 2020 with George Floyd, I think that a lot of companies caught up with where we were already at. As a result of that, I think that real change is happening.

I think that that time, everyone was at home during the pandemic, and we witnessed the tragedy with George Floyd, and everyone- it was just an opportunity for everyone to just really reflect and to see where they could be doing better. A lot of both organizations, companies, peoples, communities, really stepped up to the plate and have made long-term transformative change, and I think it’s a beautiful thing to see.

Erin: Well, what types of clients do you work with?

Shannae: We work with all kinds of clients. Our creators are in every category you could think of, from fashion, to beauty, to lifestyle, to parenting. Think of every brand or any brand that might want to work with creators in those space, and we’ve probably worked with them. Whether it’s Walmart, whether it’s Home Depot, whether it is Louis Vuitton, or it is Valentino, or The Gap, Old Navy, we’ve literally worked with every brand you could ever imagine.

Erin: That’s incredible. How has the influencer world evolved, Shannae, from celebrity endorsements on TV, late-night TV talk show hosts selling ALPO dog food because that was part of their shtick, right? In some ways, they were the original influencers. It’s been a long road to where we are now, hasn’t it?

Shannae: I definitely think it’s been a long road. I think that influencers have always existed, but I think that it’s a little bit more literal in today’s terms. I feel like back then, celebrity endorsements were- it was very clear that you were being sold to, or that the celebrity was doing whatever they were doing for the money, whether it’s selling dog food or whatever. Whereas I think with influencer marketing, people have the ability to talk about things that they would already be talking about but being paid for that.

That’s where the importance of authenticity and only endorsing things that you would genuinely use in your real life and that you have used before and that you would genuinely recommend. Audiences have become very smart, and they can sniff out when it’s not an authentic organic partnership. I think that the new element of authenticity and realness and lifting the fourth wall or lifting the veil is what- I guess is what differentiates creators of today versus the celebrities of yesterday.

Erin: Yes, I think that you bring up a good point there, talking about whether that talk show host actually used ALPO at home with his own dog or dogs. I think now it’s expected or sniffed out if somebody doesn’t use the product that they’re endorsing. It’s expected. If somebody is– For example, recently the whole brouhaha about the influencer who was plugging a mascara, and it turned out that she had fake lashes on. That can really take you down in a hurry. That authenticity, not only is it sensed, but it’s expected.

Shannae: Yes, I agree. Well, it’s all about – Building a community is all about building trust. In order for you to have a successful and an engaged and growing community, they need to be dialed in and they need to really trust you. Once you lose or you’ve broken that trust with them, they tune out and they disengage.

Erin: Yes, it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a moment to lose it. You got to be so careful, right? You, Shannae, your career, and in a nutshell, you summed it up very quickly, and a very broad expanse of experience in your case. Tell us the one thing you would like to disabuse people of when it comes to their ideas of what an influencer is. If you meet somebody at a cocktail party and say, “Well, I’m an influencer,” what is the thing that you’re afraid they’re thinking that just isn’t true?

Shannae: We’re not just self-absorbed people that are walking around taking selfies. Some of us are. Some of us actually are, but there are a lot of people who just take the power of their platform very seriously and the influence that they have very seriously, and they really only use it to bring and add value to the lives of the people that follow them. We’re a new form of media. We’re the new magazine, we’re the new talk show, we’re the new radio station where people tune in to find out about the things that they love, to sometimes find out about current events, just to find out what’s happening in the world. We’re a new source of, yes, media.

Erin: Yes. A new town square, as it were.

Shannae: Exactly.

Erin: 1.8 billion. Now that is one crowded town square, and who wouldn’t want that many followers? Let me tell you. That’s how many page views there were at REALTOR.ca last year, and that’s 121 million visitors and a half-billion visits. No wonder REALTOR.ca is the number one real estate platform in Canada. Now, back to Shannae Ingleton Smith of Kensington Grey, talking the birth, growth and power of the digital.

Now that people know what an influencer is and is not, when did businesses start seeing the value of influencers as a part of a buyable social media strategy, that it wasn’t just kids doing amazing dance numbers in their basements? When did that evolution begin?

Shannae: The power of digital, I think, has been happening since the early 2000s, but I think that it really, really blew up around 2013- the early 2010s, like 2012, 2013, 2014, where companies that couldn’t afford to spend a million dollars on a spot in the Super Bowl, or to buy a page in the Toronto Star
for $75,000, they’re like, where else could I put my money? They’re putting it into social media, and they were seeing real results, seeing better results, in fact, than using some traditional media sources like newspaper or magazine or sometimes radio. I think that once they started seeing the results, they just kept on coming back, and they haven’t looked back since.

Erin: Why should those who are on the fence make the leap? Why, do you think? What would you say to those who are still saying, “I don’t know. I’m not sure because I’ve always done it this way”?

Shannae: I think you have to go where people’s attentions are. If you want to get people’s attention, look at where their attentions are right now. It’s in their phone, it’s on their laptop, it’s on their screens. People are using traditional media as a source of their news information and purchasing decisions less and less. Traditional media is losing relevance by the day, and social media is honestly gaining relevance by the day as the source for that. You have to just get with the program or you’ll be at a significant disadvantage as a business owner, I would say.

Erin: Yes, and influencers now have this down to a science. Because we all know that social media is a powerful tool for finding and building a community of brand loyalists. Can you explain the pros and cons of targeting a niche audience as opposed to casting that wide net, taking out that full-page ad, or trying to get on the evening news in the middle of a newscast and having your ad in there or something, when niching down, if you will, is valuable?

Shannae: Niching down is valuable because you’re speaking to your people. You’re speaking to people who are almost a complete and perfect alignment with the service or the products that you have to offer. There’s very little wastage, if you will, when the people that are seeing your content, especially with platforms on social media like TikTok, where the algorithm is so, so smart that it connects you with people who have a specific interest with the exact things that you’re talking about. You find your people, you find your community, you find your target audience a lot faster, and you’re able to get to your goal that you’re trying to achieve a lot faster as well.

Erin: Okay, you brought up TikTok. Now, I want to talk to you as would-be-influencer me to influencer you. In total, I’ve got about 100,000 followers on various platforms, but I’ll tell you that TikTok is the one that gets the least of my attention. You’ve just opened my eyes to something that I didn’t know, Shannae, and maybe for people listening today too. That even if you only have followers numbering in the hundreds on TikTok as opposed to, say, I have 30,000 or whatever on Twitter, that if I put out stuff, TikTok is going to get it to the right people, instead of trying to build up all of those followers right out of the gate. Am I hearing this right?

Shannae: You are hearing me correctly. TikTok is an app that is built for discoverability. Most of the people that see your content are actually people that don’t follow you. It’s people that find you on the For You page because you’re talking about things that interest them, or that they’ve searched before or that they’ve talked about before. The algorithm is extremely sophisticated, more sophisticated than any other social media platform that I’ve ever seen before. That’s why it’s so easy for people to just literally sign up for the app and within, honestly, a few months, gain tens of thousands, sometimes even hundreds of thousands of followers because the algorithm finds your people so fast and with almost expert precision.

Erin: Wow, that’s amazing. Thank you for that. Hopefully, a light went on for a lot of people here. Again, what I’ve learned from you just partway through our talk today, Shannae, is that you don’t have to be dressing up and doing musical numbers or doing a tutorial on makeup or anything like that. It doesn’t have to be that. Again, although TikTok has a reputation for being flashy and fun and really sticky, in terms of content, it’s again down to authenticity. Sure, there’s the flash and the fun, but authenticity works on that platform too. Is that what I’m hearing?

Shannae: Yes, there’s definitely something for everyone. It’s not like the previous platforms where you have to- like it’s a struggle to find followers and to be discovered. The velocity in which you can grow on TikTok is way faster than any other platform right now. It’s because you just show up as yourself, then people that are interested in you and are like-minded will find you because most of the people that see your content are people that do not follow you. That’s what makes the app so exciting.

Erin: When we return, how you can find your niche, and then dive right in and really touch your followers where they live, sometimes literally. Not all influencers are selling, just like you should be doing, about the good works you take part in in your community. Share your stories and use the #REALTORSCare, and let everybody know about your good works, great causes and you. Now, back to REAL TIME and Shannae Ingleton Smith.

Okay, so how do you think that a REALTOR®
can find their niche and use that knowledge to grow their business, Shannae?

Shannae: Depending on whatever it is that you specialize in, whether it’s the luxury space or the first-time homebuyer space, think about what that client would want to know more about and just talk about those things. By doing that, you’re providing value for that specific audience. If it’s like the first-time homebuyer space, maybe you can talk about some of the tax benefits that they can take advantage of when buying a first-time home, or different hacks on how to save for a down payment. Things of that nature. You can talk about interest rates.

If you are focused in the luxury space, then maybe you can talk about more luxury or first-world problems, if you will. You can talk about homes with a wow factor. You can talk about the things that people that are in that spending bracket would be interested in. Then as a result of that, you’ll attract people that could potentially be clients of yours down the line.

Erin: Really, amplify your strengths and share the messages that you have learned and all of your wisdom. Do people ever worry about other people taking their ideas, though, Shannae? That must happen all the time on social media, right? If you’ve got, say, a REALTOR® who’s got a TikTok channel that’s all about those luxury houses, the one that’s got the ice cream maker in the bedroom and that sort of thing, and yes, that exists, I’d be afraid if I did something like that on my account, somebody might borrow that idea. What do you think of that?

Shannae: I think that there are very few things that are truly, truly original anymore, and I think that there’s a lot of people repurposing and doing things in their own way. However, one thing about TikTok is they’re big on accountability. They’re big on giving credit. If you are outright copying word for word, bar for bar what another REALTOR® is doing or what another person on TikTok is doing, the TikTok community will find you and they will call you out.

Like you said earlier, it takes a lifetime to build a reputation but a moment to lose it. If you’re doing things that call your integrity into question, like copying, or things that are unethical like not giving credit where credit is due, or not giving inspiration credit if you were inspired by somebody else’s content, then you’ll find yourself in hot water, and then you will lose that trust from your audience that is highly coveted and so hard to build. If you’re inspired by another REALTOR®, if you’re inspired by somebody else’s content, just say that. You can say, “Hey, I saw this on so-and-so’s page the other day. I loved what he was doing. This is my take on the same issue.”

Yes, definitely don’t try and pass off somebody else’s work or somebody else’s ideas as your own. Give credit where credit is due. Then when you are inspired by somebody else, try to find a way to make it into your own. There’s really only one you, and that’s always going to be your superpower and lean into that as much as you can.

Erin: That’s fantastic. I think that maybe you just allayed a whole bunch of fears that people have had about, “Well, there’s so many people out there on these platforms, what do I have new to offer?” You have you to offer, and that is a really important message. Thank you for that. Now, Shannae, do you have any specific platforms that you prefer for different messaging? I’ll go back to myself as an example here. I’ll put some of my content on Facebook and Instagram, others on TikTok and Twitter. How do you decide where best to reach your target audience, or is it more of a touch-them-all kind of approach?

Shannae: Yes, so I would say that Instagram is like the aesthetic, perfect, pristine app where that’s where you can share the photos, that’s where you can show the final product. Then TikTok is more the unfinished, how I got there. Maybe some of the behind the scenes, or some of just a few snippets and tidbits from your day can be on TikTok because it’s short form, it’s video, it’s casual, it’s a little bit more organic.

Then YouTube, for example, would be the deep dive like, “This is how I did it, this is every step that I took, this is the blueprint,” where you can really take a deep dive and just really delve into your content. Then I would say things like Twitter and Facebook, you can use those to drive to those other three major platforms, and to just bring awareness and to circle your followers back to those other platforms so that they can check that other content out.

Erin: Nobody knows your brand better than yourself, and it comes back to the authenticity and what we’ve discussed about the wisdom and experience and the schools of hard knocks that everybody has been through. This is especially true for entrepreneurs like REALTORS®. Shannae, how do you balance creating your own content versus outsourcing it to digital content creators? A lot of people might be intimidated not knowing even how to use iMovie in their iPhone, or whatever other programs that are so easily downloaded and worked with now. How do you balance that, creating versus outsourcing?

Shannae: Yes. I would say, well, first of all, do the things that bring you joy. If recording and talking to the camera, if you love that and that brings you joy, definitely do that. If you’re not a fan of editing, then find an editor. Find somebody who can edit and chop and mix your stuff together in a way that’s compelling and entertaining. If you prefer to be behind the camera, maybe some other members of your team prefer to be in front of the camera, and you can be the person that films and maybe edits behind the scene.

Another thing that I think that has really helped me is I try to document as much as possible as opposed to creating. I try to be the content and not orchestrate the content, if you will. If I’m already going on about my day, if I’m already doing things, I can just put an iPhone on a tripod and record that. These are things that I would be doing anyway. As opposed to just creating and the kind of orchestrating something that isn’t real, it’s just better to document it or have somebody from your team document you doing something that you would already be doing anyway.

Whether that’s a house tour, have somebody record you doing a house tour. Maybe it’s you sourcing a new neighborhood or sourcing a new client or whatever, you can get those people to capture that behind the scenes, and then you can pull anecdotes from that or pull little clips from that and then just post it up on your social media. Try to document instead of creating as much as possible.

Erin: Document instead of creating. Again, that’s more organic, it’s more natural, it’s more authentic, and there’s always editing. We all think we have to be perfect, and sometimes it’s the outtakes that are the most memorable and the most real anyway.

Shannae: That’s true.

Erin: It’s sometimes hard to share them, but they’re memorable.

Shannae: Yes, and sometimes if it’s scary or hard to share, some of the times that’s your best content and your best performing content. Don’t be afraid to take risks every once in a while. Everything doesn’t have to be always perfect.

Erin: That’s true. I will add what my broadcasting guru told me, and she still talks to broadcasters and podcasters around the world, “Be personal, but don’t be private.” There is a fine line, and you want to go personal, but you always have to respect that privacy that might make people go, “I really didn’t need to know that.”

Something that you’ve said too that really connected in your message to us, Shannae, is that the comments, what people have to say about what you’re putting out there, your content, that can sometimes tell you when you’re going in the right direction or maybe where you should take a bit of a U-turn or a detour.

Shannae: Yes. What we always like to say to our creators is the tea is always in the comments. That will send you in the right direction, that will tell you what you should do next. That will give you ideas for your next video or for your next post because your community will tell you what they want, and pay attention to your comments. It’s almost like crowdsourcing for free or doing market research for free.

Erin: Yes, absolutely. Coming up, Shannae Ingleton Smith of Kensington Grey talks about finding the right influencers to help you reach your target audience. #helpfuladvice. Whether you’re looking to open up shop in Sherbrooke, or peruse palaces in London, Ontario, of course, you can find just what your heart desires on REALTOR.ca. Oh, and while you’re there, open the tab and visit Living Room Blog to read stuff like the most googled questions about real estate answered by REALTORS®, plus idea-sparking topics like optimizing space in your galley kitchen. Okay, you could be there for a while and that’s all right. Kick back in the Living Room Blog section of REALTOR.ca. Now, we’re back to Shannae Ingleton Smith on REAL TIME.

Okay, so say I want to find somebody to champion my brand, and if I didn’t think it was me, how do you go about finding, Shannae, the right personalities to champion your brand? Where would you begin?

Shannae: I would say that you can start by just going on Instagram or TikTok and going through hashtags that are relevant to your niche, and look for the people that are showing up at the top of those hashtags or reoccurring often in those hashtags and then reach out to them. You can also utilize an agency like a Kensington Grey who represents influencers. You can ask them, “Hey, do you have somebody that likes to talk about this, or do you have somebody that is an expert in that?” Then they’ll find somebody or source that person for you, but you can definitely search.

Especially the searchability on platforms like Facebook, on even LinkedIn, on TikTok are superior. The searchability is really sophisticated there. Then on Instagram, it’s a little bit harder, but you can also use hashtags on Instagram to just find people who are experts, or who continue to pop up or end up being at the top of those hashtags.

Erin: How does one usually expect to pay an influencer who is not themselves– If you want to hire somebody, do you pay by clicks and views, or is there a set rate, or generally speaking, how does it work?

Shannae: Typically, influencers don’t do a lot for free anymore. In the very beginning, people were just happy to be asked to endorse things, and a lot of people would just do things on barter. Now, for the most part, influencers do expect to be paid. It’s different depending on who the influencer is, it’s different depending on what your budget is and the relationship you have with them, but it varies.

The general rule, I would say, is that for a post, influencers are typically paid between 3% and 5% of their following per post. Sometimes it’s more if it’s super niche, or if they have extremely high engagement. Then sometimes it’s super less if it’s not as niche, or if the client’s budget just doesn’t permit.

Erin: Interesting. Now, what else should you consider when you’re planning, researching and executing an influencer strategy? Because I think a lot of people listening right now are probably getting kind of excited about this whole idea and going, “Yes, okay, I can try this. I can do this. I don’t have to orchestrate. I can just create. I can be myself and see what comes of it.” What else should you consider when you’re doing this?

Shannae: Well, I think that you want to figure out, what is the goal here? Is the goal to sell houses? Is your goal to bring in potential home buyers or home sellers? Is the goal to just raise awareness or build your profile? When you’re sourcing creators, you want to find people that have a true and genuine connection to the content and the topic that you are talking about.

You want to source creators that have a true passion for and understanding of real estate or of the neighborhood that you’re selling a home in or that you are focused on so that it’s authentic and it doesn’t feel forced. You want people that feel natural in front of the camera, where when you watch one of their videos, you feel like you’re just talking to a friend on FaceTime. You want somebody who’s just going to make you feel comfortable, somebody who you feel like you’re just out having a drink with. I think that those are the best ways of connecting, and yes, just making sure that it’s just authentic.

Erin: Yes, we are hearing that word a lot today and for very good reason. We hear the word authenticity all the time really when it comes to brand storytelling. How do we ensure then that paid partnerships remain authentic?

Shannae: I think that the best way to ensure that paid partnerships remain authentic is to only take partnerships for brands that you would be talking about organically. If you already love Home Depot and you go to Home Depot all the time, or you love Canadian Tire and you use Canadian Tire for everything and you tell your friends about it, then it’s a natural fit if you work with that brand in a paid partnership. It’s just almost like you’re talking organically about it, but in this case, you’re being paid, but it seems true, it seems authentic.

Don’t talk about things that feel forced or that you don’t really use because then you lose credibility. People are really smart. Don’t underestimate the intelligence of your community and the audience that’s watching. They know when they’re being bamboozled, and they tune out and unfollow when those things happen. It’s never worth it just trying to make a quick buck by touting a brand or service or product that you don’t really care about or use in real life.

Erin: This wouldn’t apply to REALTORS®, especially the ones doing their own social media, but I’m sure that there are personalities who are known for plugging like 40 items. It’s like, “Oh, okay, there she is again, and this time it’s Jell-O, and yesterday it was something else.” Yes, we can all have diverse interests and things in our lives, and we may love Jell-O, and Pepsi, and Canadian Tire, but sometimes I think that you can risk being overexposed. I’m sure you tell your clients that too, right?

Shannae: Yes, that’s correct.

Erin: Yes. I mean, it’s a good problem to have.

Shannae: I guess it can be, but it depends on whether you want longevity. I think that saying no to things, that there’s power in saying no, and just really staying truthful and aligned with your ethos, and then just moving forward with the things that align with your brand best. You don’t have to take everything.

Erin: That’s right. If REALTORS® are interested in integrating influencers into their marketing strategies, tell us where you think is a good place to start, Shannae?

Shannae: I truly believe that you’re your best influencer, so don’t be afraid to show up on camera, or even if you’re not showing up face forward on the camera, don’t be afraid to start posting things and posting maybe some of the properties that you are selling, or sharing some of your expertise, whether it just be by audio or with photos, and just talking and sharing your knowledge so that you can connect with the right people.

If you are looking to connect with influencers, I would definitely say you can definitely go through an agency, but you can also just connect with people by social media and start following them. Send them a message if you think that there might be an opportunity for you to work together. Reach out to them and send an email. In most cases, people’s contact information are available in their bio.

I think that you miss all the shots that you don’t take, so just try check it out. In real estate, people that are in real estate are great at sales. It’s almost like door knocking but virtual. Don’t be afraid to knock on a few doors and ask and put out some feelers to figure out how you might be able to work with somebody, or whether they might want to work for you in a social media capacity.

Erin: Okay, let’s look closer to home then, so to speak. What about a client? Do you think a client would be a good storyteller?

Shannae: Yes, I think a client would be a great storyteller if they have a testimonial, or if they have a positive experience that they want to tell. There’s nothing better than word-of-mouth marketing. If you have a client that’s willing to share a positive experience, that is worth its weight in gold for sure. Yes, absolutely.

Erin: Most people don’t feel truly comfortable performing to a camera or to even if it’s just a phone or whatever too, so you’ve got to be judicious, don’t you? Because you want it to be authentic, and not like somebody is sitting there like a deer in headlights answering your questions. I think that something we could come back to, and if you haven’t emphasized it already, then maybe it’s worth mentioning too, again, you can always edit and maybe be a little judicious with your editing. Should you show your content to somebody else before you put it out there into the world, Shannae?

Shannae: Yes. I feel like most content should get a run-through in the group chat first. A lot of my content gets sent to my girlfriends’ group chat before I post it, just to make sure that there isn’t anything that I’m saying that is incorrect or inaccurate, or that there isn’t a stain on my shirt or whatever. The same thing applies with social media. Just run it by somebody that you trust just to make sure that you’re putting something out there that makes sense.

Just tying back to your question previously about, do you use a client? If you have a client that doesn’t feel comfortable speaking on camera or going online and sharing a testimonial, sometimes your work just speaks for itself. Maybe it’s like a two-part series where you’re talking about this home that you’ve listed, and then part two or the follow-up is that you’re sharing that the home has been sold.

People don’t always have to know the story or the person behind who owns the home or who the client is because people obviously value their privacy, but there are so many other ways that you can be your own cheerleader and share your successes and share how well you’re doing as a real estate agent in a way that will attract new clients, more clients and more business to you and your platforms.

Erin: Well, it’s certainly been eye-opening and so encouraging and just, oh, the sparks of inspiration from talking with you today, Shannae, it has been a real pleasure. Thank you, and continued success to you and Kensington Grey. Thanks again for taking the time to talk.

Shannae: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Erin: And we appreciate you listening to the podcast for Canadian REALTORS®, discussing issues that affect you and can help enrich not just your business, but your life. Make sure to subscribe and follow so you don’t miss one episode of REAL TIME. If you’ve got time, why not go for a deep dive? From designing women, to ad gurus, thinking green, and shedding light on human rights, the resources you need are right here on REAL TIME. This show is produced by Alphabet® Creative. Rob Whitehead of Real Family Productions is on the tech side, and I’m your host, Erin Davis. We can’t wait to talk to you next time on REAL TIME.

Bill S287 was signed on Jan 30th and signals State sanctioned incentives for the Decarbonization of the Concrete Industry – including the supply, delivery and use of lower carbon concrete. In a breakthrough for reducing the carbon footprint of North American construction, Bill S287 was signed on the 30th of January…

Erin Davis: Hi there, and welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for Canadian REALTORS®. I’m your host, Erin Davis. As we move into 2023, we are joined today by Shaun Cathcart, Director and Senior Economist, Housing Data and Market analysis at the Canadian Real Estate Association. On this episode 34, Shaun helps REALTORS® start the new year with a better understanding of Canada’s housing market, how it’s changed over the last few years, what’s driving these changes, and most importantly, what it could look like for you, for me, for all of us in 2023. Well, Happy New Year, Shaun. Happy Lunar New Year, too. Thanks for joining us for our first episode of 2023. It’s so good to have you back on with us again.

Shaun Cathcart: Happy new year, Erin. It’s good to be back.

Erin: Thank you. Let me think, Lunar New Year, Year of the Rabbit. Is this going to be a year of the rabbit, do you think, for Canada and the real estate market?

Shaun: Not for the housing market. Maybe more like a tortoise.

Erin: All right, with that in mind, we will move forward slowly, cautiously, and let’s start, Shaun, with a basic understanding of what you do as CREA’s senior economist. Would you give us not your elevator pitch per se, but just who you are, what you do, and why it’s so important and wonderful that we have you with us here today?

Shaun: Well, I’ve been working at CREA for a long time, working with the data. Didn’t start off as a senior person, but this many years later, here I am in charge of our housing data and market analysis program. We have a small team of data wizards and economists who do all of the data processing and a lot of automation, as you can imagine. We’ve got a hundred different regions, so we can’t be writing reports and making charts and stuff for all of them. We need to automate a lot of that using computer programming, forecasting and presentations, and all that sort of thing. Obviously, out there in the media having to be the spokesperson for a lot of what we’re saying. I guess that’s the short version.

Erin: Well, you have been everywhere of late because everybody wants to know what’s coming in the year ahead, and because CREA is the authority. Do some bragging here. We’re totally going to allow this, because what kind of housing market intelligence, the kind that you provide, is not just typical, which you can also explain for us, if you wouldn’t mind, but also the best out there that there is. I’ve laid it out there. Shaun, if you could fill in the blanks for us. What is it that you do that makes the information that you provide so vital?

Shaun: Well, you don’t have to take my word for it. I think the attention that it gets out there in the world says it all. You can get housing data from StatCan, it’s sort of census data. It’s very much data around, like the housing stock and that sort of thing. You can get housing data from CMHC, which is a lot of new builds, rental market starts, and completions and that, but the bulk of what goes on in the housing market is in the resale market. That comes from MLS systems of real estate boards and associations across Canada.

That is the data that we access for 100 regions across Canada, aggregate it to the provincial and territorial level, and then to the Canada level to create this data set that goes back more than four decades. With our partners in organized real estate that are generous to give this to us every month, it’s their data, and we hope that we can turn it around and make REALTORS® the authority on what’s going on.

The reason our data set is so popular, mostly because it contains the price piece, which I think is what most people are interested in, because a lot of people own homes. They want to know what the value of their biggest asset is doing but our data also has a lot of demand and supply information in it that tells you why prices are doing what they’re doing and what they’re likely to do next.

I think that it is the preeminent housing data set in Canada. Like I say, we operate a little bit of a mini StatCan. We even work with StatCan to seasonally adjust it. We’ve got a lot of partners there and this data set goes out far and wide. The bank of Canada and Finance and all the big banks and financial institutions and governments and everyone wants to see what’s going on in this data set. It’s our job to put it together and make sure that everything is correct and well vetted and goes out on time every month.

Erin: Wow, and with huge thanks to the big boards who make this all possible too. It’s not just the big picture that you talk about too, but that you can boil it down from national to your province to your region, even down to your house. That’s got to be super useful for REALTORS®, that granular information that you are providing for them.

Shaun: One of the neat pieces of data that we do have is the MLS home price index which is the best measure of home prices in the world. No one else in the world has anything like this thing, it is just the absolute best. I remember back in school 20-plus years ago, professors talking about how in theory, this would be a really neat thing you could do with this kind of mathematics and this kind of information, the granularity you get from an MLS system.

Big data before big data was even a term, and this is something that over the last 10 years with our partners in organized Real Estate across the country and Altus Group, particularly the group based out of Quebec City who were the pros of this stuff. We have put together this, it’s basically a national index at this point, but I can give the example of my own self. I can drill down from Canada to Ontario, to Ottawa, to West Ottawa, to Bellaire Park, which is my little neighborhood.

If I went out for a jog, I could run around it in five minutes. That’s how granular it is to my house. Type two-story little detached, I can see all of the attributes of my house, which matches up exactly with what the house is like mine are in this neighborhood, and I can see the entire price history of what that’s been doing, including right up until yesterday basically. It’s a really, really neat product that REALTORS® can use to help clients price their homes and understand what’s going on at that hyper-local level.

Erin: That’s incredible. That is incredible. You have seen the future evolve, although you haven’t just seen it, you’ve been a part of it as well. I have to go back to the best in the world. Why Canada? Why us, and what kind of challenges did you have, Shaun, aggregating all of this information for such a huge country, not big in population when you compare us to our neighbors to the south, but why are we the best in the world? I hate to keep focusing on making you brag, but it really is something to be proud of.

Shaun: Well, there’s a lot that organized real estate in Canada does have to be proud of. We have a really great federation where we’re not a disparate regions, all of these boards are local, but they’re all part of the same system, I suppose, the same federation, and so that enables us to capture everything. We’re not missing coverage really anywhere, and so that’s one of the advantages. It is a challenge to maintain all of those relationships and make sure that we’re gathering data from all of those different places in a timely way, because we always talk about the last horse across the line oftentimes.

In January, you get somebody from a smaller board that takes an extra week of vacation after the holiday season and there’s no one to send us the data, so that can be challenging. Obviously, the HPI was a challenge because it’s a really big complicated project that you’ve got to bring a lot of people to the table and get agreement on how it’s going to play out. That’s where we are, and that’s why we have the best housing market intelligence of any country in the world, I think.

Erin: Coming up, how that hindsight, that 2020 vision helps us pull into focus what’s on the way. As 2022 wrapped up, CREA donated a check for $5,000 to the Canadian Hospital Aid Society of Calgary in honor of local REALTOR® and superstar Lorna Hamm. She’s the recipient of the Canadian REALTORS Care® Award presented by REALTOR.ca for her remarkable commitment to her community of Calgary. Learn more about Lorna’s amazing contribution to her city and the people who needed her help by going to REALTORSCare.ca.

If you are doing good and we know you are, please put it out there on social media using #REALTORSCare, and thank you. Now, back to CREA Senior economist, Shaun Cathcart on REAL TIME. There’s a saying that you should look through the windshield because it’s much bigger and you want to see where you’re going and not in the rearview mirror, and there’s a reason that it’s smaller. I think we need to look in the rearview mirror when it comes to what’s happening in the housing market. Let’s do that, Shaun, and paint a picture for us, if you would, of Canada’s housing market pre pandemic. Let’s go back there, shall we, before we look through the windshield?

Shaun: That’s a great question. It’s one that almost never gets asked of me, even though it’s one that I always want to answer because there’s this inclination for people to say like, “Man, COVID made the housing market go crazy,” but I would trace a lot of what’s happened in recent years, a lot of the seller’s market, the multiple offers, the big price gains. I would trace that all the way back to a starting point around 2015 when the price of oil crashed when the Canadian dollar went from par with the US dollar to 70 cents, when the oil patch really cooled down, but everywhere else in the country, particularly manufacturing places that export to the United States started to heat up and most places took a number of years to heat up slowly but some places did flare up.

A lot of that migration that was all going to Alberta for a while sought out other opportunities in the immediate wake of the oil price crash. A lot of it went to the lower mainland which was the first part of the country to really flare up and look like what we’ve seen during COVID. We saw that in Vancouver in 2015/’16 just as the psychology was peaking and there was no inventory and multiple offers on everything, double-digit price growth.

Governments came in and were like, “We’re going to put us off to this. We’re going to make things affordable.” The policies that they had brought in wouldn’t really be all that impactful on the market, but it was the impact on the psychology that sent everyone to the sidelines and said, “Whoa, what are they going to do here?”

That was the first example of that that we saw. It happened a year later in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, General region around Toronto. These days, it seems like it stretches all the way from London to Kingston where the same thing happened. We went from months of inventory to weeks of inventory. Everything was being bought up, 30% price growth. The Ontario government came in and said, “Fair Housing Plan. We’re going to make housing affordable.”

Nothing in that was really that impactful from a policy standpoint but the psychology changed in an instant. That was the second example of that that we saw. Then obviously during COVID, we saw the entire country join in and do the exact same thing. When it became apparent that the Bank of Canada was going to be raising rates quite dramatically in 2022, the psychology snapped just the same as we’d seen it before in Toronto and Vancouver, and then here we are today.

Erin: Leading up to 2020, it was truly a seller’s market. You talk about markets evolving from high to low inventory over five to six years, and then COVID. We’re going to talk about COVID. You say that people say that, “Oh, COVID did this, COVID did that.” You saw things happening. What is the biggest thing about COVID that stands out as one of the most significant changes you’ve seen over the last few years, from sales activity to prices and such? We’ve all got myriad ways in which COVID changed our lives, but what do you see in the big picture there, Sean?

Shaun: Sure. As much as a lot of that was developing beforehand, it was made that much more extreme by COVID. People say COVID acted as a turbocharger on so many trends. This is another one where we may have had price growth that was running at 15% per year in a non-COVID world, which would’ve still been making headlines. In the COVID world it was 30%, right?

Erin: Yes.

Shaun: The most striking thing to me looking at resale market data, is in the not new home construction, but the existing market was how many sales were happening. Because in a normal good year in recent years, we would have half a million sales happen. During COVID, we’re popping up 700,000 at one point on an annualized basis. I think in March of 2021 it was 800 and something thousand. How is it that there are so many sales happening?

Well, the unique feature about COVID was when you didn’t have to commute to the office anymore and your kids weren’t commuting to school, you didn’t really have to live within that small circle of possible housing options that you thought was your forever home. You could really cast a much wider net and inter-provincial migration data from StatCam shows it, in Truck Provincial data within provinces, people moving from one city to another.

People moved around during COVID more than they ever had before and that’s the most unique feature. That’s why we’re very unlikely to ever see a sales number, at least not for a very long time, that’s going to match that 2021 numbers, such a unique feature. It wasn’t just regular housing demand, it was churn, it was the ability for people to pull up stakes and move where they thought they would be in the same place for decades, and then all of a sudden, they found themselves going from Toronto to North Bay or Winnipeg to Halifax or whatever it is.

That was the most unique thing about COVID. I think that’s probably mostly done at this point unless people get called back to the office and they end up moving back in the other direction. We’ll see.

Erin: Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you. Have you seen the inverse of this yet? Have you seen any kind of a bounce back where people are moving back to, for example, metropolitan areas?

Shaun: I wouldn’t say that we’re seeing it as obviously as in the direction of people leaving. That interprovincial migration from Central Canada out to the coasts has there been a big reversal of that. There’s been a reversal of people going back to Saskatchewan and Alberta, but that’s for economic opportunities.

Erin: That’s very interesting, boy. You have a lot of crystal balls on the go there with your data and all of the tools. Could you ever have predicted that this might be some of the fallout of COVID? When we were actually told to shelter in place, people went, “Okay, I’ve had enough of this and we’re going to do something else.” It’s a whole human nature and psychology thing, Shaun, but did any of the crystal balls say, hang tight, this is going to get really interesting?

Shaun: Boy. It became apparent at some point that maybe it wasn’t so much the people moving around the country, but definitely, people looking for more or different things out of their home was another reason there was a lot of churn. I want to work out at home. I need room for a gym, I’m working from home. I need a home office. My kids are doing school from home. We want more green space.

Maybe we don’t want to be as close to other people. If you can remember what that was like back in the early stages of the, could we have seen it coming? Boy. The only prediction that I made during COVID that I think I got right, I got really slammed for in the comments section, I learned my lesson to never read the comments section, was a video I did with a fairly major national news outlet early on.

That was a long form one where I’d made the comment. It was in the very early days when the data was very bad and everyone was really freaking out about what the market was going to do. I said, ”Look we came into this pandemic with a really red hot market, and that’s not normally a good thing for things to be that out of balance.”

If you’re going to have a big bucket of cold water thrown on you a good place to start is to be red hot. I think that ended up being true. As far as things rebounding and going crazy the way they did we didn’t necessarily predict that things were going to go off a cliff, but to come to the defense of those who did nobody knew that rates were going to get dropped the way they were.

Nobody knew about the support programs that were going to come out. Nobody could gauge to your point, the psychology of the world has changed and my whole life has changed and I’m going to change where I live. I don’t think anyone predicted that. I think that the best we could do was we track daily data so that we could see it coming before anyone else, and that was about the best we could do. We’re about a month ahead of everyone else.

Erin: Up next with CREA Senior Economist, Shaun Cathcart, the part of our country that seems to have staved off the biggest whiplash after that highest of highs, REALTOR.ca sent 5.7 million leads to REALTORS® in 2022. On average, 54 leads are sent to REALTORS® every 5 minutes. These leads are exclusively available to you as a benefit of your CREA membership. Of course, is information you’re hearing today on REAL TIME.

Let’s get back to our discussion with Sean Cathcart, shall we, Sean, you mentioned one region of Canada in particular and going back to 2015 with the oil patch crash and all of that, there is a region of Canada that didn’t join the 30% price growth, but actually is having now a better outcome because of it. Can we look at that for a sec?

Shaun: Sure. Again, that’s your Alberta, Saskatchewan the places that were still as everyone else was heating up from 2015 to 2020 they were still pretty cool looking in that part of the country prices melting high inventories. I guess to come back to my previous analogy, if you’re going to have a market that suddenly goes red hot and you don’t want it to come out of control, a good place to start is on the cold side.

What I would say about Alberta and Saskatchewan is the analogy I like is they showed up really late to the COVID party and didn’t see any anywhere near that price growth and for that reason, they got a lot less of a hangover right now.

Erin: There you go.

Shaun: Those are the parts of the country that are actually from a sales activity standpoint above average prices holding on pretty well. Pretty much the only part of the country where prices are really holding on and aren’t off that peak at all. It’s something to watch. Definitely almost like a reversal back to the way things were prior to 2015 in a way.

Erin: No kidding. The market has felt like a roller coaster with those exceptions of Alberta and Saskatchewan that you talk about these past few years, it’s been whiplash watching things. Do you think, Sean, that this degree of flux is the new normal?

Shaun: I don’t think it’s the new normal. I certainly hope it’s not because it’s very stressful, I think, back to my life doing this job before COVID, analyzing a 2% increase and a 1% decrease, and trying to figure out what it meant. It was a lot less stressful than sales plunging off a cliff and then flying into the stratosphere. I don’t suspect we’re ever going to see volatility again like we saw during COVID unless we have an event that’s as big as COVID. I’m thinking that things are going to settle back down, and so the real question for the market is where are they going to settle and when are they going to settle, I suppose?

Erin: Has it become harder or easier to predict housing trends?

Shaun: Both, it depends on your time frame and it depends on what you’re talking about, easier in some ways during COVID when a global pandemic hit, it was easy to forecast that activity was going to go down, and then when people started buying houses like crazy, it was easy to forecast that prices were going to go up.

Longer term, it’s easy to forecast that the market is going to come back to a position of arguably too much strength relative to the supply because the demographics are that strong and they will be, it’s already happening and it’s known, but where has it become harder? Well, it’s become harder when you’re forecasting 2020 back in 2019, and you don’t foresee a global pandemic coming.

It’s harder in 2021 when you’re forecasting 2022 and you don’t foresee a generational inflation crisis, and so it really has been a roller-coaster, like you say. I think that the hope is that 2023 we’re through COVID, we’ve tamed inflation to some extent and that we can barring the next crazy thing that happens. I’ve often joked that pandemic used to be used as an example of a crazy black swan event that could happen, but not so much anymore, so I was thinking maybe, I don’t know, like super volcano or alien invasion or something.

Erin: Could you just not?

Shaun: Barring those things or something similar? I think that we’re going to see things calm down, let’s hope.

Erin: I sense a lot of optimism for you in the longer term because of the demographics for Canada. They are so strong, you’ve said that, and that it’s easy to say that we’re going to get back to trend and keep going. Is that even with inflation? What are you thinking here, Shaun?

Shaun: See, I’m not a professional inflation/Bank of Canada watcher, I watched the watchers though, and I know what they think, so the idea is that inflation has come off its peak, you could say, oh, that’s just gas prices and maybe it is, but the bottom line is that it is moving in the right direction. It’s widely thought that the Bank of Canada’s very close to finishing up their tightening cycle, which is also going to be good for housing, it’s not going back to rates that are going to be friendly to first-time buyers anytime soon, but you got to stop going up before you can start going down.

I think that that’s where I’m looking at the demographic and the return to trend is more of a long-term thing that I think that we can really get, we’re probably not going to get running on all cylinders again until 2025 when all of those first-time buyers can come back and have interest rates that are a bit more friendly. So it’ll take us a– It’s a multi-year climb out of this situation, but I think that that’s the direction it’s going to be moving in.

Erin: Look at just how Shaun Cathcart with a little help know a lot of help from the boards who feed him data can peer into the future and help us all. REALTOR.ca is the only real estate portal that combines MLS system feeds from every real estate board and association in the country. First of all, it’s right there at your fingertips. Learn more at REALTOR.ca. Now back to REAL TIME, the podcast for Canadian REALTORS® and even those of us who just watch and listen with interest. In this segment, we’re going to take a look into 2023 and your forecasting, you’ve already mentioned 2025, but it’s a little bit a closer focus, but before we do, Shaun, what factors influence how you forecast housing trends?

Shaun: Sure, the biggest factor that influences the way that you model data like this is the data itself, where it is that’s your starting point for your forecast and what direction it’s been moving in, historical volatility, and that sort of thing, and then you add in your various fundamental factors. Your longer term is population growth and just demand and supply in the housing market.

A shorter-term interest rate forecasts and employment forecasts that heavily influence the housing market in the short term, and you plug all this stuff into a model and you get your highs and your lows and your middle-of-the-range outputs, and then you can exercise some judgment within that range based on things that are not possible to put into a model. Those are the fundamental factors. The things that you would just assume is demographics, employment, interest rates, people that need to live somewhere, are they gainfully employed? Do they have a good confidence in the future and are they able to go out and borrow the money to buy that place?

Erin: It’s so much more than just shoveling numbers into a magic generator of some kind. You have to use your gut when you’re forecasting. You have to use your experience and you have to use your knowledge of how Canada works. Forecasting into this year ahead of us, what do you expect the housing market to look like, Shaun, based on the current available data and what you know?

Shaun: Right. The way that we’re thinking about that we’ve published a forecast recently that people can go look at CREA.ca but I’m not going to get into super specific numbers. It’s more of a narrative at this point. 2022 is the year where everything changed, interest rates went from zero to inflation-fighting mode in a year. Sales went from red hot to below average in a year.

Prices went from the biggest month-over-month increases ever, boom, boom in the winter of 2022 to the biggest declines we’ve ever seen, bearing in mind that they’re still way up from before COVID, but they have given some of that back. Market conditions went from the tightest market conditions we’ve ever seen, one month of inventory nationally to much more in the balanced range still on the tight side, but a big change in the course of a year.

If 2022 is a year that all of that changed very rapidly, I think 2023 is the year that it stops changing at least. We have a year where things calm down, flatten out. We’re already seeing that on the sales side. I’m seeing it on the price side in some markets, but that’s not everywhere yet. That’s still playing out on a downward trend a little bit. Interest rates flat to be close to a top at this point. That’s going to stabilize.

2022, think of a year not of recovery, but of turnaround. Hopefully, we see some improvement on the road to 2024 where that’s when we really start to see the improvement. Then I would think, even though our forecast doesn’t go out this far, 2025 is the year where really the market is back running on all cylinders. It is a multi-year sort of climb out of this. 2023 is the year that we turned the corner, I suppose.

Erin: If I understand you correctly, Shaun, the decline was the steepest that wasn’t a financial crisis but we started from the highest point, therefore, we come out ahead of where we would’ve otherwise. I’m not trying to turn this whole thing glass half full and half empty, but really, we are starting from a much higher basis point, are we not? Am I understanding this correctly?

Shaun: Yes. That applies to both when we talk about sales and prices being down. The only thing that really compares is the financial crisis, but the difference is in the financial crisis, sales went from Goldilock’s middle of the road to ice cold, whereas this time they went from white hot to a little below average. It’s a big decline but you need to think about what you’re comparing where your starting point was. The same thing with prices.

Prices went down more in the last year than they did in the financial crisis, which is the only really, other time that we really saw a significant decline in recent history. They also went up in advance of that decline by way more so that, to your point, from the beginning point to where we are today is that much better. It’s much higher and the sales picture is much more average as opposed to being historically low. Again, I come back to the point I think I made earlier that if you’re going to have a bucket of cold water thrown on you it’s good to start off white hot and you might end up just lukewarm.

Erin: Where do the first-time buyers end up in this whole scenario then moving forward as you look ahead? When can they feel like, okay, we’re ready as a demographic, generally speaking, Sean,

Shaun: I think for a lot of them I’ve often said in 2022, there’s a lot of people on the sidelines and some of them are waiting and watching and there’s going to be a great window of opportunity for them to buy in in a slower market. If they’re trading another home and they’re playing with a lot of equity for first-time buyers who are borrowing a lot of money with interest rates as high as they are, it’s going to be really tough for a lot of them. For a lot of them, they’re going to be stuck on those sidelines for a while.

On the sidelines of the resale housing market probably in the rental market where I think that if I could make another prediction, we’re probably going to see a lot of stories coming out about renovictions again and payments to landlords to secure a place and rents going up by $500. All of those stories we saw back in 2018, this is that on steroids. To come back to your point, where does that leave first-time buyers? It’s not going to be enough for rates to top out which they’re going to do possibly any day now, and it’s not going to be enough for them to start to go down which could happen in the second half of this year even, maybe in the fall, the first cut.

They’re going to have to actually be down. We’re talking like two more normal from where we are now is we’re talking like 200 basis points which would be eight meetings from the Bank of Canada where they cut by 25 assuming they do it every meeting, that’s still a year from when they start. I don’t think until, like I say, to get all of these first-time buyers back engaged in the market the way they want to be with friendlier interest rates is probably more of a 2025 story than it is certainly not a 2023 story.

Maybe towards the end of 2024. If you looking at buyers really reentering the spring market in big numbers that’s probably looking out into 2025, unfortunately. It’s going to take that long for the Bank of Canada to wind down this inflation fight that they’re in.

Erin: In our final segment with Shaun Cathcart, we look at the year ahead and beyond. Look, we all love a happy ending, right? Well, there are some amazing stories awaiting you from a first-time buyer sharing how her realtor opened the door to homeownership for her to how one woman’s realtor helped her through last year’s ups and downs. Read these stories and think about sharing your own.

Just go to REALTOR.ca and click Living Room. It’s comfy and heartwarming just like a living room should be. Wherever you’re listening today thank you. Now we’re going back to CREA, senior economist, Shaun Cathcart. As we wrap up here, Shaun what should REALTORS® and their clients be aware of heading into 2023 year of the rabbit that feels like a tortoise, you said off the top in both the short and long term. What are you seeing and what can we expect?

Shaun: First of all, no offense to tortoises.

Erin: Oh, no. We love tortoises. We love all animals.

Shaun: I like tortoises, but the analogy is that it’s still going to be a slower year. We’ll get there. My advice for buyers, I think it’s a real window of opportunity between the hot market that was that a lot of people did not want to engage in. A lot of existing owners who were looking to say, downsize or move up buyers do not want to engage with 10 other offers, a hundred thousand over asking when you’re my age or older that’s your money. That’s $100,000 of your retirement fund.

That’s not the bank’s money that’s 25 years away from having to deal with. I think a lot of people didn’t want to have to deal with this market. There’s a whole subset of buyers out there who are going to want to come back in now that real active market that we saw during COVID has been pushed out. I think that’s a wild card for this year. If you’re one of those buyers, it’s going to be an opportunity to engage in a much slower market. One, like you probably remember from 10 years ago you can see different properties. They stay up for a while.

They don’t just disappear. You don’t have to make a decision in two days. You can negotiate, you can look at different properties, you can do a home inspection, you can put conditions in your offer. A lot of things that people have been waiting for and you also are going to probably be able to negotiate that listing price down a bit. A lot of things that we would consider a more normal balanced market will be back in 2023. I think it’s not going to be a normal market, it’s a turnaround year that’s going to be heading back, I think in the hotter direction just based on supply and demographics.

For now, I think it’s a window of opportunity. If you’re a seller this is not the market of one year ago and you are likely, unless you’re in a very few places in Canada, not going to get the kind of money you could have gotten in the second week of February 2022. I think that there is a chance that prices are stabilizing. I don’t think that they’re in free fall. You be careful about how you price your property and be prepared to negotiate because there is going to be more of that. Price it properly and price it reasonably and just don’t think that we’re in the market of a year ago because we’re not, but we’re also not still heading in the direction that we’ve been heading in since then. How about that?

Erin: That sounds great. Also, you have advised people don’t be offended. Don’t take it personally. This is a change in things ride it out and make the most of it.

Shaun: This is how it’s been for most of buyers and sellers throughout most of history. Coming off of some of the conditions that maybe some people were used to seeing in the last few years, yes, it’s going to look a lot different for now. A lot more similar to what it’s been throughout most of our history, these big seller’s markets tend to be the exception, not the rule.

Erin: Excellent. Thank you for your time and your insight, Shaun, it’s always great talking to you, and really, do have a great year.

Shaun: Thanks, Erin. You too.

Erin: Thanks so much for listening to this episode 34 of REAL TIME. To catch up on previous episodes with everyone from designers to architects and ability, ambassador and an ad agency genius, just scroll through our REAL TIME podcasts, I promise you’ll find hours of great and timeless information. Be sure to click follow so you don’t miss a new one. REAL TIME is a production of Alphabet® Creative with technical production by Rob Whitehead and Real Family Productions. I’m Erin Davis, and we’ll talk again soon on REAL TIME.

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