Category: Blog Posts

We previously reported that the UK and Europe had started phasing out the use of ‘natural’ fossil gas in homes, and that Canada has also started to drop hints about banning gas. Now California has decided to ban Gas Heating and Gas Water Heaters in Homes. “While this strategy will clean the air for all Californians…

Erin Davis: Welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for and about realtors from the Canadian Real Estate Association. We’ve got a terrific guest for you today. I’m Erin Davis, and you’re going to be tempted to take notes or just listen again and again because our guest is an author, instructor, keynote speaker, certified professional coach, and the person you wish you had sitting next to you on a plane for four hours, Neil Thornton, President of the Thornton Group. Just some of his wisdom, your business will get better when your people get better, your people will get better when their management gets better.

As the workforce continues to evolve with some post-pandemic industries experiencing a labor shortfall, and others seeing an increase, creating a culture that employees value is critical to recruit and retain the right talent. Here we go. On episode 30 of REAL TIME, we are joined by Neil Thornton to help REALTORS® and brokers, regardless of your role on a team, strengthen your leadership, coaching, and engagement skills to build a strong team culture. Welcome to REAL TIME, Neil. It is such a pleasure to talk with you today.

Neil Thornton: Same here, Erin. Thanks. I’m so excited to do this.

Erin: You got to tell us a little bit about the Thornton Group. A lot of the people who are listening today are familiar with you. You did a talk recently for CREA in St. John’s, and of course, you’re well known for what you do, but why don’t you tell the few who don’t know just what the Thornton Group is?

Neil: It’s been a great ride, about 23 years. I often tell people it’s strategic doing that we do, and they look at me really odd. I’ll often say, “The strategic planning is easy, it’s the doing that’s the hard part.” Then, in part of that doing is leading change. I think that’s probably the most important business skill right now is our ability to lead change. I quote General Shinseki, “If you don’t like change, you’ll like irrelevancy even less.”

I think that’s our business reality because today, I honestly believe we are in the attention span economy where attention spans are shorter than ever before, so messaging, standing out in a crowded marketplace. Also, it’s dealing with change. We’re in exponentially changing times. I think what we’ve done before is not going to get the same results today or even beyond. I think that’s what organizations are looking for is the speed of change.

Erin: We will talk a little bit further on about this, but instead of looking in the rearview mirror, as you say, what used to work, be looking through the windshield because it’s much larger anyway. That’s going to be, I think the basis of a lot of what we talk about here today, which is why this forward-looking and being able to put behind the highs, and the lows, and the really unusual circumstances of the past few years and be able to try and see into the future just a little bit.

Neil: You remember the key word everybody used was pivot. Through the pandemic, it was pivot and pivot, but I really think the classic skills that we’ve learned to build our organizations to this point, there’s fundamental skills and then there’s some new skills. What the pandemic has done is it threw us into a virtual environment, but you still have the same personal cues, the speaking, the energy, the transferring the enthusiasm, which is so important in a virtual world if not even more.

In fairness, I teach at Niagara College here, and this will be the first year we’ve graduated students who have not stepped foot on campus, and most colleges, universities are saying that right now, but to that generation, they’re used to it. They get these changes. We can’t fight. We have to learn. It’s not what happens to us it matters, it’s how we react to it, really.

Erin: Of course, of course, Viktor Frankl said that the last human freedom is how we choose to react to whatever happens to us.

Neil: Man’s Search for Meaning.

Erin: What a great little book. Going back to the classroom a little bit, teaching via Zoom and the various different ways that you did that, how did that translate to how a businessperson conducts themselves? I understand that you were called upon by a very, very large company to help them to hold better meetings or to communicate better with their staff. I know that we are so far into this now that practically everybody has a pithy mug that says, “I’m on my Zoom call,” or whatever, but tell me if there’s any little nuggets that any of us has missed that we could put to use on Zoom or being more effective on our laptops or whatever camera happens to be in our house.

Neil: I wrote a report. It was very early in the pandemic. It was Elevate Your Virtual Meetings. I take it back to 2008 in the last recession, I was a managing partner of one of the largest training companies in the world. It was Dale Carnegie Business Group here in Canada. When the recession hit, it made us reinvent. What I did when the pandemic hit was go back to those lessons, but then I also started reading things like nonverbals, body language, improving my speaking ability, improving my vocabulary.

Executives who reached out to me during the pandemic, I took them back to not only the fundamentals, like don’t run a virtual meeting sitting down. Stand up, let them see your energy. Are you speaking to eyes or foreheads? Because if you’re speaking to foreheads, you’ve lost your audience. You have to change the delivery of your message.

Erin: What do you mean? One sec, Neil. Eyes or foreheads, are you talking about looking up into the lens on your laptop or what are you referring to there?

Neil: Right. You’re leading a group of people. Do you have people’s eyes looking into the camera because you have their attention or are you speaking to their foreheads? They’re busy on their phones or checking their emails.

Erin: Oh, oh, oh. Okay. All right. I get that.

Neil: That’s a concept I use when I teach public speakers is if you’re in a room full of people and people are checking their phones, you’ve lost the room. Stop the meeting. Go for a walk. Break it up. Get into a team exercise. It’s being spontaneous to lead and understand the influence you’re having on other people. I think that’s the greatest skill right now for any person in business, including REALTORS®, is learn to read a room.

Don’t forget, Erin, we’re working on the experience of any meeting or interaction. Even in this call for REALTORS®, it’s what people say about you when you leave the meeting, or are you having a meeting and then another meeting happens in the hallway after the meeting, then you have a culture problem.

Erin: What is the definition of leadership? Oh, this is good, but I’ll let Neil Thornton tell you, after all, he’s the expert. He’ll do that right after I remind you about CREA Café. You know it, right? It’s where you get the latest scoop on real estate news and industry developments, CREA Café. We hear a lot about workplace culture being a key driver for today’s workforce. How do you define workplace culture?

Neil: There’s a concept I use teaching marketing today is your brand now precedes you. That could be your personal brand or your organizational brand, but it’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room. I’ve been teaching leadership for 20 years; I finally came up with that definition. The definition of leadership is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.

That’s reputation, it’s testimonials, it’s videos. A previous colleague of mine always said, “When you say it, it’s bragging. When others say it, it’s proof.” I think we have to look at what we’re known as in our market, and that’s often a reflection of our culture, which includes people who not only work with us now but maybe people who have decided to leave, and they’ve gone on to other opportunities, what would they say about their experience working with you?

Erin, this is so important because an organization today needs to attract talent. We all know how hard it is right now to attract talent. It’s because of the retiring baby boomers, now moving into Gen X, you’re seeing this huge exodus due to the pandemic from the workforce. We’re now looking at these younger generations, the Millennials, the Gen Zs, their attention spans are different, but they can multitask, they can communicate, they’re wired differently than any other generation. Does your organization, is it going to attract that future generation? I think that’s the number one thing most organizations need to work on right now is attracting future talent and being cool, being seen as a company that’s cool.

Erin: That’s positive. To turn it negative for just a second, what are some of the common mistakes that leaders make in trying to create a positive culture? Can you think of any?

Neil: It’s sending some people off to a retreat, and you do some wordsmithing, and we have a new vision, mission, values, and strategic plan, and then you stand there, and you jump up on a mount, and you give a speech and people in the room are like, “I don’t have any relationship to this.” I’ve often used the term that every person in your company should have a fingerprint on where you’re going, their vision and values.

Then another thing I see a lot of people do is they spend far too much time trying to fix or convince people. Have you ever tried to send an angry person anger management? It usually peeves them off because they don’t have a relationship. For years, I did human relations training. I had people in a room who were voluntold to be there, or they were there to get fixed. You know they’re not going to put anything in that program, so we very graciously let them leave on their own terms. They had to go back to their bosses and tell them why, but I think we need to work on and focus on the people who are contributing to our business.

Have you ever noticed it’s not the bad people who leave a company? It’s usually the good people. When they leave, they give you a resignation, everybody’s surprised. That is a reflection of your culture is you need people to stay. If you’ve got a turnover or an attrition issue in your organization, you have to look in the mirror and say, “What is it about me that people are leaving this organization? What is it about us and our leadership team? Are we focused on the right things?

Erin: That’s where the problems that are the biggest obstacles come in. You’ve spoken of them. There’s ego and–

Neil: Ego and fear. It’s the only two things that’ll ever get in the way of anybody’s success. Fear, I’m going to be optimistic. I don’t see a lot of ego in business anymore. In the body language we call it splaying or taking up a lot of space, raised chins means I’m raising kill points, you’re not a threat to me. I like the book, The Power of Now and Eckhart Tolley said, “Ego and awareness cannot coexist.” I think if ego’s in check in an organization, then you go to fear. I know a lot of really great leaders who really want to succeed, but they can’t get themselves out of the way. They spend too much time in their own brain.

Erin: The same talent that got them to where they are, the overthinking, the taking care of details, and all that can also turn into an internal weapon.

Neil: Look at the definition of insanity. I’m doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. In 2022, that will not work. Maybe 10 years ago, you could maybe get away with that thinking, but today, it just changes so fast. I’ve got students graduating from college. What they learned in first year is almost irrelevant by the time they graduate. That’s the speed of change in technology and data. That generation, they understand that is I have to learn to change.

Now, I get this a lot in groups of people. I often ask people, “Hey, raise your hand. If you feel people resist change.” Everybody probably on this call, their hands would go up. It’s actually not true. In fact, people resist the uncertainty of the change, that’s perceived forced on them. A great book that I often turn to is Start with Why by Simon Sinek where if you’re leading change, you have to explain the why of the change, then the how, but a lot of people just go to the how and the tactics. Then, that’s why you get that meeting in the hallway after the meeting because people don’t know why they’re doing. Then, that creates apathy.

Apathy is a cancer that will kill your organization. There’s a word. You had mentioned to me earlier, Erin, about measuring culture. There’s a word that if you hear in your organization, just stop the bus. It’s the word they. When you hear that, that elicits and us versus them conversation, an underlying pattern of mistrust. As soon as you hear the word they, stop and say, “I thought it was we. I thought this company was we.” It’s amazing how vocabulary and linguistics tie into all elements of business right now.

Erin: We hope you’re enjoying REAL TIME. I loved this conversation because so much of what Neil says is fascinating, truly. Next up, we’ll look at what your potential client is saying without using words. There’s so much more to explore here with us on REAL TIME month after month. Subscribe wherever you enjoy the best podcasts for episodes with newsmakers, insiders, designers, and great minds who share their wisdom with you. You can also go to CREA.ca/podcast for more details.

Now, we’re back to our chat with Neil Thornton. Before we get on any further, I need to hear some of those body language things that about that you can impart to people who are conducting meetings. I got to hear this. We all do well.

Neil: The whole essence of body language for me is not if somebody’s lying. That’s out of integrity. For me, I use body language to be able to read a room and read the influence I have on that room so that if I’m doing a keynote and I notice that there’s some closed gestures, people are closing up. Remember the classic arms cross in front of the chest. For some people, that’s comfort. That could be a self hug. You watch for changes in body language.

If somebody has open gestures to you their hands are out. Remember shaking hands. Your hand is neutral, and people are open, and their body language is open, and they’re comfortable, and they’re tapping their feet. That’s comfort signs, or their legs are out front that’s comfort. People are comfortable, their head’s nodding. Then, when you say something, they lean back, they cross their arms, they fold their legs. They almost start to take up less space. You’ve just insulted them. You’ve said something that’s told their brain to close up due to comfort.

If you see someone rubbing or pacifying or tugging on a piece of clothing, that’s the brain pacifying. Adults don’t suck thumbs, but my eight-month-old grandson sucks his thumb because babies do that to pacify. Now, we say, “Adults don’t pacify.” Go to a University during exam week, you’ll see a lot of pacifying and people rubbing. That’s the brain trying to comfort itself.

That’s how I use body language. If people are opened, or closed, or comfortable, or uncomfortable, you read the cues, and it gives you a better ammunition when dealing with people especially, say for today if you’re a REALTOR® and you’re walking up to a home, and you see some nonverbal gestures. That couple is giving you the cues of their relationship with you and what you can and can’t do.

Erin: Excellent. Earlier on, you mentioned the idea of going away to some sort of an inspiration camp or whatever. You brought to my mind a vision board, the thing where you put your vision there. Part of your message, if I understand it, has been to make the messages on the board actually come down and be part of your lives instead of just making the vision, and then just letting it be, making the vision a reality. How does one go about doing that?

Neil: I go bananas here. Here we go. Far too many companies have these vague platitudes. They’re called wallpaper. They’re in the lobby wall or a banner in a website. They say something like, “We will exceed client’s expectations by offering the highest level of service and quality.” Right now, my finger’s in my throat because I’m going to throw up. That is nonsense you. How can you exceed client’s expectations when I just mentioned how quickly they’re changing? Real vision is a very clear picture of where we’re going.

Think about Bill Gates. When Bill Gates said every home will own a personal computer. At the time, a microprocessor was as large as an apartment, and Bill Gates said, “Let’s make it happen.” When JFK said by the end of the 1960s, we’ll put someone on the moon and bring them back alive. Martin Luther king, “I have a dream.” Steve jobs, “All of human knowledge on a handheld device.” Now, those are visions. A vision is a very clear picture of where we’re going. An organization creates that vision. Everyone’s involved. They believe in it.

Now, comes the hard part. How do we not just check this off a strategic plan and put it in a binder somewhere? What I often coach organizations to do is number one, agree on the vision, everybody agrees, and core values, vision, mission, core values are strategic goals, everybody, agree. Next week, please come prepared to have your name pulled from a hat. If you are pulled, you will be asked to stand and in front of your colleagues, give a specific example, including a date and a time, of when either you have lived the vision, mission, values or noticed somebody else doing it. Have a great week.

People now leave that meeting with the tension knowing that they could be called upon the next week to give real examples. You agree, then you assign, you come back, and you record successes, you publish it for the company, and then you celebrate successes. At the heart of every culture, the heart of everything is Maslow, the hierarchy of needs, the number one human need, self-actualization, the feeling of importance. In business, it’s recognition of a job well done, appreciation.

That vision is creating future-based action, future-based conversations, future-based commitments, which pulls that organization to innovate. Most companies are mired in the status quo at best, the current reality, problem-solving, firefighting. You know if all you do all day is problem solve, firefight, and babysit, all you produce are more problems, fires, and babies. It’s so true. Company leaders are frustrated because that’s where they find themselves. We need to focus on where we’re going. I say start with listening.

Erin: You’ve said that it’s strategic. Tell me about that.

Neil: As human beings. Here’s what we tend to do. When someone says something in a room, think about a meeting room you’ve been in, and someone says something, and what you tend to observe is people often say, “That’s just like, or remember when, or oh, let me tell you why that’s not going to work.” What happens is we tend to listen for what we already know.

When people feel judged in that environment, it’s like going home and let’s say you have a spouse or a partner at home, and you say, “Honey, would you mind sitting down? I like to talk about your performance over the last year.” “Neil, that’s ridiculous.” We do it with our employees. We do it in meetings. We judge people based on what they say, based on what we already know. Listening is often from the past. It’s based on what’s probable. That’s why innovation’s hard.

When you coach listening for what’s possible, instead of probable, you’ll hear what you’ve never heard, but you used the word earlier, Erin, which is really important. I get it from a book called the Art of Possibility by Ben Zander. He’s the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. In the book, he ends one of his chapters, and it’s how I ended my book that I just wrote. It’s the two words, “How fascinating?”

It’s interesting, I just try it with groups. Guys, just say how fascinating. You listen from curiosity, not knowing. We tend to listen for what we already know from a right or wrong or should and shouldn’t be standpoint. Just admit we don’t know what we don’t know. That’s where innovation lies. I think that’s where every organization has to go now in 2022.

Erin: Listening from a place of I don’t know.

Neil: I don’t know. I admit I don’t know what I don’t know. I’m going to listen from curiosity, and I’m going to listen from innovation, not already knowing. That gets rid of the ego.

Erin: That’s coming back to Eckhart Tolle again.

Neil: How many meetings have we sat in where you just hear people justifying their opinions, they’re going around the room. They just justify themselves. Then, you leave the meeting going “That meeting was about as useless as an ashtray on a motorcycle. We didn’t advance anything. Far too many times, we do that.

Erin: When we return, building your team and what a strong team looks like. Are you a team player in your community as well, showing up and doing the work when volunteers and leaders alike are needed for great causes? Then why not share your story, using #realtorscare? REALTORS Care® is a national guiding principle, celebrating the great charitable work done by the Canadian REALTOR® community. Help raise awareness for those charities and causes you love. Again, use social media and the #realtorscare.

Let’s dig a bit deeper into specific team-building strategies and best practices. You’ve got so much wisdom and you’ve got great ideas. Let’s get the message through here. Some general characteristics of a strong team in your experience.

Neil: A lot of time, if not most of our time, is spent contributing to where we’re going, the vision. If you could picture a vision above your desk, and your desk is the current reality, the vision has an elastic. An elastic that anchors the vision to the current reality, and tension seeks resolution. What we put our attention to is what happens. If you hear language in your organization like, “I’m busy. I haven’t been able to do it.” Then, you hear weak words like, hope, try, maybe, I’d like to do it. Those are just weak languages.

Vision language is very strong. It’s, “I will. We are going to do this. Here’s what’s at risk if we don’t.” It’s amazing. One of the top things I get asked to do right now is how do I have robust and difficult conversations with people, the conversations we need to have that are honest. Again, there’s no conflict in reality. Check your premises. That was Ayn Rand that wrote that. Let’s get really honest with our dialogue. I’ve been going back to this a lot. It’s time to get human again, Erin.

Right behind me is a book from 1935. It’s an actual original copy of How to Win Friends & Influence People. It’s one of the most popular books in the world, and I’m seeing a lot of people picking that book up again. You’d mentioned earlier was Victor Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning. When I work with people who are so stressed today, and they don’t know what they’re going to do, and they’re so worrisome, I pull that book out and say, “Read this book, and then you’ll know what stress really is.”

Erin: Tell me how it is that a nearly 100-year-old book from Dale Carnegie is still resonating.

Neil: It tells amazing stories of how people have built rapport, trust, respect with other people, how to gain willing and enthusiastic cooperation, how to change people’s minds without creating resentment, how to lead and inspire a team. I think those human skills, they just transcend the generations. They really do.

In dealing with a younger generation at the college right now, in the university world, it’s what a lot of students are looking for. They’re smart. They’re really smart students, but they want to strengthen their leadership and human relations. They also want to strengthen a relationship with failure and adversity. It’s a generational thing we’re dealing with right now, an entire generation that needs to understand failure.

Erin: What do we need to learn about the Gen Z?

Neil: You got to be careful. Just diversity right now is so prevalent. We live in a divisive society. We all know that. I think we have to stop. I often do this with a room full of people. I often say, “Hey, are we all committed here today? Please understand that all people are committed. We’re all here today. You all have a different worldview. I’d like everyone to close their eyes, put their right hand in the air, and point north. Everybody, open your eyes. You will see an entire room of committed people pointing in a different direction.”

You say, “Here we are. We all have a different interpretation of reality.” If somebody has number one, the courage to go to HR and say, “This is how I feel,” they’re saying that because they feel they can’t share it elsewhere. It’s a result of a number of interactions that have been unconscious by a number of people. Unfortunately, it’s the visit to HR that’s the end of the line, like, “Okay, we now have a complaint.” That brings us back down to if all we’re doing all day is solving people’s problems, we’re never going to advance.

I often say, as a leader of any organization, get really good at connecting what people’s commitments are and align the expectations. What do we expect of each other? If you feel you can’t approach your boss or you call them a boss or whatever, those aren’t modern organizations. Those are hierarchical organizations. You need to have flat equal organizations. Most CEOs I work with today, they don’t even have an office. They come in, they’ve got a tablet, they’ve got coffee areas, meeting rooms. They sit with people, and they coach and mentor. Those are great skill sets.

Erin: What’s the balance between coaching and knowing, Neil, when a team member just isn’t going to work out?

Neil: Let’s start with coaching. Coaching is a science. You and I have talked about it. It’s a certified science, but each person if they’re a business leader on this call has three skill sets. You have management skills, leadership skills, and coaching skills. All three are completely different. Coaching is about identifying people’s strengths that they might not realize they have. You ask great questions. People leave a coaching session with a heightened level of awareness and capacity to do more. That’s what a coach does. Leaders inspire a group, and managers manage things.

The rule of coaching is you never coach unless someone asks you. If you’ve got a progressive culture, going back to one of your first questions, what’s a sign of a great culture? You have a coaching organization. People have created their own business plans. They have their own visions. They know where they’re going. They see the value of being coached by an impartial person who’s there to help them, not to manage them. That’s the sign of a great organization.

Now, on the flip side of that, if we’re trying to maybe send ducks to eagle school, or we’re trying to fix problem people, one of the greatest pieces of business advice I ever got was hire slow, fire fast. If someone is just not prepared to go where the organization’s going, it’s okay to part ways. Help them with their career, move them to somewhere where they’re going to be happy. I think we spend far too much time trying to solve people. It’s just a complete waste of time today.

Erin: Coming up, choosing innovation through focusing on the future and when busy is not a good word in business. We live in a huge country, but REALTOR.ca brings everybody together. It’s the meeting place for buyers, sellers, and everyone in between. Right now, there’s like a quarter million listings there from trusted realtors. Of course, that number’s probably changed since I started talking with Neil. Check it out, REALTOR.ca, reliable real estate resources, all under one roof. Neil, how can leaders keep up with the speed of business today while maintaining strong human relationships with their teams?

Neil: I would say, the new speed of business actually means being aware of the impact you’re having on other people. I just wrote a book called Presence, Impact, and Influence. What I’m finding now, what I’m being asked is I’m approached by leaders, managers, owners, C-suite executives. This is what they’re saying to me, “Neil, I pretty much know everything about my job. I know everything about the academia, the tactics, all the strategies. I know what I’m doing. I’ve been doing it for years. I now want to raise my awareness. I now want to know how memorable am I. How could I be a better speaker? How could I better understand the room? How could I better lead and inspire a team?”

I think that’s the conversation that’s happening with progressive companies right now is people are saying, “I don’t want to keep doing what I’ve always ever done. I want to innovate, and I want to grow.” If you want to attract future talent, you have to have that future focused in your organization.

The other thing I often say too is get really good at interrogating language. When someone comes in a room and they say, “I didn’t get to it. I was busy, or I just didn’t have time,” that’s a great opportunity. Just stop the meeting and say, “Just tell the truth.” Then, “What? “Just tell the truth. It wasn’t important to you. Just say it.” Now, in my business, I’ve lost my filter many, many years ago, but having someone in the room that just stops the room and interrogates the reality and says, “Just admit it. You had said you were going to do this, and you’ve come back and said that you didn’t do it, which means you’re out of integrity with your group. You have to build that integrity back up, but your language was I just got busy.”

Busy is not a good word in business anymore. There’s no room for busy. Instead of saying, “I made a commitment to do it, I didn’t know what to do, or I wasn’t aware how to do it.” Okay, no problem. That’s a coaching conversation, but we let too many conversations go across a room without someone interrogating them.

Erin: It sounds confrontational though, Neil. It would be very difficult to conduct without seeming like you’re picking at, or picking a fight, or picking on them. Wouldn’t you agree? How do you think people would perceive that? Why don’t you just tell the truth?

Neil: You’re talking to a classic Dale Carnegie person that builds that trust and rapport with the groups. Then, I often say things like, “I need to say something. Now, I’m saying this because I love you guys. I love my clients, and I care about them, but I need to say something that needs to be said, and I’m saying this so it advances us.”

You’d be amazed Erin, most people, I think, “Oh, I’m going to get punched in the parking lot.” I get a phone call, and it’s usually that person that says, “I want to thank you because no one in my company had the courage to tell me what you said and because you said that, it made me realize that yes, you know what, maybe I am using weak language. Maybe, I have fallen into a rut.” That’s the value of a great coach. A great coach isn’t loved. A great coach has respect and integrity, and they help people advance their language.

Erin: You prefaced it by saying, I’m going to say something that comes from a place of love or whatever else that it does. That totally makes sense. How do you balance equitable treatment for those who’ve been loyal to you with the need to attract new talent? This is another lane that a lot of people are finding themselves in.

Neil: We live in a time where seniority doesn’t mean what it used to. I worked with an organization once that was a government agency, and a gentleman walked in a room and said, “25 more years, and I’m out of here.” I’m like, “Okay.” That’s apathy kicking in. What I often find is the people who have more experience, they’re tenured. What I often do is let them be champions, let them mentor, let them create a legacy, let them work with some of the newer performers that are coming on board.

It’s not just you as the leader, you delegate some of that mentorship to other people. They feel valued. They’ll actually go home at night saying, “Hey, I know I’ve been in this organization for years, but I’m finally being asked for my opinion, and I’m finally being able to contribute my knowledge to younger people.” They get a bit of a kick in their step.

Erin: Then, it’s so important for younger or newer members to a team to know that they can go to someone, that they can be vulnerable, that they could say, “Look, I ran into this, and I don’t know what to do about it, or what would you have done?” or to be able to mine some of that wealth of information and wisdom that’s just there for the taking.

Neil: Then, in my work, I’m very digital. I’m very black and white. You have to be when you’re dealing with teams. When someone fails, it’s only because of two reasons. Number one, they don’t know what to do, they don’t have the knowledge, or number two, they know what they need to do, but they’re not willing to execute on that. As a manager, just ask them, which one is it? Have we not done a good enough job giving you the skills and the knowledge to do this, or you need to do it, but you’re not necessarily doing it? Let’s talk about what’s really getting in the way. Maybe, you’re fearful. Maybe, there’s some procrastination issues that we need to deal with.

That’s what really great managers do, is you get down to the facts, and you take the personalities out of conflicts, and personalities out of this. Like, “Oh, well, this person thinks this about you.” That’s not healthy at all. Just say, “Let’s hold a mirror up to you. Let’s look at who you’re being as a human being. Are you a human being or a human doing? Are you running around just being busy?” Because most people right now are just so focused on what’s in front of their face.

If you put your hand right in front of your nose, the focus doesn’t change until you pull your hand away and you start to have a different perspective. I often coach, really, it’s interesting, I coach executive leaders to walk around the building, start learning how to meditate, prayer. Just do something that pulls you away from this day-to-day, work on you, and not just be so buried in the business because you’re not building any integrity with your team if you’re not available for them.

Erin: We’ll be back to Neil Thornton with a phrase he’s used earlier that’s worth repeating and why it’s vital that it sinks in for each of us, but before we do let me remind you, don’t miss our next REAL TIME podcast as soon as it drops. Subscribe where you listen to your favorite podcasts or just go to CREA.ca/podcast for more. Your brand now precedes you is something that you have said. We will get the title of your book and where to find it coming up. I hope that this is a big part of the book but tell us what those words mean. Your brand now proceeds you, and why it’s so important today.

Neil: This is the world we live in where when I say your brand precedes you, it means that I know everything about you before I meet you. That’s digital feeds, social media. I’m a huge proponent of LinkedIn from a professional standpoint, I’ve got just over 6,200 connections. I’ve got 104 written recommendations. To me, people often call me because they see that. They see a website that has testimonial videos on the first page because of what I said earlier when you say it, it’s bragging, when others say it, it’s proof. I’m always collecting people’s impressions of what I do.

My goal is to walk in a room and people say, “I’ve heard about the great things that you do.” I think that’s what every businessperson wants. That now involves building content, being a thought leader, doing keynotes with your industries and your associations. I’m seeing REALTORS® doing that a lot now. They’re now doing real estate news and market updates, and they’re putting themselves out there by being seen as experts in their field. They’re the ones that are working on their brand and how they stand out. I think every organization needs to focus on that right now is brand of your own personal reputation, your team’s reputation, and your organization’s reputation.

Erin: Well, this is a great time to mention the book. Would you tell us about it, how it came to be, what it’s called, and where we can find it, Neil?

Neil: It was a pandemic project. I had planned it a couple of years ago, but it turned into this 390-page behemoth. It’s called Presence, Impact, and Influence. In the book, I talk about leading change, executive reinvention, speaking skills, body language. People love the body language stuff, but it was really meant to be a reference tool for executives, owners, and managers to really focus on themselves and the impact that they’re having, the influence they’re having on others, and then the presence when they walk into a room. That’s all the human stuff. That’s why I wrote it. I’m so proud. I have it on Amazon.ca. Amazon, woo. It’s your friend.

Erin: It is. The title again is PII.

Neil: Presence, Impact, and Influence by Neil Thornton.

Erin: Well done. Excellent. Okay, Neil, let’s end this on an actionable end note. When it comes to team building and workplace culture, what is your go-to piece of advice? First off, for leaders.

Neil: For leaders, understand that your culture will eat your strategy for breakfast. That’s from Peter Drucker. That is so true. We spend so much time on strategy and so little time on culture, and dialogue, and conversations.

Erin: For your employees.

Neil: In the absence of a vision, we’re each just driven by our own agendas. We’re inattentive to each other’s needs and we inadvertently pull the win from each other’s sales. That’s a quote from the Art of Possibility, but it’s so true that not only do I need to align to my organizational vision, but I need to have a vision of my own and where am I going, and it needs to be a very clear picture. Also, have a plan to deal with the critics and the cynics and the sidelines who want to tell you why you can’t succeed.

Erin: There, we go to Teddy Roosevelt and it is saying about it’s the ones who are in the arena getting dirty and bloody and not the ones who are sitting in the stands that matter. I think you and I read a lot of the same things.

Neil: Yes, we do.

Erin: I think so. I haven’t read your book yet though. Maybe, you’ll read mine and we’ll do a book club.

Neil: I’ve already ordered it.

Erin: Wonderful. Now, for those who get stuck in a holding pattern, not going forward, not going backward, who is coaching you to move, who is stretching you? Seems to be the question that needs to be asked, yes?

Neil: I’ve often said, the greatest athletes in the world use coaches. People are going to laugh, but let’s say the Toronto Maple Leafs, they win a game. Well, the next day, they’re being coached. They’re not celebrating. They’re in watching films. The greatest businesspeople realize that, “Hey, I’m a good person, and what I’ve done is got me to this point, but it might not necessarily get me to the next point. If I can find an outside, non-biased, professional advisor, a business coach, a real business coach who will be willing to listen and not just give me advice. That’s what consultants do. They come in and, “You’d be more successful if you’re more like me.” I just find that arrogant.

A real consultant, a real coach says, “Hey, you’d be more successful if you’re more like you. Let’s look at your patterns. Let’s look at your underlying patterns that maybe you’ve lost or become unaware of, like your language that’s getting you what you’re getting.” I often say to business leaders, “You’ve got great tools. My goal is to give you more tools. You can go back to the originals, but I’m going to give you more tools to get the job done quicker and faster. It’s going to be up to you if you want to use them.” Whenever you try something new, it takes a bit of practice at first, so a great coach gets people through that learning curve.

Erin: I really feel like you gave us a whole bunch of new tools, and some good advice, and good insight on perhaps how to start using them more effectively. Neil, we are so grateful for you joining us here today and sharing your wisdom, your humor, your insight. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Neil: I’m honored. Thank you, Erin.

Erin: Neil Thornton is President of the Thornton Group. If you’re looking for that book of his on Amazon, once again, it’s called Presence, Impact, and Influence. If it’s as great as this chat was, I am sure it’s worth a read. Thanks to Rob Whitehead for putting this together for Real Family Productions, to Alphabet® Creative for producing REAL TIME. I’m your host, Erin Davis, and we will talk with you again soon on REAL TIME. Bye for now.

Two First Nations women have secured funding to build an off-grid solar powered greenhouse to provide food security for their community. The Sagkeeng First Nation is a Treaty-1, 3 and 5 First Nation in the Eastman Region of Manitoba, where two young and ambitious members of their community have undertaken a project…

Historically, real estate has been a referral business, with business development driven by reputation. So, in an industry where word-of-mouth is your strongest marketing tool, how does modern marketing fit in?

On Episode 29 of REAL TIME, we’re joined by Priyanka Goswami, Executive Vice President of One-to-One and Customer Experience at award-winning creative agency No Fixed Address.

Priyanka joins REAL TIME to offer insights on how REALTORS® can take a focused approach to marketing their business, building a strategy that includes first-party data, personalization, success metrics, and more.

Choosing the best heat pump can be difficult. Heat pumps are poorly understood, they have often been over-sold, poorly installed, and placed where they can be a noise nuisance. But the best heat pumps are a really good choice for heating green homes. What is a heat pump and how does it work?
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Erin Davis: Welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS® and about issues affecting REALTORS®, brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. I’m your host, Erin Davis. Today, we have a guest you probably know and who’s here to impart some of his trade secrets to help you every step along the way. We might be living in a digital age, sure, but a career in real estate is still personal. Buyers and sellers depend on REALTORS® to not only guide, inform, and advise, but to assure and reassure an emotional need.

Succeeding as a REALTOR® requires a strong knack for connection, the ability to build trust, a commitment to immersing yourself in a client’s vision so you can help them achieve it. In short, you need to communicate.

We have one of Canada’s best communicators, long-time TSN anchor, and sports journalist, James Duthie, to share some valuable insight to help us all. On this episode of REAL TIME, we’ll explore a fundamentally human experience, conversation.

How can REALTORS® better connect with clients and prospective clients on a personal level? How can you find common ground to instill trust? What questions should be asked and not asked and how can you become a better listener? Pairing knowledge and expertise with the right conversation skills can give REALTORS® a professional edge and that’s what we are here to talk about.

Thanks so much for joining us, James. We’re so happy to be talking with you here, and not about sports for a change. How does that feel?

James Duthie: It is somewhat of a thrill, Erin. I love my job. I love the people that watch me on TV, but you do get a lot in my world of, “So the Leafs power play, what do you think?”

Erin: I bet. I do have to ask you. If you could only work with one sport, you’re going to be totally focused on one sport the rest of your career, which is it, James?

James: That answer would’ve changed over the years. I would probably say now golf because that’s become my obsession. I’ve always loved golf, but I think as I get older, it’s my favourite thing to play. It’s the only thing I really still play because my body’s gotten too old for hockey and football and I get too beat up for that. It would probably be golf.

I was at the Canadian Open back in June. I got to do the Masters back in April. There’s just something wonderful about being at a golf course. It just doesn’t feel as much like work even though it is. The days are very long there. I probably go with golf, but I still love my hockey and my football and everything else.

Erin: Well, you mentioned football, so let’s start out with that. Going back to early in your career and before your career, tell us how it took shape? Here you are now, one of Canada’s favourite sportscasters. James, where did it begin?

James: I think, Erin, like most sportscasters, you’d find our failed athletes and I was one of those. I was a delusional high school football player who truly believed that I was going to play for the San Francisco 49ers. I was going to go to Clemson University because I think I fell in love with a cheerleader who had a paw on her face when I was in about grade 11.

I was determined to go to Clemson after I saw that one cheerleader. I really thought, I mean, I was a decent high school football player, but I think it was somewhere along the way in grade 13, remember when that existed, that I realized I was barely 5’10” and 145 pounds with mediocre speed and talents, and the Niners probably weren’t looking for that. I remember going into my guidance counsellor’s office and saying, “I don’t think I can make it as an athlete, so I’d love to do something in sport.”

She plunked it into her computer. Sports marketing and sports administration came up a bunch of different programs and journalism came up. I guess I’d probably had it in my mind. I was probably one of those kids who did, turn down the TV and do play-by-play a little in high school, I suppose. That’s where I went and that’s how I ended up here.

Erin: How did you get noticed by TSN because somebody doesn’t just start at a major sports network, or did it even exist then?

James: Well, not when I started, no. Most sports jobs were the local guys at your local CTV or CBC station who had been there forever. I actually couldn’t get a job in sports. I was lucky enough to get a job at the CTV station in Ottawa right out of school but as a news reporter. I spent seven years covering politics and murderers and fires and boring city council meetings and all those things all the while still dreaming about doing sports. I got to do a little bit of sports in Ottawa. I guess that’s where, by luck, a TSN executive was watching me one night and gave me a phone call.

I sent them a tape and I had an audition. They actually didn’t hire me the first time. I took a job out in Vancouver and actually went back to news reporting. Then I remember I really wanted to live in BC and I told the guy when he said, “I can’t hire you now, but I’d love to hire you someday.” I said, “Well, I’m moving out to BC to take a job there. Don’t call me for a couple of years because I want to live the BC life.” He called me in six months and offered me what really was my dream job. Much to my wife’s chagrin, we moved back east.

Erin: Somebody, and I believe it was Oprah, who said that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. You got that opportunity, but you had the preparation. You put in those Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours probably with all those interviews and the boring city council and all that kind of stuff, would you say?

James: I think so. Actually, I really think that I don’t think I would have gotten the opportunity at TSN and all the opportunities I’ve had since without those years in news. Being a news reporter is a really fascinating thing. You basically go into work every day and get assigned a topic and your job is to learn as much about that topic in one day as possible. It’s a fascinating way to meet so many different people in different lines. It makes you a better interviewer, I think. It makes you a better writer for the job. I think that the skills I developed in news ended up being critical in sports and probably were the key to any success that I’ve had.

Erin: Not only do you have to be a good dancer and, of course, you’re tap dancing there in front of a live audience through all kinds of different circumstances and challenges, but you need to be a choreographer, the dance captain who, in the case of a panel, for example, people probably think as they do with anything that is done well, talent makes it look easy, but it’s not, James. What about coordinating panels and the different talents, “Go ahead, don’t be humble,” that are required to do what you do and make it look so easy?

James: I think it’s like being a traffic cop. You’re somewhat the conductor of this little four-minute orchestra in the intermission of a hockey game or after a golf round or a football game or whatever it may be. You’re so right. You get all these different personalities. Some guys want to talk the whole time. You get some ex-hockey players in there that it’s hard to get a couple of sentences out of. Your job is to balance those to maybe shut up the guy who wants to talk all the time and get more out of the guy who doesn’t talk as much and make it hopefully flow like a seamless, casual conversation.

In the end, that’s what you are, is basically a professional conversationalist, is to hopefully make some hockey topic or football or whatever it may be and just have a good conversation. Hopefully, a lively conversation, sometimes a debate, sometimes not, and that is hopefully appealing to the viewers at home. That’s essentially what I do. It’s hardly rocket science. I think sometimes it’s just basically trying to have good conversations.

Erin: Well, it’s almost like a dinner party too. If you are hosting a dinner party, I definitely either want to be at the table or to be listening in on the conversation because you’re bringing the best out of everybody who’s there at the table. Who’s the talker in your household, James?

James: Oh, unfortunately, my biggest problem, my wife often reminds me, is that I talk in my broadcast voice in dinner. You know what I mean? You’re not supposed to bring your work home, but I’ll be telling the story. I’ll be like, “Yes, so in the third period, you won’t believe what happened.” She’s like, “Honey, you’re not on TV anymore, all right? It’s just me and the kids and the dogs. You don’t have to yell like that.” I think in our family, it’s mixed around. I have some pretty bubbly personalities. I guess I do talk loud when I talk, but I’m actually fairly quiet, I think, away from things. I always feel like sometimes you have to play in these charity golf events when you are the “celebrity.”

Erin: Those used to be awful.

James: Oh, I know. I’m sure.

Erin: I used to get stuck in that fourth spot and I’m a terrible golfer, James, and they’re all looking to see, “Oh, is Doug Gilmour in our– Oh, no, it’s Doug.” James said, “Oh, we got this woman?”

James: I’m the same way you’re in where– First of all, they expect you to be a great golfer. I’ll say this right away that being a professional sportscaster does not mean you’re a great athlete.

Erin: More in a moment with TSN host James Duthie, exploring the art of conversation. You know what? It was at a charity event at which I first met James years ago. He was telling a very personal story while also helping to raise money for a cause that was important to our community. Of course, as a REALTOR®, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re ever looking for ideas on how you can light a spark of inspiration, follow Realtors Care on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Be sure to share your own stories using #RealtorsCare.

Back now to TSN’s James Duthie and the joy of having a virtual map, but also going off-road when you’re conducting a conversation.

Talking about someone who is talented as you are when you see someone who’s not, it tends to stick out now like a sore thumb. I think one of the things that we noticed and probably were guilty of early in our careers, and I’ll ask if you were, is having a set of questions and sticking to them. This translates to conversation of all kinds because we are talking about the art of conversation today, which means that this is where I’m quiet and let you answer and I will, but it’s that list of questions that some don’t deviate from. Tell us about those as road maps or guidelines or do you just chuck them out the window, James?

James: I think I learned that lesson in my first year of doing television at Carleton University and I was operating the camera. My colleague, my fellow student, was doing the interview and she had this wonderful long list of questions. She was very thorough, and I was just listening to what the guy was saying. She was so focused on getting every single question she’d written down out that she wasn’t listening to the answer.

It wasn’t like I was some brilliant interviewer then, but I remember clicking into saying, “Wow, she’s missing all these opportunities here to ask some good questions.” I guess that’s stuck with me. I think that’s probably the most critical thing, not only in interviews but in any sort of conversation is listening. When we do that and a lot of journalists, I think, do that is they write down their questions. They’re so focused on getting to that next question that they don’t really listen to the answers, which usually lead to the best questions.

I’ve developed in the habit over the years of doing interviews, I will write down questions and I still handwrite my questions because I always feel like there’s a better connection between the hand and the brain than if I’m writing them in my phone or on my computer or my iPad or whatever. I’m really old-school that way. Almost everything I do in television, I write down. We don’t use a teleprompter in our studio or anything.

I will just write down handwritten notes of some of the things I’d like to say. Hopefully, it comes out decently on TV, but I find I remember it better that way. I’ll write a list of questions for an interview and I’ll go over them a couple of times, but then I’ll never pull out that piece of paper. I’ll keep it in my pocket. Maybe I have some sort of safety mechanism that I know it’s in my pocket if I need it and if I freeze.

For the most part, I will just try to listen and ask the questions based on that. It served me well over the years. I think the great interviewers that you see on television, whether it’s somebody like Oprah or whatever, is the same thing, right? They’re just listening, and all their follow-up questions are the ones that get the best answers. I think that’s a crucial tool, whether it’s in journalism or broadcasting or anywhere else in life, is to just listen to the person you’re talking to.

Erin: I am listening and we’re going to keep talking about conversation, but I have to go back to something you just said. Are you a rarity or unique in that you don’t have a teleprompter in the studio, James?

James: I think it’s fairly common now with sports studio shows. I don’t think it’s very common in news. I argue from my industry that I think sports broadcasters are some of the best broadcasters out there because there’s such a live element to everything we do in sports. From the beginning, my first day when I got to TSN, I’d done some anchoring for sports and news at the station. There was always a teleprompter. I remember getting to TSN and my first job was hosting CFL football games.

They quickly told me there was going to be no prompter. I probably was scared at first, but quickly realized that that’s the best way to have conversations. That’s been that way for my whole career. If you’re watching the show SportsCentre, the highlight show, they have a teleprompter. Any of the other shows we do, do not. I much prefer it that way. Going back to what we were talking about, about having normal conversations, I think it’s really difficult to have those when they’re all on a teleprompter, right?

Erin: Absolutely.

James: “How are you doing today? What did you think about that first half of football?”

Erin: Dot, dot, dot.

James: Yes, and the other thing is I think it keeps your brain sharper because you are a little bit naked to the world. If you do forget what you’re going to say, there’s no backup there to help you. You’re just on your own. I’ve had the odd embarrassing moment in my career where I’ve completely forgotten where I was going. You teach yourself these tricks where you keep talking even though you’re not saying it. There’s one more thing I wanted to ask you just before we go. It pertains, of course, to the last subject you were– Kick in now. Kick in now anytime, brain, right?

Erin: That’s right.

James: We’ve all done that.

Erin: Just keep swimming.

James: That’s right. Usually, it eventually comes around. I think there’s been one or two times in my career where I’ve just said out loud on the air, “I’m sorry. I have no idea what I was going to ask you.”

Erin: That’s so relatable.

James: It’s okay, right? It’s human.

Erin: Yes, it does. It takes down that wall. What’s the foundation, James, for the way that you conduct a conversation in front of the camera? Then we’ll talk about off-camera in real life for the rest of it.

James: I don’t know that I’ve ever sat down, Erin, and come up with a set of rules or one way of doing things. Because I think when you do that, it also limits the scope of what you do. I prefer to not have that and to just– Look, it might be different if you’re doing an interview, which is the subject might be a little bit tough. You’re going to have to do more follow-ups or you’re going to have to challenge the person a little bit more.

I’m obviously prepared for that, but I don’t think I have any other sort of template either than to do it the way I do it in real life, which is if you’re sitting down talking to a friend on the couch or something, you’re not thinking about how the conversation’s going to go for the most part. Maybe I’ve had a few of my kids where I’ve had to think about the way it’s going to go. I don’t really follow any sort of set of rules. Hopefully, it comes to me naturally. If it doesn’t, well, then I fail a little bit.

One thing I do is you go off the person that you are interviewing, right? If they’re someone who you know talks a lot or tends to give you two or three-minute answers, you sit back obviously. Maybe there’s some body language you can give to let them know that maybe they want to wrap this one up to get to the next question. For the most part, if it’s the opposite, if it’s someone who doesn’t speak a lot, then I try to ask maybe more open-ended questions instead of pointed questions.

Maybe I’ll ask pointed questions to someone who tends to speak a lot. I’ll ask more open-ended questions to the person who doesn’t speak a lot. If it’s one of those hockey players who just speaks in little five-second answers and doesn’t give you much, that’s when maybe you use a little more of the: “Tell me about this,” that kind of question, which allows them to go in different directions.

Erin: REAL TIME returns with our conversation about conversation and TV sports host James Duthie about reading the room.

When it comes to feeling at home, there’s no place like REALTOR.ca Living Room. It’s the source for free engaging content for your social feeds. From key 2022 housing trends to design tutorials, Living Room is here to bring you entertaining and inspiring articles. We’ll continue our chat now with TSN’s James Duthie on REAL TIME.

I would imagine that the REALTORS® who are listening today have had experience with a couple where even one partner is ready to tell you about their history and what they want in a house and what they had and what they hoped for while the other one will be sitting there quietly contemplating or nodding or maybe not giving off any signals at all. Comfort is a big deal.

What you’re talking about, reading the room, reading the signs, who are you going to talk to, but having both parties comfortable, both you and the subject of your interview or the person you’re having your conversation within the case of a REALTOR®, that’s really important from the jump too, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s just rolling into it softly with whether it’s about the weather or anything like that. Tell us about that little bit of the art that you’ve used.

James: You’re so right. I think it’s probably the most important thing, particularly in television where people might not feel comfortable in front of the camera. Obviously, some of the athletes are so used to it, but some others are not necessarily. I think you always want someone to be comfortable. What I would do is maybe before the cameras are rolling or even after the cameras are rolling is try to talk about something other than the subject that we are about to talk about.

I try to avoid the weather, which is obvious, but maybe it’s a different sport. Maybe it’s something that happened the night before. Maybe it’s, “Did you see Top Gun yet?” that kind of thing. “Did you check out the new Netflix series?” whatever. Athletes, in particular, I think they get so bored with talking about their own stuff that they would love to talk about anything else but that. You have to be genuine, right? It can’t just be, “Okay, he’s just killing time before he gets to the subject.”

I think REALTORS® would have to be aware of that too, right? You can’t just go in there and say, “Oh, what a nice day. All right, let’s get down to the crux of the issue here,” right? You have to genuinely be interested in something else that they’re talking about. You have to humanize yourself away from the job, whether it’s talking about kids or dogs. I think my dogs probably come up a lot in conversation because I have crazy dogs.

Animals, kids, all those things, I think, are common bonds that we all have as humans. People always love to talk about their kids or their dogs or their cats or whatever that may be. I will, before an interview, try to talk about anything else, except the interview. The one other thing I will do, I think, for comfort though is be very upfront about what we are going to talk about. I don’t believe necessarily in the got-you interview that I don’t really have to do much anyway. It’s not like I’m 60 Minutes or something.

If I’m going to do an interview on a subject that is tough, I will tell the subject beforehand, “Hey, we’re going to get into all of this and I’m going to ask you about this, this, and this,” because I think, that way, they’re much more comfortable knowing what’s coming than if you suddenly throw something at them that they weren’t expecting right in the middle of the interview. Those are some of the ways that, hopefully, I make somebody feel comfortable.

Erin: Have you ever had anyone just take off their live mic and leave it on the chair and say, “No, I’m not talking about that”?

James: I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody walk out on me per se. That’s a great question. I don’t think I have. I’ve definitely had people very angry with me. The most awkward interview I ever had was with the legend, Steve Yzerman, who I’m a big fan of, who was, at that point, general manager of Canada’s Olympic team. It was the day they announced the Olympic team for the Sochi Olympics 2014.

Steve was also the general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning at the time and Marty St. Louis was the star for the Lightning. There was a big question going in about whether Marty would make the team. He was right on the line. The fact that Steve was his general manager, would that help him make the team? That was kind of the big story leading into that day. He ended up not being on the team.

Steve announced the team at this big gala event and then came right to us to do an interview with me. I asked him one question about the team. Then I said, “It must have been very difficult for you to leave Marty St. Louis off the team?” For whatever reason, Steve was not expecting that question and, I could tell right away, was extremely uncomfortable and said, “Well, I really rather talk about the players that are on the team.”

I came back and said, “Well, I realize that, Steve, and we will, but this is something that everybody was wondering about, so I need to get into it.” He deflected again and it got increasingly uncomfortable. I think if you asked my colleagues, they would say that was probably the most uncomfortable interview I was ever involved in.

I think Steve was mad at me for a while. In fact, it wasn’t until a couple of years later, I flew down to Tampa to do another story that I saw him and we hashed it out for 10 minutes. Hopefully, we have a better relationship today. He’s definitely very professional with me, but I don’t know if I’m his favourite interviewer. Hockey guys have long memories as you know, hold grudges for a long time, but I still think I did my job well there. I don’t think I did anything wrong. I’ve thought about it a lot. Should I have waited maybe two or three more questions to ask that?

Would that have helped? I don’t know. I’ll guess I’ll never know. For the most part, I haven’t had moments like that. Sports is fairly lighthearted. Most of the people you talk to don’t mind talking to you. I’ve had some awkward ones on NHL trade deadline, which is a 10-hour live show we do. Guys are getting traded, and their lives are being upended. There was one time where it all happens very quickly. A producer gets in your ear and says, “Hey, we’ve got so-and-so on the line. He’s just been traded.”

In this case, it was, I believe, Chris Stewart was the player and he’d just been traded from Buffalo to Minnesota. He comes on the line, and I said, “Chris, welcome to the show. What do you think about the trade?” He said, “I don’t know. Your guy just called me. I don’t know where I’ve been traded to.” This was live television. I said, “Oh, do you want me to tell you?” He said, “Sure.” I said, “You’ve been traded to Minnesota.” He said, “Oh, okay.”

He took it very well, but it was a few awkward seconds there where I was like, “Oh, how do I handle this?” Because even though it’s just a hockey show to us, lives getting upended, and children being pulled out of school and moved to another city in the middle of the year. Those things happened. In that case, it ended up being more of a chuckle than anything else because he took it very well, but lots of crazy things happen in live TV. For the most part, I haven’t had anybody slug me or walk out on me yet.

Erin: Is there a way to deflect or to avoid being shot as the messenger when someone has something that they have to impart like if you’d been telling Chris that he was going to some team absolutely nobody wanted to go to? I’m not even going to name one right now because it’s somebody’s favourite team, but is there a way for someone who has to deliver news, “The offer wasn’t enough,” or “You didn’t get the house”? Do you have any advice there, James? Obviously, you had to think on your feet there.

James: Yes, obviously, I think that would come up probably with REALTORS® probably a lot more than me where they have to say, “Hey, you didn’t get the house,” or “You’re going to have to come up $50,000,” or whatever that may be. I don’t deal with as many of those situations. Maybe it’s more so that you have to do an interview right after something devastating has happened to someone. I have to pick up the pieces with this person, right? They’ve just lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final after working their entire life to get there. Now, I’m throwing a microphone in their face and saying, “What went wrong?”

Erin: Right.

James: That is a challenging part of my job. Most people accept it, but it’s not easy by any means to do that. I do feel it’s always a little bit awkward. I think you have to combine normal human decency and pathos and sympathy. At the same time, still being a professional about it, right? You’re not going to let them cry on your shoulder. Perhaps in realty, but I don’t think I can do that on live TV. You have to find a way to be understanding of their pain and still do your job and ask the pertinent questions.

I think that only comes with experience really more than anything else where you just say, “Look, I know that this is a terrible loss for you guys, but we appreciate you coming out and talking to us. Tell us what happened on that game-winning goal, basket shot, touchdown,” whatever the sport may be. For the most part, I think people understand that you have a job to do. I don’t think that would be any different in realty. It’s not your fault that the offer didn’t get accepted. You’re just having to be the messenger. I think if you just communicate it in that professional way with a little bit of sympathy, then that’s the best you can do.

Erin: In a moment, finding that comfort zone when you’re having a conversation.

You can always feel at home connecting with local leads, growing your network, or finding valuable content for your audience at REALTOR.ca. Visit REALTOR.ca today, reliable real estate resources, all under one roof. Now, back to James Duthie on REAL TIME.

You’re so good at drawing parallels for our listeners here today, James. Thank you. When we’re talking about buying or selling a home, for example, it can be a nerve-racking experience. For a REALTOR® then, first impressions are just so important. Let’s draw some parallels for our listeners. What other techniques do you use to keep people comfortable during an interview? Do you lay the groundwork that, “Look, you’re safe with me. When the camera rolls, I’m not going to be sabotaging you”? I guess that might be your integrity and your reputation that precedes you, yes?

James: Right. I think you’re right on that, Erin. I think that you can only develop that over time, a trust that this guy is okay. Word gets around when you’ve been doing this for a long time that if you have a bad reputation or as someone that does the got-you type interviews or is looking to find some sort of clip that they’ll make it out to be more salacious than it really is and tabloid it a little bit, that sticks with you.

I think you have to earn that over time by doing good interviews and being trustworthy and I guess being likable to these people. That helps, but I think it does take time to establish that. Sometimes when I go to new sports, my job now is different than it used to be when I just used to be a hockey guy and I cover football and golf and soccer. I’m going to the World Cup in November.

Sometimes I do get into places where the athletes don’t know me as well as some of the others. It’s like you’re starting from scratch in developing these reputations. I have to go back to square one and try to establish trust with someone. Sometimes that’s hard to do in a very limited time window. If you only have 10 minutes with someone, 7 minutes through the interview and 3 minutes to get to know them, that’s a little bit of a challenge.

All you can try to do is do some of the same things I said before. Let people know that you’re not out to get them, that you’re a decent person, and that you’re just going to be doing your job here. I think, for the most part, people appreciate that, but it’s easier in the places that I’ve been longer where I know people or where word maybe have gotten around that maybe I’m an okay guy to have interview you or people that you’ve interviewed multiple times before, right?

That’s obviously the easiest part of it when, “Okay, I’ve had experiences with this guy before and he’s a decent guy. He’s going to do me all right.” There’s nothing more, I think, complementary than when someone requests you for an interview or says, “This is the one guy I want to do an interview with.” I had a really good relationship with Roberto Luongo, the former goaltender. He was involved in a major story once where he wanted to be traded by the Canucks, and then they ended up trading the other goalie and it was a massive controversy.

His agent called me and said, “Roberto wants you to come down and interview him in Florida.” He hasn’t done an interview since then. That’s because I had done stuff with him before. Some actually really ridiculous shtick-type stuff. Through that, we established a relationship. I think that’s part of it too, is I’m a bit of an idiot. I say that somewhat lovingly, hopefully towards me. We do a lot of silly comedy stuff on TSN. Hopefully, from that, people realize that I’m not the guy that’s going to nail you with– I hope I get taken seriously still, but at the same time that there’s a softer, lighter side to me.

Erin: A sense of humor on the side of it. Again, it comes down to that human connection, to not being afraid to let a tear well in your eye or to have some quiet in the conversation as well, and just let the talk breathe and not feel like you have to fill every second of the conversation.

James: Right, and that is massive. Something that I was probably not very good at in the beginning is a person would stop talking for a second and I’d be right down in there with the next question. I think sometimes the best answers you get are the second part of answers that come after a one or two-second pause where the person’s regaining their thoughts and then they want to say more.

I think that’s important on a TV interview or in life is to just let it breathe a little bit more. Sometimes that’s awkward with a person you don’t know that those seconds of silence, you feel that desperate need to fill them right away. If you can control yourself or we can control ourselves and not do that, I think sometimes that can lead to the best conversations that we have.

Erin: Certainly, our guest today goes into that column under one of our best. Back with James Duthie in a moment. Follow him on Twitter @tsnjamesduthie, D-U-T-H-I-E. So, you don’t miss our next REAL TIME, be sure and follow us. Subscribe or visit crea.ca/podcast to enjoy past episodes of REAL TIME.

Now, we wrap up our conversation with some great insight and tips on REAL TIME. It almost sounds like an oxymoron to say an active listener because listening to so many seems passive, but how important is it to be an active listener as part of being a good conversationalist, James?

James: I think it’s everything. It certainly is in my business is to– and it goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning with the whole list of questions, is you need to hear everything that they are saying. The conversation has to flow from that, right? That doesn’t mean that sometimes in the middle of a conversation, it can’t take a complete left turn. If you’re tired of talking about one particular subject, that’s okay.

Active listening to me is engaged listening as much as anything else. The biggest sign of engagement is eye contact. If you’re having a conversation with someone and they’re on their phone, I can get away with that with my wife or my kids maybe or my best buddies when I’m on the golf course. If you’re with a client or if I’m doing an interview subject, it doesn’t fly and it doesn’t do you any good either.

I think my dad told me when I was going to my first job interview when I was 17 was firm handshake and look them in the eye. I don’t think that’s any different. All these years later is to show that you care about what the person is saying. Eye contact is as important as what you’re doing with your ears.

Erin: Watching the body language too. Whenever I see someone with their arms folded and their legs crossed, it’s like, “Oh, you are closing off. You don’t want to have this discussion,” but the reverse of that is leaning in and giving them all of you, which you’re very good at doing.

James: Steve Yzerman definitely had the arms crossed that day. You’re right. I would say if I have one technique, I don’t really think about this stuff much. I suppose in interviewing, the one technique I would have with body language would be to lean in. I think that just says to someone that you care and that you’re really interested in what they say.

I probably do it naturally. I don’t really think about it anymore. It’s not like I sit down to do an interview with Erin Davis and I make sure I’m angled at 45 degrees towards her. I think just naturally when you care and when you’re engaged that you do that a little bit. I think it works. Again, I don’t think people should necessarily practice this at home. I think, hopefully, it’ll come quite naturally.

Erin: I’d like, James, if we could tie things up on an actionable endnote here. What is one thing that you suggest our listeners do to work on their conversation skills? Give us one for the road, would you?

James: Two things. I would say going back to earlier in our conversation, that listening is the number one thing, that becoming a good listener will make you a good conversationalist. They come together. Also, I would say, and this is about as simple as possible, is that I remember one of my bosses telling me early in my career that you have to be yourself. I think that I was being too serious. There was a point in my career where I was trying to become Walter Cronkite or something.

That wasn’t me and he had to pull me aside and said, “Look, you’re a funny guy. You’re a lighthearted guy. You’re a nice guy. Just go back to being that guy on TV.” I think it’s the same in all walks of life, is that you have to be yourself, that most people are pretty astute and can see a phony a mile away. I think the most important part of any conversation is to be yourself. That brings together everything we were talking about.

The casual conversation beforehand where, hopefully, you’re yourself and you’re talking about something in your life that maybe relates to something in their life. That part is absolutely critical. If you’re funny, then be that way. Don’t necessarily try to be Mr. Serious. If you’re serious, don’t try to be funny. That’s probably a bigger thing. Listen and be yourself. I know those sound pretty simple, but I think we forget about them sometimes.

Erin: You also have suggested that being self-deprecating has really helped in terms of your likability. You wouldn’t have put it that way, but I will. Your likability, your relatability, and not coming in and saying, “Look, I’m the person for the job. I know more about this than anybody, so you’re going to listen to me.” It’s just a matter of parking the ego and then just the humour that you say is so important. That’s the great note to remember too.

James: Yes, it’s probably my fallback, that self-deprecation and there’s probably some deep– If I got in front of a psychologist, they’d probably say there is some sort of insecurity or lack of confidence that leads to these things, but it’s always been my way of going about things, but I think it can disarm people, right? If you put your flaws right up in front of them instead of trying to be the Mr. or Mrs. Perfect, Mr. Confidence, then I think sometimes that can break down walls pretty quickly and help to better conversations and better relationships.

Erin: Well, I can’t think of how this could have gone better, James. I know I will when I’m trying to get to sleep tonight. I’ll think, “Oh, I should have asked him this or this or this.” No, you were a tremendous guest. We’re just so thrilled that you could find time in what is always your busy season because that’s the life of sports, right?

James: They do never end. I do get a little bit of break in the summer here, so it’s not too bad. With COVID, hockey goes later now. We have a World Junior tournament in August, which makes no sense because it’s supposed to be a Christmas time. You’re right.

My schedule doesn’t make any sense anymore, but I love it. I’ve been doing this now for, I don’t know, 30 years, Erin. My dad once told me, “Just find something that when you’re driving to work every day that you’re not going to be like, ‘I don’t want to be here.’” I’ve been so lucky to find something that I really love going into every day. I’m incredibly blessed that way.

Erin: It shows and that’s a wonderful thing to see too. You are the distraction, you’re the enjoyment, you’re the entertainment and the information. Thanks for providing all of those things for us today, James. We’re so grateful.

James: Oh, well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it. I hope I’ve given something to all the REALTORS® out there. I’ve certainly used them many a time. I’m hopefully stuck in this house forever because I told my wife after the cost of the rental, we did a few years ago that they’d have to carry me out of here.

Erin: Yes, toes out. Thanks, James.

James: Thank you for having me.

Erin: REAL TIME is a production of Real Family and Rob Whitehead and Alphabet Creative®, brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. I’m Erin Davis and thank you again for your time. We’ll talk to you soon on REAL TIME.

We recently helped renovate and stain a huge red cedar deck that had been exposed to all weathers, ice, rain and simple living – burgers dripping relish and ketchup – and all the things we enjoy on a backyard deck. How to stain an old cedar deck to make it look new and last longer.
Staining an old weathered cedar…

Erin Davis: Welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for and about REALTORS® brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. I’m Erin Davis and I think you’re really going to get a lot out of this episode of REAL TIME. According to StatsCan, nearly one in four Canadians aged 15 years and over or about 6.2 million individuals, has one or more physical disabilities. When we listen to our guest today, we can see that those numbers are only going to grow as we all continue to age.

While we can’t stop time, we can adjust to how we approach our futures at home. Universal design, or UD is an approach to creating spaces that are inclusive and equitable for those living with permanent or temporary physical disability. What are some of the misconceptions about universal design and how is the industry evolving and adapting to growing demand, especially from an aging population that wants to age at home?

In episode 20 of REAL TIME, we take a closer look at UD trends and opportunities. Joining us is Brad McCannell. Brad is vice-president of Access and Inclusion with the Rick Hansen Foundation, Brad, welcome. I think that first off, we should talk about what you have called the superpower of universal design. That is that it’s invisible.

Brad McCannell: It’s funny. I get asked all the time, can you send me a photograph of a really good universal design? The answer is no, if you do it right, it’s invisible.

Erin: Excellent. Well, now that we can’t see it, why don’t you tell us what it is? What is universal design and what’s its purpose, Brad?

Brad: There’s seven principles of universal design. In a nutshell, what it’s designed to do is be the most good for the most people. It’s designed to allow people to interact with their built environment easily. It’s designed to let them have flexibility in use, for example. It’s simple. It’s intuitive.

There’s a great quote. I feel bad because I can’t credit the person, but the quote was “To err is human, to forgive is designed”. That’s what you do as a designer, you make whatever you’re working with interface with the human and the human now doesn’t have to do anything. The better the design, the more invisible design, the easier it is to interact with things then the better off everyone is.

Erin: Well, how then is UD, universal design different from, say, accessible design?

Brad: Now, we’re into the weeds. Universal design: it refers to making the most good for the most people. Accessible design used to be called barrier-free design. Sometimes you see universal design and barrier-free design used interchangeably. The reality is accessible design is a specific solution for a specific application for a specific user. By way of example, universal design says everything should be the same, so it works for everyone.

You can’t do that in a parking lot, every space would have to be oversized. You can’t do that in a washroom. All the stalls would have to be enormous so that washrooms themselves would be enormous. On those applications, that’s what accessible design is. It came on into the post-war actually, when people were coming back from the war with mobility impairments, and you wanted to get Uncle Frank into the local church, well, you just built a ramp on the back door. Now, the ramp was usually about 45-degrees, but the point was to get into the church, and you’d sit in the back and you’d be fine. It was like, okay, that’s done.

But barrier-free design doesn’t accommodate the needs of the most of the people that only accommodates that specific need. When the church case you’d have to be pushed up the ramp, you couldn’t be independent and washrooms and parking lots. It’s just not practical to apply universal design in every spot. At the same time, universal principles still apply even though you’re only doing 10% or 20% of the parking lot at oversized spaces.

Erin: Well, universal design, you have said, because I’m quoting you from a great piece you wrote for rickhansen.com in 2018, liberating. It doesn’t rely on standard design parameters aimed at healthy males, aged 18 to 55. You point out, when a place works for everyone, say a park with even surfacing on trails, which we saw up in Parksville, British Columbia just last month and around accessible playground equipment. Suddenly, more people show up. Grandma shows up, more kids with range of abilities show up because they can.

Brad: Isn’t that interesting? Isn’t that the very nature of inclusion? People forget that inclusion is a result. It’s not a discipline. Inclusion is the result of accessibility and accessibility breeds accessibility. The more access you create, the more access you’re going to need because it brings people out. Like in the early 70s, curb ramps started happening, but they were designed for high-functioning paraplegics. But who did it benefit? Well, it benefited the whole community. It benefited people pushing baby carriages and people pushing dollies. Then what happened as medical science moved on, quadriplegics like me, suddenly we were out on the streets and now the curb ramp benefited us as well.

To benefit us, it had to be a little better, it had to be a little less steep. It brought out people with vision loss but to accommodate people with vision loss, what we to do was make sure there was high contrast markings on the curb ramp, tactile markings on the curb ramp so they’d be aware they walked into traffic. The more access you create, the more access you’re going to need. That’s a really good thing because that means you’re getting inclusion in the community. That means you’re keeping people active and involved.

Erin: One of the myths that you’ve spoken about is that disability happens to other people. Universal design doesn’t reflect my needs but that really is shortsighted. Isn’t it? I think it’s a little Pollyanna-ish to think, well, nothing’s ever going to happen to me. When we look at the statistics and, of course, the ever-aging demographic, chances are if you design with universal design in mind, then you are actually paving the way you’re building that less steep ramp that Uncle Frank had to your own future, your own access and ability.

Brad: Well, this goes to one of the core messages this idea that all this access stuff and all these laws and regulations are pointed at a few people with mobility impairments a few wheelchair users. It just couldn’t be further from the truth. You’re doing a face plant and you’re skiing as a teenager, and you end up in a wheelchair or you’re 85 and you need a walker. You’re going to have a disability. In our community, we call able-bodied people TABs.

Erin: What’s that stand for?

Brad: You’re Temporarily Able-Bodied. It’s only a matter of time before you’re going to require some assistance in some form. Frankly, it’s the older adults and seniors that are really driving the numbers right now and the numbers are going through the ceiling. A 1000 people turn 65 every day in Canada; 240,000 people retire every year in Canada. This is a really unique group from a disability perspective because there’s two characteristics of them. Number one, they’re in complete denial “My eyes are fine; My arms aren’t long enough.” “I can hear fine if you’d stop mumbling.” So, there’s this real denial.

And the second thing is they don’t have a disability, they have multiple disabilities. They’ll have mobility loss combined with hearing loss. They’ll have vision loss combined with cognitive issues. They’ll have every combination under the sun and that’s that labeled disabled component we talk about all the time. Often, you’ll see a power door operator and will have that little blue guy on it, a little blue stick man. It’s just vexing to our community because what happens when you push that button, there’s a little blue genie in a wheelchair suddenly appears and grants you five wishes. When you push that button, the door opens, why doesn’t it say, “Open door?” Why do I have to be labeled disabled? That power operator helps so many people, people carrying boxes, people in a hurry, people pushing a wheelchair, people pushing it, period. It opens the door. That’s part of the universal design concept.

Stop labeling people. Stop using disabled language to describe built environment. If you do it right, you don’t have to use that language. If you stop that, then you stopped the labeling. Then you’re stopping segregation. That’s what it really is right now.

You go to a bank and there’s a lowered teller at the far end and that’s where I’m supposed to go. I go there and I sit, and I’m ignored or not seen or whatever. You couldn’t do that with any other group. Could you say all the blondes have to grab the corner at the end? If you say that any anybody of colour has to go sit over there. It’s really vexing to be labeled disabled constantly.

It starts touching on the idea of us being non-market housing and setting aside 10% of some development for people with disabilities, whatever that means. Segregation, it’s one of our biggest problems. Actually, it’s the attitudinal barrier.

Erin: Well, let me go back to the bank for a second. Ideally, Brad, what would you like to see there?

Brad: Universal counters, if all the counters were the same and all the counters were universal and provided knee space, it’s just no work, this isn’t really tricky design or anything. All you do is you provide knee space on a standard counter for everyone, that works for everyone. If you go to Vancouver International Airport you may notice, you probably won’t notice, that all the counters are at universal height. All the food courts, all the tables, they’re at that universal height and it works for everyone, whereas having a high counter for tellers and one lowered at the other end, you can’t help but segregate.

Erin: You’ve just brought something up that I think we’re all going to notice from here on end.

Brad: I hope so.

Erin: When we return, Brad McCannell from the Rick Hansen Foundation tells us how he’s going about changing the way we think about design and the role of advocates in helping us to do so.

We hope you’re enjoying this 20th episode of REAL TIME. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts for monthly episodes with someone else who knows design: TV icon, Sarah Richardson, as well as award-winning author, Jessie Thistle, broadcast and marketing legend, Terry O’Reilly and political journalist, Chantal Hébert, just to name a few. Visit CREA.ca/podcast for more details.

Brad, you’re responsible for the Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification Program and Support Training, what is this trademark, the Accessibility Certification?

Brad: Well, first I’ll say it’s an industry program, it’s not a consumer program. It’s a process that we undertook to change design culture to help the people in the industry to understand the return on the investment, it’s there that’s been just left on the street. Ours is a program that identifies what’s actually there. We’re not the code police, we don’t come in and tell people, “Well, you did this wrong, you did that wrong.”

We identify what’s really there and who it affects, who’s it a barrier to, and so that as an owner or an operator you can take our report, look at your site and use it as a planning tool moving forward so that it becomes part of the normal design process instead of stopping at it after the fact, something you need special funding for. What we’re trying to do is normalize the delivery of accessible services and we’re trying to professionalize the delivery of it.

Right now, we’ve been relying pretty heavily on the advocates to tell people what’s accessible, what’s not and then find the solutions for that, and that’s just not appropriate. Advocates are critical, without advocates nothing happens. Their job is to identify the barriers, but their job can’t be to resolve the barriers, they don’t have the experience of the built environment, they’re not architects, they’re not planners, they’re not engineers.

What we had to do is shift that industry, we had to shift the culture in that industry to see the built environment differently and we’ve had great success with that so far.

Erin: Who is it that should pursue accessibility certification then Brad?

Brad: Accessibility certifications should be pursued by anyone who wants their site to be accessible, anyone who wants to understand where their site is right now. Our program identifies what’s actually there, and it becomes a perfect planning tool. It breaks any site down into eight different categories so the operator can look at it in one glance, see where they’re weak, where they’re strong, and use it as a planning tool.

The idea is to use the RHFAC, Accessibility Certification Program, as a starting point, not as an end. Too often people think, “Well, I’m going to get this rating, and now I’m an RHFAC Gold or I’m an RHFAC certified site and I’ll just stop there.” No, that’s where you start, that’s the beginning. The value of the program is that you can see now what your site needs and how you’re going to move it forward as part of the normal process, it is part of your normal operating process. The whole goal for us is to move accessibility up the design food chain.

What happens right now is this building gets designed, they get it permitted, they pour concrete and then they phone me and say, “Can we make it accessible?” No, I can’t. I can do what we call bolt-on-access, I can put on a power door, or I can put a hearing loop over a reception desk or I can walk to the mailroom so some of the mail slots are accessible, I can do the little things, but I can’t affect the core design principles of the building, and that’s what you have to do to really meet universal design requirements.

Erin: What kind of demand or interest Brad, is there for universal design in Canada, residentially and commercially?

Brad: Well, it’s just enormous. It’s driven largely by the older adults and seniors. We just did an Angus Reid poll, and it was really interesting because it was the first-time individuals recognized the shortcomings of their own environment. In the past, people always say, “Oh, yes, access is good. Those people need that.” This is the first-time people are, “Wow, wait a minute, we had 56% of our respondents saying that the access was a concern whenever they went out for dinner or lunch or shopping, with a house they buy, a car they buy, everything.” 56% of people would prioritize accessibility.

Right now, in Canada, we report 24% having a significant disability. Every one of those people have at least one other person in their life that also benefits from a barrier-free environment, from an accessible environment. They benefit on two levels. First, they benefit because I benefit so if it’s good for me it’s probably good for them, but they also benefit because a universal space keeps them safer so when they are assisting, when they are helping me, they are in danger of becoming people with disabilities themselves.

Everybody has at least one person in their life, either a lover, mother, brother, sister, paid caregiver, they all have somebody in their lives that also benefits so it’s not 24% of the population, it’s 50% or even higher. Most of us have more than one person.

Erin: Sure.

Brad: This idea that we’re a non-market is so vexing because that’s part of the problem. If we were viewed as part of the market as your listeners today will testify, they’re working with older adults and seniors every day. They may not stand up and put up their hands and say I have a disability because remember they’re in denial, but there’s no question that it benefits them in every way and so it’s absolutely clear that we need to keep people independent in their own homes, in their own communities as long as possible – in reality, forever.

The moment grandma can’t go to the arena and watch her grandson play hockey because she’s afraid of the tripping hazards on the sidewalk or the stairs in the arena or even opening the door to the arena. The moment that happens, a little thread breaks in the community. She’s not part of her grandson’s life anymore, and the more those threads break, the more the whole community starts to break down.

The other big thing here is let’s not forget how universal designs, one of its biggest attributes is it allows for intergenerational family living in a same single home. Grandma can stay with you, and that’s a really important point. We tend to ship our older adults and seniors off, and other cultures don’t. Other cultures revere their elders, and we seem to be content to let that go and we’ve seen the consequences of that now.

Erin: Back with Brad McCannell in just a moment with an eye-opening take on Disability: You and Me. Whether disability is caused by the natural effects of aging or by accident or injury, the simple truth is that each one of us will experience disability at some point in our lives and we’ll need our communities to be accessible so that we can continue to participate and live full lives. The Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification Program works to help improve accessibility of the built environment in Canada, the places where we live, work, learn and play. Find out more about the program and join the movement to help create a fully accessible and inclusive Canada by visiting rickhansen.com/become-accessible.

Now back to Brad McCannell, Vice President of Access and Inclusion with the Rick Hansen Foundation.

Obviously, everything you’re talking about is improving lives for all of us but why do you think, Brad, homeowners who do not have lived experience with disability, why should they consider implementing universal design in their properties?

Brad: Everyone should consider making their homes more accessible, everyone’s going to have a disability and it’s also frighteningly easy to do at least at the design stage. It’s harder on a retrofit, I get that. We are the largest minority group in the world, people with disabilities. We’re the only one that anyone of you can and will join at any moment. You twist an ankle and fall down the stairs, you have a car accident, you have a medical issue, you are going to be a person with a disability. It’s totally inevitable.

I happen to live in what would be considered a resort community about an hour outside of Vancouver. All my neighbours have built these homes as their retirement, they view this as the last home they’re going to have, they’re going to settle in, it’s going to be beautiful for the rest of their lives, and I can’t visit them. I can’t get in the front door. In their house, they’ve got stairs. I know one particular house, this person had been designing for decades and couldn’t wait to retire and she’s been in the home now for three years, and she can’t get upstairs to the bedroom anymore.

Erin: Oh, wow.

Brad: You have to think about this stuff. Whether you like it or not, it’s going to change so if we as a community don’t start adopting universal design principles, if we don’t start building homes that anticipate the needs of the users, if the fix to the house is so enormous so you have to move because you can’t handle the stairs, some people talk about stair glides and things like that, I’m not in favor of them, I think they are very last resort personally. But when you’re designing a home, one of the simple fixes that Safer Home Society advocates and Safer Home Society, by the way, I’d highly recommend. If you want to know about accessible housing at a single-family home level, the saferhomesociety.com is a great resource. One of the things they talk about all the time, especially in new construction, is how you can align closets. The closets on the first floor and the closet on the second floor are over top of each other. When you’re building the house, you make that an elevator shaft. At the time of construction, the cost is really nominal but to put in an elevator after the fact, it’s in the $100,000 range.

Even if you are not going to be the one to get old in it, by creating that universal aspect of the home, you’re increasing the value of the home, because the next buyer may need it. If the house can anticipate the needs of the user, if there’s backing in the walls, that you can let you put a grab bar anywhere you need it. Not just where the code says it goes, if there’s backing in the ceiling, you can put in an overhead lift. One day you may need a lift that picks you out to your bed and takes you to the bathroom.

If that’s all built in, it’s remarkably inexpensive. In fact, it’s one of the things that pays for itself, because right now what happens is they complete a house, there’s a big pile of leftover lumber and they put it in that truck, and they ship it off to the dump. Boom. There goes your LEED rating where you just dump a bunch of stuff in the landfill.

Gather up that wood and pound it into the framing. It doesn’t have to be pretty; it’s all going to be covered anyone. You can now install ceiling lifts or grab bars or whatever you need, and you don’t have to pay to ship it. You don’t have to send it to a landfill. You leave your LEED rating alone.

Erin: That’s brilliant.

Brad: Simple things like this. There’s simple solutions all over the place.

Erin: Now, are there many home builders, contractors and designers in Canada who specialize in universal design. How does a homeowner go about finding them?

Brad: Yes. There are lots in fact, but this is part of the problem. There’s no governing body. There’s no single group that can certify whether they actually know what they’re talking about or not. Again, the RHFAC, the Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification Program, we stepped in there and we said that has to change. We accredit people, people taking our course then have the opportunity to take an exam administered by the CSA group, Canadian Standards Association, completely independent of us, and they will test you for your level of knowledge, do you understand universal design. Now we have an accredit person who’s taken a course and been examined by a third party and said, yes, that guy knows what he’s talking about.

Erin: Brad, what steps can a REALTOR® take to advocate for clients who are living with permanent or temporary physical disabilities while they’re in the home buying and selling process? What do you think?

Brad: Well, REALTORS® are key to this whole process. Nobody’s closer than your listeners to the real needs of the community. They must see it every day. I would encourage them to help consumers demand more. It’s completely unacceptable to use what’s called the medical model. The medical model says you have a disability you figure out how to overcome the barriers. The social model says, no, why don’t we build places that are universal? Why don’t we embrace the community more? Why does that person have to be labeled and excluded?

There’s an old joke in our business. You want to know how good a restaurant is, you ask a wheelchair guy because he probably came in through the kitchen. It’s that old idea that any access will do that’s that barrier free design approach. It won’t. I think REALTORS® are in a position to talk to developers about this, to say that the market is there to say that we’re people with disabilities, older adults and seniors are not non-market, that we are market and we need more. If you on your building properly, that becomes a huge asset.

One of the other problems, especially in single family dwellings, for example, if you’re injured at work and Work Safe BC comes into the play, they will typically allow $150,000 worth of renovations to your home because now you’re a wheelchair user and you have be able to live there. You got that $150,000 and the OTs come in, the Occupational Therapists come in and they slap grab bars all over the place and they turn your house into an institution.

While that’s really functional and nobody wants to live in an institution, but the real problem because when you go to sell that house because able bodied person, they come and look at that house and they want to buy it. How much would it cost to get all that wheelchair stuff out? How much to take it back to the house it was instead of the institution it became, well, that’s about $150,000. Now you’ve got a $300,000 swing in real estate value at the time you can least afford it.

The thing about universal design is it’s beautiful. If you’ve done it right, it’s invisible. It has the advantage of making your house look bigger, because the way it opens up space. If you don’t, if you label disabled, if you turn it into an institution it’s going to kill the real estate value. What can REALTORS® do? They can help developers understand that we are not non-market. They help them understand the return on investment that’s available here.

The REALTOR®’s role here is just absolutely key because they’re the interface between the developer and the real users. When you’re dropping this kind of money on a house or a condo or whatever you’re buying, the cost of making it accessible is so minuscule. We did a big study on a condominium development they did that showed unequivocally it costs less than a $1000 per unit to make it universal, to make it work under the safer home system. To make it work for older adults and seniors to make it work for wheelchair users, less than a $1000 a unit. I’m sorry that’s not even the carrying cost of the money it takes to build one of those things, it’s invisible.

Erin: When we return, how Brad has integrated accessibilities in ways that we’ve all experienced and seen or not seen in the case of that invisibility to which he refers.

Here’s a staggering number for you. Just last year there were 374 million visits to the REALTOR.ca platform and visitors looked at property pages, 1.7 billion, yes, with a B-times. Be sure to make the most of those visitors with the tools provided to you through your CREA membership.

Now let’s return to our chat with Brad McCannell, VP of Access and Inclusion with the Rick Hansen Foundation, making travel and homes friendlier for us all. You talk about the invisibility of it. Tell me what you’ve done in your own situation, Brad, that is functional, that is beautiful. That is something that we can all imagine in our own lives, if we decide to go ahead and do this.

Brad: Well, let me give you two examples. One is a large public building, Vancouver International Airport. I’ve had the great pleasure of working with them now well, since 1992. So, it’s been a 30-year journey. What we’ve been able to do there is change the corporate culture to ask a really simple question before any project is completed: “How will this affect people with disabilities?” That airport is I think, nine years now running, voted the best airport in North America.

Erin: Wow.

Brad: A large part of that evaluation is customer service. We do exit surveys at YVR and a couple years back we focused on older adults and seniors and people with disabilities. We asked them, how’d you find the airport? How was it for you? The answer was, it’s great. Why? Don’t know. That’s the perfect answer. If you don’t know then you weren’t handled differently. You weren’t separated from your family to go to a special counter. You didn’t have to get pushed under some tunnels under the airport, like in Toronto to get to the airplane, making that space work, that’s a true universal space.

Next time you’re there look around you won’t see the little wheelchair guy. He’s not on the counters. He’s not on the washrooms. You might see him in hold rooms. There’s a few seats reserved, but that’s because every works for everyone. We’ve taken the labels off. We made it work for everyone from a public building perspective.

From a housing perspective, I’ve been telling people how to build things for 30 years. I just recently built my little dream house outside of Vancouver and I thought, if I’m going to do this, I better get it right. I spent great deal of time working on universal design principles and applying them to my own home, and I defy anybody to tell that somebody a quadriplegic, especially, but a wheelchair user lives in my house. None of the tell-tale signs are there. There’s no grab bars. I don’t use grab bars.

In most wheelchair homes about inches up on the wall there a black mark that runs around mostly the whole house, but usually around corners. That’s the front caster catching that outside 90-degree corner when you’re going into your kitchen, for example, when you’re going into a bathroom.

Universal design says, no, no, no, don’t do that. Make that a 45-degree angle, cut that off, even by six inches. Suddenly that is no impact point there. When you see a mark on the wall or a piece of drywall that’s been carved, you see a maintenance problem. When I see it, I see a health problem. I see a collision problem. Somebody’s hit that.

Now as a wheelchair user, I’m pretty good. I can ram things and survive pretty well, but when mom is on a cane or a crutch and she catches that wall or her walker hits that wall, then you’re introducing a falling hazard into the home. One of the great things about Universal design is how it makes your home safer. It literally removes falling hazards, tripping hazard and that’s really important. The best example I can give you is in a typical residential setting, in a bathroom we put the sink, the toilet and the tub, all those controls and water lines are on the same wall.

We do that to make it easy for the plumber. I don’t care about the plumber. I care about my mother, and she walks in there and she steps between the toilet and the tub with one foot, and she leans way over to turn on the tub and she’s going to fall. That’s where she’s going to fall. If she falls there and breaks her hip, she has a 20% chance of being dead in a calendar year. She has 50% chance of never getting out of an institution. Why are we doing this for the plumber? I’ve had arguments with architects. We can’t make it any bigger. Real Estate space is just too expensive. We can’t have a bigger bathroom. Pick the tub up, turn it 180 degrees and set it back down in the same space. Now the controls are on the open wall.

If you want to go crazy, let’s just go absolutely insane here for a second, let’s take the controls and move them 6 inches closer to the edge of the tub. Now she’s not even leaning over. Just anecdotally, I think you can reduce falls in the home by 20% by doing just something that’s simple. None of this is rocket science. There’s a feeling that I can’t create accessible because I don’t have a big enough footprint. Universally design is your best friend in small spaces. It makes things work for everybody so much easier and it’s all about reach requirements and those kinds of things.

Erin: Putting plugs in different places to electrical outlets.

Brad: Especially on a new build, it costs about seven bucks to put an outlet in a new build. It costs about $3000 to do it if you have to rip the drywall out. Why not put a plug behind your toilet? Why not put a plug besides your main entry door and your main exit door? Someday you may want a power door operator on that. Why not throw some plugs over by the windows so that you can operate the drapes with a remote or the windows too? When you design a home, in my home, I used crank style windows because I can pull that crank off and put a little motor on that.

Now I can operate the windows from my bed. If you’re going to automate your home, you need these AC outlets everywhere. If you add a design stage at the construction site just throw them in, the more the merrier.

The other thing you want to do is you want to lift all the outlets up by six inches and you want to bring all the switches down by six inches. Now everything’s within reach of most people and it doesn’t look weird.

Sometimes people raise the outlets way too high. It looks horrible. You plug something in, there’s a big cable hanging down the wall, but lifting it six inches puts it within the range of 80 or more percent of the community. If you can keep mom from bending down, it’s a bonus.

If you can put in a touch faucet, touch faucets are amazing. You don’t have to have dexterity to turn them on or off. There’s a little light on there, it tells you the temperature of the water without touching. It is not thought of as a disability thing and that’s great. It really works for my darling wife when she’s baking and her hands are covered in flour and guck, and she doesn’t want to touch the faucet. There’re a million little things you can do to make it work.

The biggest barrier to all people with disabilities is the attitudinal barrier. Pre-conceived notions of what we’re capable of or not capable of. Preconceived notions of us being non-market somehow. The biggest barrier to overcome is what people think we can do and what we can’t do and what we might want. My boss, Rick Hanson said it decades ago when he was talking about his own home and he was talking to the developer and he said, I just want a normal house. I don’t want to live in an institution. I don’t want to live in a place that looks like an institution. I just want a normal house. It’s easy to do. It’s functional. It pays dividends because it increases the value of the home especially as more and more people need this.

It’s an opportunity for everybody to come on board and understand the return on investment. This is not something we’re asking you to do because gee it’s great, because mom’s amazing. Wouldn’t we like to help the community and “Gee guys, I know let’s do this really nice thing.’ There’s money to be made here.

Erin: Brad, as we bring this conversation which has been so enlightening and perfect to a close, let’s fast forward a few months, how do you want to describe the rest of the year in three words?

Brad: Three words. Finally making progress. The Accessible Canada’s Act has been a big push forward. BC now stepped up with accessibility legislation and doing an amazing job through Sam Turcotte and his team. I think it was finally getting the message through and that message of return on investments coming through. I think industry has finally been brought to the table. In the past what’s been happening is people demand higher code requirements and more enforcement. I agree that’s absolutely critical.

You have to have that, but the industry was never brought to the table. They always said, “You will do this now.” That just doesn’t work. Finally, through the RHFAC program, we’re getting industries to the table. We’re helping them understand the return on investment. I’m hoping you understand why it’s so important that this be done at a cultural level. I’ve got great hope for the coming year, and I’ve got great hope for the years beyond that. My fervent dream is to be unemployed as soon as possible because they don’t need a consultant on disability anymore because it’s part of the natural culture.

Erin: Thanks for sharing your insight with us here today and the inspiration of the message that this is just so accessible. Thanks so much, Brad. We really appreciate your time and your wisdom, and we’ll be watching to see more progress. Thanks to people like you and the Rick Hansen Foundation and the Accessibility Certification Program and a reminder to visit rickhansen.com and look at the five myths that Brad McCannell has written. It’s just fantastic.

Brad: Remember that while we may be perceived as the leaders, it’s the people doing the work and it’s your listeners. Your Real Estate agent, REALTORS® generally can make a huge change here just by being aware of this, just by demanding more, just by stepping up and being the voice. We’re maybe leading the scene. We get the nice labels. We get the government grants, but the heavy lifting is done by your listeners, so I really appreciate this opportunity.

Erin: We appreciate it too. A reminder to go to rickhansen.com/become-accessible to learn more and make that difference that Brad McCannell, Vice President of Access and Inclusion with the Rick Hansen Foundation, talks about.

Thank you for joining us here today on this episode of REAL TIME brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association, produced by Rob Whitehead for Real Family Productions, and Alphabet® Creative.

Be sure to check out all of our episodes and subscribe so you don’t miss any more great, guests including in Episode 21 Real Estate Visionary Stefan Swanepoel. I’m Erin Davis and we’ll talk to you again soon on REAL TIME.

Erin Davis: Welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for and about REALTORS® brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. I’m Erin Davis. CREA and the REALTOR® community have advocated for home buyers, property owners, and communities for more than three decades. Of course, that means we’ve been keeping a close eye on the lead up to and results of Canada’s 44th federal election.

On this episode 19 of REAL TIME, we’re joined by one of Canada’s most prolific political journalists and commentators, Chantal Hébert. Join us as we unpack the election’s political implications for Canada’s housing crisis including the newly elected government’s housing promises and how all parties might align to support a more accessible and sustainable housing sector.

Well, Chantal, despite a hotly contested campaign, our new parliament looks a lot like it did before the election. If you could, can we take a closer look at how we got here? We’ll go back to August 15th. I know back in the way-back machine to an entire month and a half ago but why do you think it is that the Prime Minister decided to call a snap election at that moment?

Chantal Hébert: Easy. Minority governments, 18 to 24 months is the usual shelf life. The liberals have been leading, solidly leading in the polls for months. It is in the nature of minority governments to always be on the lookout for a window for reelection. Here are the calendar options that Mr. Trudeau was looking at. If he didn’t go on August 15, then he wasn’t going to go in the fall of 2021 because as of right now, there are significant municipal election campaigns that are getting underway not only in Quebec but also in Alberta. You really want to not be– Those signs in Montreal went up for the mayoral battle a day before the end of the federal election. It was jarring to see suddenly new faces appear on top of all the other faces.

Erin: Oh, wow.

Chantal: That took care of the fall. Then you go to the spring of 2022, and here again, no window. Why? Ontario is going to the polls in June as a fixed-state election. There is no doubt about Ontario having a campaign. That pretty much means that as of February, March, every party in Ontario is going to be concerned with reelection or beating Premier Doug Ford. That means a lot of campaign workers who would normally work for the federal Liberals, Conservatives, NDP would be fixated on the provincial scene.

Oh, well. Let’s move fast forward to the end of the summer of 2022. Here’s Mr. Trudeau thinking, “I really want to have some control over my timing,” whoops, except that there’s a Quebec election. It’s a fixed-date election, so it is going to happen. As of the beginning of next summer, right after Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day that Tuesday, most political volunteers are going to be working or lining up to work for Premier Legault or for one of the other contenders in the Quebec election. Here we are, November 2022. Taking all that into account and having no way to predict the future, who knows if you’re still going to have that nice big fat lead in November 2022? Are you going to call a Christmas election seriously?

On balance, I’m guessing that the Prime Minister decided, “I have the lead, I can get this over with and buy myself time, will a majority, which would be nice because the pandemic is not over but will come to an end. By the time it comes to an end, 2023, ’24, we are going to all be taking a more serious look at our fiscal situation and the fiscal damage. It may not be a great, great time to have to campaign for reelection, so let’s do it now when a majority mandate that in theory, would take the government all the way to 2025.”

Erin: Do you think that the Prime Minister could have done a better job in getting out the message of why the timing so that people didn’t react with so much displeasure, which seemed to be the overriding emotion that we felt over the past several weeks, Chantal?

Chantal: Couple of points on that. There was never a narrative that really worked for Justin Trudeau to call an election in part because of the pandemic. What has been happening over the past year and a half, two years since the 2019 election is that there has been a fairly high degree of cooperation between the opposition parties and not just on Parliament Hill, in most provincial legislatures for obvious reasons.

On top of that, most of Justin Trudeau’s big projects, childcare, climate change, indigenous reconciliation, he had the dancing partner for all of them on the opposition benches. Mr. Trudeau had a very comfortable minority government going into this election where no one could argue that he could not get his plans in progress. He couldn’t go to voters and say, “I need to have two hands on the wheel because I can’t get the country to anything,” because he could not sustain the narrative.

The other issue, the people’s reaction. It is true that normally, people, when they see an election called Justin Trudeau’s not the first Prime Minister in a minority situation to have tried to find his way to a majority. BC did it earlier on in the pandemic. New Brunswick did the same thing earlier on in the pandemic. Both of those governments won majority governments. People weren’t all that annoyed, but I think over time, the Prime Minister and possibly, the people who advise him got themselves into an even thicker bubble than usual because of the pandemic. Their read on the public mood was probably increasingly based on polls rather than on speaking to people.

If they have, you guys speak to people, you meet them. You would’ve known that the mood out there wasn’t a, “Yes, let’s have an election. I can’t wait to give Justin Trudeau a prize for having handled the pandemic.” It was a, “Please leave me alone and let us get on with finishing the pandemic.” I think it was a combination of both Trudeau wanting a majority and thinking he could get it and having be a failed connection to the public mood.

Erin: I found it interesting in his acceptance speech that he mentioned that Canadians have made it clear that they’re tired of the pandemic and they’re tired of elections. That was a very Canadian moment like apologizing for victory.

Chantal: Now there is no one more deaf than he does not want to hear. This is not something he could not have picked up on. I read and I write columns. I read my colleagues’ columns, and 90% of anything that was written in the three months before the election call went the way of, “Don’t do it.”

Erin: What are the results mostly back to the status quo say about Canadians and our perceptions of government right now?

Chantal: It mostly says that Canadians were comfortable with Justin Trudeau on a bit of a leash and with a minority situation. It also says that voters in general looked at the alternatives and they would mostly have looked at Erin O’Toole not only because he was the main contender for power but he was the newer face on the scene and saw nothing that made them really want to change the government or the makeup of the House of Commons and so in the end, every party got zero reward for his or her campaign.

This is an election that has a winner. Make no mistake. If you wake up in the morning, the Prime Minister, you’re better off than waking up in the morning in opposition. If you look at what everyone wanted, this is a no winner election.

Erin: You were all over Twitter on Monday night. I thought it was quite interesting of course, decades as a prolific and high profile and respected journalist. You’re a Twitter star because of a quote, Chantal, that you said, “An election that nobody wanted and nobody got what they wanted’. Kudos.

Chantal: Election nights, sometimes you end up thinking quickly and sometimes you get yourself in huge trouble. In this case, I didn’t.

Erin: With no liberal majority, no win for Erin O’Toole, only a modest gain for the NDP, and no seat for the Green leader. Did anybody except as waking up as Prime Minister as you said, did anyone get what they wanted with this election?

Chantal: No, although I’m going to say something that is going to sound very counterintuitive, and I’ll probably regret saying it because this is being taped, but if anyone got anything from this election, I would say it would have to be Erin O’Toole. Why do I say that? He got a dry run. If his party allows him to run again and to lead the party again in another election, he will have learned a lot of stuff from his first campaign, made a lot of mistakes that he won’t repeat, and probably will be able to run a better campaign next time. You did notice and I’m going to stress it that there’s a big ‘if’ in my sentence, and the ‘if’ is ‘if’ they allow him to remain as leader.

Erin: Did anything surprise you about the results?

Chantal: A lot of people seem to be surprised. Luck would have it that as a very, very, very junior reporter, I was assigned to cover a little bit of the 1977 provincial campaign in Ontario. Bill Davis had a minority government, elected in ’75, decided that he was going to turn that into a majority, so two years later, manufactured a reason to have an election and ended up with exactly the same legislature. Having seen that early on, you could say that though Stephen Harper was elected in ’06, tried his luck in ’08 to get the majority, and again, failed to get that majority. I thought the results we got was the result any sane person that was not in a Liberal bubble would have expected.

Erin: Back with commentator and longtime political journalist Chantal Hébert in a moment with where housing ranks as this government moves forward and looking for signs literally.

Both directly and through its political action committee of REALTORS®, CREA works with federal cabinet ministers, members of parliament, parliamentary committees, and senior officials in order to drive legislative and regulatory changes that will benefit homeowners, aspiring homeowners, and communities across the country as well as the Canadian economy. When issues come up that affect housing, property rights, or the real estate sector, CREA engages elected officials and government to discuss solutions and make recommendations on behalf of you, REALTORS®.

Now, back to journalist Chantal Hébert on Election 44, insight, info, and more. When you were talking about the litany of reasons in terms of timing as to why the election had to be called when it was, from Prime Minister Trudeau’s standpoint, I couldn’t help but think just for a moment about all those signs on the lawns. As you said in Montreal, they were switching up before the election votes were counted, where do the REALTOR® signs go? I always think about that in elections. I’m trying to sell my house, but how high does the issue of housing typically rate in federal elections compared to other domestic issues like the economy or healthcare or the environment, Chantal?

Chantal: I don’t know about you, but it’s the first time that I see housing emerged as one of the talked about issue. It’s mentioned but talk about to the degree that it was talked about in this election, I can’t remember a campaign when that happened, not even when interest rates were sky-high, because at that point, politicians, as you may remember, would say, “Bank of Canada, that’s not on us.” I think it goes to the larger issue of affordability, which has been one of the overriding themes of this campaign. Housing, for obvious reasons, because of what has happened to the housing market over the course of last spring and the pandemic, became the poster child for the larger affordability issue, and it is a major issue.

That being said, just because politicians talk about housing a lot in a federal election does not necessarily translate into a major issue in Parliament. The reason for that, the reasons are fairly obvious. The federal government’s impact on the housing issue is indirect. It is not accurate that if you elect candidate A versus candidate D, housing will suddenly become more affordable or more houses will be built more quickly in the right places for the right people. There is no expertise, and I think for a few decades, we don’t even have a National Housing minister. We used to, and that has disappeared. So yes, a number of proposals were heard during the election. I’m not so sure that they will necessarily be the stuff that question period is going to be made of because this housing discussion, it’s not going to go away, but it is now going to shift over to those provincial campaigns that I talked about.

Erin: The numbers that we heard during the campaign, which elements of the Liberal housing plan might be up for negotiation with opposition parties in order to get housing legislation passed? The Liberals promised to preserve, build or repair an additional about one and a half million homes over the next four years. The Tories promised to build one million homes over a three-year period, and the NDP, a half million affordable housing units over 10 years, and the Bloc promised to fund affordable housing using 1% of the federal government’s annual revenue. Do you see any of that coming, if not to fruition, then at least being tabled and being discussed in a serious manner moving forward?

Chantal: Okay, you don’t need legislation to do most of these things. You do need to allocate funding to trigger it, but we do know that the federal government is not going to be taking your taxpayers’ dollars to build family homes. What is going to be happening is that the federal government is going to negotiate with cities and with provincial governments to try to put money and incentives in place to get this done, but an army of construction workers is not going to fan out on the basis of some federal legislation. The federal government’s impact on whether it wants to cool or not cool the housing market runs to mechanism that go from the obvious Bank of Canada and interest rates, making it harder for people to qualify for mortgages, and the one that no one talks about, because it’s never going to happen, and if you want, I can tell you why, is taxing profit on your home when you resell.

Erin: Okay, tell us why.

Chantal: Let’s forget the actual campaign and let’s make one up. It could have been anyone, but Justin Trudeau wakes up one morning over the past five weeks and says, “We are going to cool this market and we’re going to help people enter the market by going after all the money that is piled up in the principal residences. My government, if reelected, is going to be taxing the amount of money.” They are going to tax your principal residence, as he says, the same way that we tax cottages. Then what happens? Political Science 101, the leader of the opposition then says, “If elected, I will never do this. If this ever happens, I will run on the promise to undo this.” Guess who becomes the Prime Minister on election?

Erin: You got it, number two.

Chantal: It’s such a political nuclear device that would so blow up on whoever proposes it, and so not survive the election of another party, that no one will ever want to go there. It’s political suicide. Not only is it political suicide, but it’s political suicide for no cause, because you will be replaced by someone who will promise to undo it.

Erin: We did hear some promises that were not political suicide, they were promises.

Chantal: Speculation taxes, yes. If you buy and flip and use the principal residence, I do believe they will tighten that up, up to a point. I have also noticed that they will try to craft it in such a way as to not catch me for instance, buying a nice house and then suddenly discovering that I can’t live in it because of illness, so I need to sell it. I think they will craft it properly. I also believe that if they do present legislation along those lines, they will find support across the aisle.

Erin: Now we’re not only talking homeownership here, we heard promises from the Liberals on a rent-to-own program, buyer’s bill of rights, doubling the first-time homebuyer’s tax credit. While the election was going on, did economists and housing experts back up those proposed measures as being effective and even starting to address Canada’s housing challenges?

Chantal: Most economists, as far as a one could read, said that most of what is being proposed would make little difference to the housing issue. The tax credit route is one that federal governments tend to like, so you will probably see some movement there, but beyond that, a lot of those programs are programs that are run by the provinces, one. Two, it makes a lot of sense that they’re run by provinces because it is possible that the housing market in PEI is a bit different from the housing market in BC. The notion that the federal government can come up with a comprehensive one-size-fits-all approach to this issue, it does not meet the test of reality. Which is why I think that if the federal government is going to be in any way, shape or form proactive beyond the tax measures, proactive on housing, they will do so by striking deals with various provincial governments and if Toronto and Montreal and Vancouver can help it with the big cities.

Erin: Do you think that any of the opposition parties are likely to use housing legislation as a lightning rod for a nonconfidence motion?

Chantal: No, never going to happen. For one, there’s no appetite. If you were one of the opposition parties looking at the numbers this week, I don’t think that you would be looking for reasons to have nonconfidence motions, for one. Two, most of the moves that the Liberals may make on housing will be included in a budget. If the government were to lose the confidence of the house, it would be on its entire budget. I think that the NDP will push really hard to have some housing proposals in the next budget, but the dynamics of a second minority government, in a way, they self-cancel each other.

Justin Trudeau, of course, does not have the weapon of saying, “If you don’t do what I want, I’m going to call an election.” He’s used that one up. The opposition parties are not in a position to create the conditions for an election anytime soon. If you were Jagmeet Singh saying it and suddenly you decided you didn’t like the housing section of the next trans feature budget, would you really bring down the government and then run the risk that your partner across the aisle is the Conservative Party? By and large, I think it’s not a big secret that NDP supporters and a solid section of Bloc supporters are much more comfortable with the Liberal government than the Conservative government.

Erin: Coming up more with journalist Chantal Hébert and her view to the future.

An election campaign includes a lot of numbers. Seats needed for a majority, polling results, dollars promised, but here are some numbers you need to hear now. Last year, REALTOR.ca had 73 million visitors. That’s up 45% from the previous year, and visitors looked at REALTORS®’ profiles 11 million times. No wonder REALTOR.ca is the most popular and trusted real estate website in Canada. Make the most of those visits with the REALTOR.ca tools that come with your CREA membership.

Now, back to journalist commentator, Chantal Hebert, on REAL TIME. Can I ask you what is your take on the future of the Green Party? You’ve been here for a while and Monday has to have been just devastating on so many fronts as it was here watching the British Columbia news where we’re based. What is your take on the Greens, Chantal?

Chantal: I think they have, at this point, more of a future in a number of provinces, PEI to name one. They used to have more presence in BC, I think, that could come back if and when the NDP is no longer in power and Victoria. I don’t think that the Green Party federally is salvageable under its current leader. I also believe that it is possible for the federal Green Party to find a good leader who is not Elizabeth May.

Erin: The message that we’ve heard listening to you today is that I’m hearing echoes of climate change issues where climate change was never mentioned and now, of course, it’s part of the regular discourse. The homeless situation and housing and affordable housing made it into the election as part of people’s platforms and that seems to speak right to the Green Party. Am I wrong?

Chantal: If you want to be kind to the Green Party, you can say that they’re victims of their own success. I don’t totally buy that. I think climate change climbed up on the radar for obvious reasons that have little to do with a party that never had more than three seats at the back of the House of Commons. Climate change has now become a ballot box issue or a precondition for support for a majority of Canadian voters, while it was not the case maybe 15 years ago. The Conservatives will tell you and I suspect they still pay the price for it in this election, that increasingly when they’re campaigning in the suburbs, be it in BC or Ontario or Quebec, people have no time for whatever it is that they have on offer because they are perceived as not being serious about climate change.

I think a lot of voters have a little box and it says climate change. If you can’t tick that box, they’re not going to consider you. That means that the Green Party, which is so associated with climate change, but so not associated with being in government, is in some trouble at the federal level, because if you’re serious about climate change, what you really want is a government that is serious about climate change, and we will not be having a Green government in Ottawa over the rest of my life. I should say I’m not 30, so I’m not saying that’s not going to happen for 100 years. My working life will never see a Green Party in power at the federal level. I’m not sure that I will ever see a Green Party that has the 12 members required to have official party recognition in Parliament between now and when I decide that I’ve seen enough of all these very nice people.

Erin: Well, with the federal election behind us now, Chantal, how are you hoping to describe the rest of the year?

Chantal: I am, like all others out there, hoping that the winter is not too hard on us, on the pandemic front, that kids will get vaccinated, that in January, we’ll be looking to not coming out of another dark tunnel, but living in some semblance of normalcy as we’ve currently been doing, and that the kids will manage to be in school all year. My demands are not very high. I don’t think we’re done with this. I’m watching what’s happening in Alberta, frankly, scary. I think we’re going to see a lot about people on the political front, not with Justin Trudeau, but on the Conservative front. Some Conservatives want to go after Erin O’Toole. Jason Kenney, I’m not sure will still be Premier in Alberta at Christmas. There’s this election coming up in Ontario with Premier Ford. I think Conservatives and Conservative sympathizers are going to have a lot of action to look up.

Erin: Therefore, so will you keeping an eye on it all for us all. Thank you so much for your time and your insight and your expertise, Chantal, we really do appreciate it.

Chantal: Okay, and I hope that the Trudeau trump speech does include enough lines to keep you people interested.

Erin: I’m sure that it will. Thank you. We’ll have our fingers crossed. Thank you, Chantal.

Chantal: You’re welcome.

Erin: Journalist Chantal Hébert. You can see her regularly on CBC’s The National and can read her in the Toronto Star as well as several other publications. We’re so glad you could hear her on REAL TIME. Don’t miss our next episode when we talk universal design with Brad McCannell. He’s VP of Access and Inclusion with the Rick Hansen Foundation, and he promises to be a great guest. Honestly, they all are.

Just be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode of REAL TIME, a production of Alphabet® Creative with technical production by Rob Whitehead for Real Family Productions. I’m Erin Davis, and we’ll talk again soon on REAL TIME.

Erin Davis: Welcome to REAL TIME, a podcast for REALTORS® brought to you by CREA, the Canadian Real Estate Association. We are all about sparking conversations with inspiring people about all things Canadian real estate and topics that impact REALTORS®, and really all of us. I’m your host, Erin Davis and our guest for episode 18 of REAL TIME is actually a host in a lot of ways, and you’re going to find our chat fascinating. The appeal of vacation properties skyrocketed during the pandemic as Canadians look to create memories close to home. This scramble for real estate dovetails with another phenomenon, vacation rentals and the sharing economy.

With record numbers of people looking to get away close to home, can any property become a vacation property, and what are the pros and cons of investing in one? In episode 18 of REAL TIME, we take a closer look at the trends and opportunities with Heather Bayer. She’s a vacation rental expert, speaker, podcaster, broadcaster, and mentor of short-term rental managers and owners. Heather Bayer is also CEO of one of Ontario’s leading cottage rental agencies. We’re thrilled she could carve out time to be with us on REAL TIME during one of her busiest seasons ever. Thank you, Heather, for joining us. This feels like a virtual vacation and no matter the time of year, I think we can still all use one. I appreciate your time.

Heather Bayer: You’re absolutely welcome, Erin. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here.

Erin: You’ve been in the vacation rental business for more than 20 years. How did you get into the industry, and what makes you so passionate about it? Tell us your story, Heather.

Heather: What it was, it was very much by accident. I’ve been a serial entrepreneur since the 1980s. I love to start-up businesses, but until 1998, I’d had nothing to do with hospitality apart from partaking of it myself. In fact, at that time, back in 1998, I was running a management training company, I had a psychotherapy and hypnotherapy practice and happily hypnotizing people and running my training and it was great.

Then the adventure started. My brother was getting married in Midland, Ontario. Of course, as you know, from my accent, you can probably understand, I was in England at the time. He was getting married in Ontario. A week later, my niece was going to be married in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We had a family of 12 Brits and Scots, and we planned this two-week adventure and my brother organized our accommodation in Ontario. It sounded absolutely marvelous when he told us. It was a four-bedroom cottage on a pristine lake, and that’s all he said, and it’s something we never experienced before and we just couldn’t wait for this to happen.

What he conveniently forgot to tell us was that it was a water access-only property. Although we were ferried across to this cottage on this very nice motorboat by my future sister-in-law’s stepson, all we had after that was a tin boat with a nine horsepower motor, which was meant to ferry us back and forth to the mainland and the motor kept going wrong and things were happening. He also neglected to mention that the cottage hadn’t been occupied for the previous six months. At least it hadn’t been occupied by humans and it was overrun by mice and for the first three days, we cleaned the place.

Which sounds like a complete nightmare, but in fact, it was probably the most amazing vacation we’d ever had. We swam in the morning at dawn with the loons, I’m getting poetic here. We sat around the campfire telling stories and roasting marshmallows, and it was bliss, idyllic. On the last night, my sister and I sat on a rock and we were having a gin and tonic and looking out over the most amazing sunset, and I just said, “Hey, we could do this. We could actually buy a property and rent it out and do it much better”.

My husband always raises his eyebrows. When I always say those four words, “I’ve got an idea”, he wants to run a mile. I went back to UK and decided we’d go into the travel industry, and I was going to source the best in Ontario cottages and rent them to the British market. Oddly enough though, in a couple of years we did that, we got more business coming from Toronto, calling us in the UK and trying to rent a cottage two hours north of them.

Eventually, I moved out in 2003. I’d had enough of going backwards and forwards to Ontario every six weeks to buy another property because we kept buying them. We had six at one point and I was also looking at third-party properties and managing them from England. My husband had been in the UK military in the RAF for 35 years and it was time for him to retire. We said, “Hey, let’s move to Ontario.” That was the start of the adventure and here we are 18 years later.

I now run one of Ontario’s most popular rental management companies along with my business partner. We have 160 properties and I’ve written a book about how to rent. I have a podcast with 400 episodes and nearly a million downloads now, and I live, eat and breathe this business. Yes, the passion that started in 1998 has not waned one iota since then.

Erin: What an incredible story. I’m still stuck on the hook that you were a hypnotherapist and a psychotherapist because I want that in everybody that I know, oh my goodness, boy, you changed lanes in such a big way. Of course, the whole world did in the past year and a half, Heather, with COVID-19 having such a major impact on travel and tourism. What have been the immediate effects on Canadian vacation rentals that you’ve seen?

Heather: It’s been a story of famine and feast really because it depends where you are. Here in Ontario, we serve a domestic market, so 90% of our travelers come from the major cities from Toronto, with less so from Ottawa, but it’s domestic. When the borders closed and people couldn’t go traveling, they decided that they would stay at home and do the staycation, and that turned out to be the best year in 2020 for us. This year, 2021, it is just as busy, if not busier. We’ve never had busier years. However, that’s not the same for every part of Canada because there are areas that don’t have that high level of domestic travel. They have more international travel people crossing over the border.

For example, property managers and owners, let’s say in Canmore and Banff, less likely to have a domestic market because it’s only an hour or an hour and a half away from Calgary. People are more likely just to do a day trip rather than to book accommodation because the majority of their business comes from the US. Many of the managers I spoke to have told me about the famine effect. It’s been the same in the urban markets for those who had properties say in downtown Vancouver or in Toronto or in Montreal because people weren’t visiting the cities anymore. It has been either feast or famine.

Erin: Do you expect, Heather, the pandemic to influence any long-term trends even after we returned to, “Normal”?

Heather: The issue of what’s going to happen next year, don’t we all wish we had the crystal ball, and people say, “when we returned to normal”, always waving those air quotes to normal, we look at it two ways. We’ve had to explain to a lot of new owners this year when they bought properties and they paid a lot of money for it, and they are coming into it at a period of the highest rental rates we’ve ever seen.

We raised our rates between 25% and 30% this year just to remain competitive, and owners have come in saying, “This is amazing. I’ll feed this into my spreadsheet.” We’re going, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” 2022 could be very, very different because we don’t know what’s going to happen when international travel helps people to move south and move east and west, just go away from where they’d been stuck for the past 18 months.

On the other hand, some people have found the secret door to what’s in their backyard, which is lakes and areas of pristine natural beauty that they may not have even realized was so close to home. Yes, a crystal ball would be fantastic. I’m ever the positive. I always have a glass completely full, and I am suggesting that we will probably maintain some good rates next year, good occupancy, but there’s always a but isn’t there? We’ve also had this massive increase in rental inventory as well because everybody that’s come in and bought properties has been wanting to rent it. We’ve got a large inventory too. There’s a lot of moving parts in this and we have a lot of fingers crossed right now.

Erin: In talking about the prices of cottages and cabins having skyrocketed by as much as 30% and I’m sure you’ve seen percentages even higher than that, Heather, does renting the property suddenly make owning more realistic for the average Canadian?

Heather: I think it’s the only thing people can do unless they’ve got oodles of money and can maintain two properties, one of which they just spent way over the odds to get hold of, I think they have to rent. In the past, rental was seen as something that you did to just fund the project, fund the renovation or a new deck but now, the buyers that I’ve been speaking to over the past year see it as an absolute part of their investment strategy and it has to be built in to ensure costs are covered.

There’s the mortgage, there’s taxes, there are all the costs for rentos because many people have bought properties that need significant renos to be able to be put into the rental market. Yes, renting does make it more realistic.

Erin: Coming up with three kinds of rental property buyer. Are you one of them or perhaps one of your clients is? As we mark a year and a half of CREA REAL TIME episodes, why not take the time to do a bit of a deeper dive into some of the fascinating and still very timely chats we’ve had? REALTOR® Chris Jovic is an expert in his field on sustainability and you probably saw him quoted on CBC just last week in a piece about climate change and homeowners’ protection. You’ll find him in Episode Two of our first season. Subscribe, so you don’t miss any of our talks. Go to Spotify, Apple, Stitcher, or visit CREA.ca/podcast for more details.

You have cited that there are three types of buyers, can we break it down into the three, and then we’re going to focus on one of them in particular because I know you’ve piqued a lot of people’s interest in this today, Heather? Let’s dive into that a little bit, shall we?

Heather: Buyers come in many different shapes and forms but you can usually put them into three separate buckets and the first one is the traditional family buyer. This is usually people who’ve been brought up going to the second home, whether it’s on Vancouver Island, whether it’s in Ontario, whether it’s in Nova Scotia, it doesn’t matter. They’ve had the second home that they were brought up as kids going to on vacation.

As these kids have now grown up into adulthood with their own families, they want to recreate that and we see a lot of those, “We want to buy something so our children can experience what we did when we were kids”. Sadly, I don’t think it’s going to work out that way because when those parents were kids, there was no internet, technology wasn’t as it is now and I think it’s a little bit of a pipe dream expecting that their kids will be just as happy with some water and some sunshine and not have YouTube and TikTok however-

Erin: Logging on meant actually putting wood in the fireplace.

Heather: I love that. The second group are the retirees. The ones that are looking at it and thinking, well, if I don’t buy in now, I’m not going to get into it in the future and I want to retire to this place. They want to get in early, buy what will be their second home, and use rental to pay off as much of their costs as possible until the time comes for them to sell their primary home and moved to it. We see quite a large proportion of those as well and while they’re not using it, they’re going to pay for it by rental.

Then the third type are the pure investors and Airbnb has delivered us a lot more investors because it’s made it so much easier for people to get into the business and taken a lot of the work away from it. An investor can come in, buy a property, perhaps engage a co-host, somebody who will manage it for them online, and then they just sit back and take the money and that’s a very lucrative business if you’re doing it in the right area.

Erin: It sounds very lucrative. It sounds very attractive and now we’re going to focus on that, let’s hone in on number three, that third group. What would you say, Heather, are the benefits of owning or managing a vacation rental and don’t forget this woman has been doing this for 20– and I’ll say 20 odd years because I’m sure they have been odd, my dear.

Heather: Still are.

Erin: I bet you. Every day, a new adventure, if you want to call it that. All right, what are the benefits of owning or managing a vacation rental, Heather?

Heather: The benefit, certainly from an investor standpoint, is over a period of time, that property is going to increase in value, that’s basically it. When I started to invest here in Ontario, it didn’t take very long for my investment to increase in value, and I was able to use rental to pay all the costs involved, and the capital grew, and I sold each one for a nice profit, but that didn’t take very long. Now I think the benefit is only if the investor is going to be in there for the long haul because we don’t know what’s going to happen with property values.

There’s benefits to doing it yourself. There’s two models of running a short-term rental business. I say business because every single person who buys a property to rent is going into business. They’re joining the travel and tourism and hospitality business. Something I always say to my owners when we first take them on board as property management clients, is regardless of whether you’re doing it yourself or you’re using a property management company, you’ve now entered the hospitality industry and there’s huge responsibilities that come with that.

Erin: That really does seem like an aha moment, I think, for a lot of people, that suddenly you are part of the hospitality industry, you’re not just mom and dad renting out a cottage on an island or something, you’re part of a much bigger picture.

Heather: Yes and mom and dad did it 20 years ago and they just put the sign on the lawn or a classified ad in a newspaper but now to achieve success, it has to be done professionally. Every part of it has to be done professionally. From the photos that are taken, to the amenities that are offered, to the level of communication with guests. It’s no longer the quick phone call with somebody saying, “I want to rent your place” and you saying, “Yes, come and give me $750 at the door when you arrive on vacation and leave it as found.”

I’m glad I experience that actually because I remember arriving at so many properties to find that the previous guests hadn’t cleaned it so I had to start cleaning it myself but that was the way it was then. Now, it is so, so different. People are expecting– let’s talk about the guest expectations because guests, we don’t call them renters any more, they’re guests and they have massive expectations.

They expect their vacation rental to be as well presented as a good or top class hotel or resort and any deviation from that brings a complaint and that brings me to something else is that we live, eat and breathe by reviews. Anybody going into the business now has to understand that that you can’t go into it half-hearted because the moment somebody gives you a negative review, wherever you are, whether it’s on Google or Airbnb or VRBO, that almost can spell the death knell for your business at the very outset.

Erin: Coming up the pros of hashtag book direct. How many people use the bigger companies and why your client may want to go his or her own way or not? Whether it’s by a lake or walking distance to the best mall in the city, the heart of your home is the living room, we get that. It’s why REALTOR.ca Living Room is your source for free engaging content for your social feeds. From key 2021 housing trends to design tutorials, Living Room is here to bring you entertaining and inspiring articles. Pull up a chair and join us there, won’t you?

Now back to Heather Bayer, CEO of one of Ontario’s leading cottage rental agencies and our guest on REAL TIME. What share of vacation properties are independently owned and managed, do you think, Heather, versus those managed commercially or by an agency?

Heather: There’s two ways of renting out a property: one is the do-it-yourself model and the second one is to go with a property management company. I don’t think I’ve seen any real statistics that show what that ratio is. I would say it’s somewhere around 70% independently managed and maybe 30% are managed by professional agencies. I could be way off whack there but that’s what it’s certainly what it seems to be here in Ontario when I look at the wealth of properties that are available on some of the major listing platforms.

By listing platforms, I mean platforms like VRBO, what used to be Home Away, what used to be Canada Stays, they change every month, it seems and, of course, Airbnb, but if you go through Airbnb listings, you’ll see probably about 70% of them are managed by the owners and probably about 30% are managed by agents.

Erin: Do independent investors compete with property management agencies for the same business, do you think?

Heather: Oh, yes, absolutely. Yes, we all compete for the same travelers. I think what we have as property managers that stands us out is that we have much better marketing clout. We don’t have to just sit on Airbnb or VRBO. Every property management company has their own website; they go for the direct bookings. In that way, we tend to achieve many, many more repeat guests because we are encouraging people to come back to us. If you’re advertising on one of the major platforms as an independent owner, somebody will see your property and then perhaps go on to another property and never come back to you again.

At least with an agency, as a guest, they’re probably going to stick around with that agency if they get really good service. About 70% of our guests are our returnees every single year, not necessarily to the same property but they come back to our company every year. That’s the same for many of our competitor companies.

Erin: Well, and that’s the best review you can possibly get, isn’t it? That and referrals, right?

Heather: Oh, absolutely. When we have guests who are now on their 16th, 17th, 20th visit, and they post that on a Google review, you don’t get that if you are doing your own advertising. That’s a benefit. That’s real benefit of going with an agency. I always talk to new owners just about these two different options they have and suggest that, start with an agency and get your feet on the ground of this hospitality while somebody is holding your hand and they’re helping you through absolutely everything, they’re dealing with the issues that come up, but then sharing why those issues came up and how you can prevent them in the future.

We have a lot of owners who come to us maybe for the first one or two years and then go, “Right, I’m ready to take the training wheels off now”. They go off, they create their own websites, and love doing the marketing and management themselves. You have to bear in mind that it’s not just a matter of posting a listing on one of these websites, you have to expect to hear from your guests, sometimes 10 times a day with the most minor things.

Erin: Okay, the questions and I’m sure a lot of them have to do with things that maybe perhaps city dwellers have never seen before like there’s a skunk in the yard, what do I do? Or there’s squirrels or whatever, you’ve probably heard them all, Heather, I’m sure.

Heather: Well, yes. Just recently, “There’s a bat in the bedroom”.

Erin: Oh, how lovely.

Heather: Guest woke up in the night, and there’s a bat flying around the bedroom. This is two o’clock in the morning. Now we have a 24-hour call answering service and somebody will answer the phone at two o’clock in the morning. We were talking these guests through their panic and their fear and anger because we had let this bat in apparently.

Erin: Yes, really, your fault. That has to be something that a potential owner who’s looking to have guests in their property is going to have to be able to commit to. You are basically on call 24/7 or you’re not giving people maybe what they’ve come to expect.

Heather: That’s exactly it, Erin. We are on there 24/7 and I noticed last night, my customer service manager was still answering texts at half-past eleven about how to get the Wi-Fi to work in a property. For that guest, it is hugely important to them. They might be night people and they’re going to spend the evening and night working and they need that Wi-Fi. Yes, if you’re doing it yourself, you’ve got to have somebody who’s able to deal with those things at any time because we live in a 24-hour society and we can’t just say, no, you’re only allowed to have an emergency between the hours of this and this and your emergencies can only be in these categories.

Erin: Yes, that’s right. Because people aren’t all just there to kick back on floaties. There are people like us who work from remote locations and need that Wi-Fi. Okay, well, you know what, we’ve talked about remote locations in terms of truly rural and remote but can any property like a condo be a vacation property, Heather?

Heather: Any property. You’ve talked about RVs and trailers and things being turned into rentals. Yes, there’s tree houses and there’s yurts and air streams. Absolutely anything can be out there now as a short-term rental property, providing it meets with local regulations and that’s the big, big issue right now. Cities, townships, municipalities across the world are getting into the idea that this industry must be more regulated than it currently is.

Erin: Do you agree that it needs more regulation?

Heather: I do. I do agree that it needs some regulation. I’m fully in favor of licensing properties because I believe that a licensed short-term rental property that meets the proper safety regulations, et cetera, meets occupancy limits, is a responsible rental. The whole issue of responsible versus irresponsible rental is what has made some of these municipalities and townships go this route anyway. I’m in Huntsville, Ontario, we have a great system, every short-term rental property has to be licensed, somebody will come out to the property and check that there are fire extinguishers and CO monitors, et cetera. Check for egress.

You can’t rent a place with a bedroom that has no window, that hasn’t got the two methods of egress, for example. Once you’ve gone through the licensing, then it goes up on the township website and the guests actually pay a 6% hospitality tax to stay at that property. That tax goes to the township. Now, there’s arguments against this, but quite honestly, I think fair regulation is what we all need.

Erin: It is because there will always be those who ruin it for the rest of us and you also have to make peace with the neighbours too, in terms of occupancy and noise. We’ve all started to see signs in different areas that say “Ban short-term rentals”, and that’s not a nice feeling if you’re going in there for a week or two to know that you’re not welcome. If everybody’s on the same playing field– I do have a question, Heather, how much is the license? Do you know?

Heather: The licensing varies, certainly here, every township seems to have its own. They vary from $500 to $2,000. Once they get up to that level, they are trying to knock out the small players, which I think is a shame, because often, it’s the smaller rental operations that just renting two or three weeks a year to pay some taxes, those are the most responsible.

I think putting a high figure on licensing cuts those out. The people who are buying multiple properties, investing in multiple properties just to yield the greatest income aren’t going to be bothered by $2,000. I prefer to see the lower rate, $300 to $500 on an annual basis to pay for inspection and have some fair criteria for rental. One of them being occupancy so that we don’t see a three-bedroom cottage being open to 20 people, for example,

Erin: Right, there’s that. That’s where their screening of the potential guests comes in too. It goes back to being in the hospitality industry. If you’re just some person who’s playing with a whole bunch of little houses and hotels on the Monopoly board, you don’t really care who goes into them but if you’re invested in that property and in your neighbours, you want to make sure that those people going into that place are not going to be partying at all hours because they’re on vacay, right? Or in the one case, you had someone who was complaining because the guests were too darn friendly.

Heather: This is an issue that you will get in more residential areas where there’s been an influx of short-term rentals where it was all generally nice and tranquil residences, and now you have what they’re calling the revolving door. Every week, a new group arrives. Every week, they’re excited and they can’t wait to get going on vacation, and they meet the neighbours and the next-door neighbour is really friendly and they ask him over for a drink or ask the family for a barbecue. That was when we did hear from one neighbour of a property that said, “I really like having the rentals next door but could you possibly tell them to stop being so friendly?”

He said, “Because if I responded to every request or every invitation for me to come across for drinks and a barbecue”, he said, “I’d never get my gardening done”.

Erin: Oh my goodness, one must have his priorities. Oh boy.

Erin: When we return with Heather Bayer, the important big eight questions a REALTOR® needs to ask if a client is considering buying a property and entering that hospitality business of which Heather speaks. Here’s another number, nearly two million, that’s how many searches there were for REALTORS® on REALTOR.ca in 2020. You can make the most of those visits with the REALTOR.ca tools provided as part of your CREA membership.

What questions should a REALTOR® ask their client to determine what kind of vacation property is going to be the best fit? Because I think if I’m living in, let’s say Toronto, because you’re talking about Toronto and Midland, I think, okay I’d like to get someplace say up in Georgina or Keswick. Certainly, I can’t go in there knowing little but a REALTOR® who’s going to represent you should make sure you’re going to be the right fit for this kind of a position as a hospitality owner. Help us help REALTORS® know what to ask and find the right fits. Would you please, Heather?

Heather: I think it’s really important that a REALTOR® assesses what the buyer’s goals are for rental, is it for pure investment? You want to get the maximum out of the property. In that case, then the property they should look out should be year round not a seasonal property. Also, to find out what level of ownership they want. How much do they want to use it themselves. Because you get to this point where you think, do they want this as a pure rental? In which case they might want an entirely different property from one that they’d want to use themselves.

For example, a nice riverside property that is rentable year-round may suit somebody who wants to get as much rental income as possible because a river property will rent. It’ll rent really well, but it may not suit a family who wants to use a Sea-Doo or go water skiing. They will be better off getting out onto a lake. Whereas rental guests in general don’t have their own boats, so they have different needs. It’s a matter of assessing the needs of the owner and telling them about the different types of things that guests want because often what owners want and what guests want a very, very different.

I actually like to, if it’s okay, I’ve got some questions actually, that an owner would ask a REALTOR®, which is turning your question around a bit, but there’s eight key questions that your buyers could ask. If you can get these answers right, then you’re going to have a happy buyer who buys the right place.

The first one is, they’re going to say, what’s the best area to buy for getting the best rental occupancy? You mention Georgina and Keswick, that may be okay in terms of summer occupancy, not great for the Winter. You might know that to get up somewhere where there’s a ski area, maybe not so much Collingwood, but perhaps up towards Mount St. Louis Moonstone, about two hours north of Toronto, they’re going to get better rental value in that area. It’s about knowing the different areas where they’re going to get the best occupancy.

Second question: what rental rate should I expect in each location? That’s just a matter of researching what’s being charged for different styles and types of property.

The third question is what do rental guests look for in a vacation property in this location? Your knowledge of the tourism demographic is important. If you have that information to hand to know that there’s a strong winter market and to know that you’d need an open source of heat, a fireplace and a sauna, might be more important than a on-suite bathroom, for example. Travelers have very different needs than the second homeowner who’s using it for their own purposes.

The fourth question would be, do you know of anybody who can manage the property in my absence or who can manage a property for me? That’s all about talking to local property managers, rental managers and finding out what services they offer and perhaps going into some referral partnership or something like that. We work with quite a number of real estate agents just on a very flexible basis that really, really helps because they know how we work.

The fifth question we’ve just covered, every REALTOR® needs to know what restrictions there are in any area because these restrictions are becoming more commonplace. Awareness of zoning, bylaw restrictions, anything that’s there and also anything that’s upcoming. It’s always worthwhile really. This is a really good tip that I heard from somebody else is in an area where somebody is looking, go into the municipality or the township website and look at their meeting minutes and just put it in the search box, short-term rental. Something may come up that says somebody raised this and there’s a likelihood that there’s going to be some action taken in the future.

Number six: how is rental income taxed? That’s always good to know because we’re always asked that, I always refer people to an accountant, but you will get asked that question.

Then number seven is knowing what the seasonality of rental activity is in the location. Majority of areas have seasonality built into the rental potential. Just go into the local tourism office. They will usually have that information on the inbound traveler demographic. Low and shoulder season vacancies can really impact a bottom line. Any prospective owner wants to have a clear indication of what they should expect, particularly in areas where there’s a high concentration of rental properties.

Lastly, and I touched on this, is who is this rental demographic? Where did the guests come from? As we’ve seen in the last two years, that is super, super important. Is it a driving location? Is a domestic market? Is it predominantly flying? What’s the age demographic? How long do they stay? Do they stay for short, two nights? Do they stay for weeks?

Those are the eight questions that I think every REALTOR® should be prepared to answer. You could actually create a binder for prospects demonstrates that the vacation rental business and how it’s presented and operated in your area because that’s so invaluable for anybody wanting to invest.

Erin: Absolute gold. There’s more to come including a real eye opener for me and probably for you on how potential property owners can keep their eye on just how many people are in their place. It’s not how you think. I love learning new things through hosting REAL TIME and I hope you feel the same way listening. Here’s another way of tapping into the knowledge of REALTORS® across the country and sharing your own lessons and insights. Visit REALTORS® Corner on CREA Café, a hub of content created by REALTORS® for REALTORS®. Check it out.

We return now to Heather Bayer, vacation rental expert, a speaker, podcaster, broadcaster, and mentor of short-term rental managers and owners. Heather Bayer is also CEO of one of Ontario’s leading cottage rental agencies. She wants us to remind you to #bookdirect.

Before we look back at 2021 and maybe ahead into 2022, let’s talk a little bit about high-tech. You mentioned a binder and there something about holding a folder in your hand and looking through those pages and knowing that your REALTOR® knows her or his stuff when it comes to what you want to know. I can’t even fathom the changes that you’ve seen in the past 20 years in what you’re doing and how it has changed things. How do you anticipate tech is going to further transform the short-term rental industry in the future specifically post pandemic, Heather?

Heather: Tech has come a long, long way. Nowadays there is tech for everything. I was talking to an owner this morning who was talking about how do we know how many people there are in their property? In the past, I would’ve said, well, you don’t, you don’t. Once people arrive, if it’s a remote-ish property, you don’t know whether they brought in 10 of their friends. Now you can use a device called StayFi. That ensures that anybody in the property who wants to connect to the Wi-Fi has to register their email address.

Erin: Oh, that’s good.

Heather: There is another one called Party Squasher. That one just detects how many working devices there are in the property. It would detect how many phones, how many tablets, et cetera.

Erin: Wow. I thought you were going to go with ring cameras and stuff, and that can get hanky, right? People don’t want big brother or sister watching over them, but it’s your Wi-Fi, you’re paying for this? Oh my, that’s fascinating, Heather.

Heather: There’s a third one called NoiseAware. Which I love NoiseAware. This is better for maybe for condos because it measures the decibel level in your home. You can set it to a particular level and for a particular duration. If you’ve got a family in there and they’ve got a screaming baby, then it’s going to register. If that goes on for an hour, you might consider that maybe it’s not a screaming baby, it may be this fledgling party just kicking off.

Erin: Or hit the Mary Poppins App and make her appear and take care of the child. That’s your next thing, Heather.

Heather: As an entrepreneur, I’ve just filed that away.

Erin: All right, so let’s do this. Let’s fast forward a few months. How do you hope to describe 2021 when you look back on the year?

Heather: Best year ever.

Erin: Good for you.

Heather: Well, that’s me. I hesitate to say that because it sounds as my nine-year-old granddaughter goes, “Grandma, you’re bragging”.

Erin: You’re not bragging if you can do it. That’s what I say.

Heather: Exactly. Yes, best year ever, but also, I look back on a year of learning because we’ve had plenty of time to learn. The first six months of our year were canceled, basically. We’ve had everybody out there learning new stuff. It’s also been a year of tolerance. We’ve learned that everybody is so different and people will react to things in very, very different ways. We’ve seen that more so in the last year. I think we’re coming out of this. I’m talking in terms of my company, we’re coming out of it as a kinder, more tolerant and accepting company.

We are far more accepting of somebody who’s going to flip out because the neighbours have a party one night, and we’re far more accepting of somebody who goes bananas because there’s an ant. People are reacting. We used to say they’re overreacting, but no, they’re just reacting a little bit differently to what they would normally do. I really thought about this and I think tolerance is the biggest thing that’s come out of it for us, but also a lot of excitement about getting out of all this and what’s going to happen in the future.

Erin: Oh, I love your full glass, Heather. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. It’s been insightful, delightful. I got to give you a plug here because you’re in the midst of writing a course.

Heather: Yes, I am building a course for people who are going into this business, who are going to invest and want to treat it as a business. I wrote a book back in 2005 and then went into the podcast. Now I think I’m trying to get it all down into a really easy to digest course.

Erin: The book was reprinted in 2007, so your message is getting through and the changes, it seems like it’s almost time for a re-up, in your spare time, Heather.

Heather: Well, that book in 2007, when I look back on it, and particularly I look back on the marketing side, and it’s how to write your classified ad.

Erin: Oh my gosh, it was delightful talking to you, Heather. Thank you so much and may the future be as full as you see it. You deserve everything.

Heather: Thank you so much, Erin, it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you.

Erin: Don’t miss our next REAL TIME Episode. We’re going to the polls in a few weeks, and our CREA REAL TIME Team, along with Alphabet Creative is putting together analysis in real-time as we move into the future in Canada.

REAL TIME is produced by Rob Whitehead and REAL family productions plus Alphabet® Creative. Thanks again for joining us. I’m Erin Davis. We’ll talk to you again soon on REAL TIME.