I am so old now that I wonder if at the end of the day they will take my old bones and set them up in the museum beside the other dinosaurs. I have seen so many cycles in the real estate business that I wonder if anything in this business can even make me blink anymore.

I remember during the ’50s and ’60s many real estate brokers owned their own storefront offices as well as the buildings themselves. There was a greater assortment of real estate shingles hanging in front of those offices. If you wanted to be a real estate sales representative back then, you had to apply and then submit to a vigorous interview and scrutiny process before the broker would consider offering you a job. Back then a broker invested heavily in their sales reps by helping pay for licenses as well as paying for everything else in the office including desks, typewriters, carbon paper and rotary telephones. In those days a lot of real estate brokers were also insurance brokers. It seemed as though if you traveled through the city, you would come upon several real estate offices before you got half-way across town.

I remember a couple of very astute Realtors told me that one day there would be even more real estate offices. I recall thinking how amazing it was that the prediction had come true. During the late ’70s and early ’80s it seemed like there was a real estate office on every city block, sometimes two or three. I know that to be true because I used to park my car and walk those blocks selling advertising to those offices.

Around that time I met a couple of future-thinking Realtors who told me that things would change again and there would be fewer real estate offices but there would be far more agents. It was hard for me to believe that there could be more than the 14,000 Realtors already working in Toronto but they were right. I thought about those astute future thinkers when that number doubled to 28,000 during a seven-year period between 1979 and 1986.

I remember a time when folks laughed at the idea of condominiums. The concept of someone owning a home within a building was inconceivable. How could that be? Then we saw Realtors promoting themselves as “Condo Specialists”. All those who laughed about that were left in the dust and today hardly anyone calls themselves a condo expert anymore, it is just so common place.

I can barely imagine how the business of real estate and the facilitation of home ownership will change in the days ahead.

All this should be documented and in a book. This industry needs to commission a team of researchers to write the history of this incredible business. I don’t mean just an account of the industry all laid out in good order and dry notation.

The story of this business needs to be written in a compelling manner. It should be told in an entertaining way. The real estate business is a business community. It has all manner of characters that shaped the industry with their charm, style and most assuredly their integrity. These grand gentlemen and ladies should be written about, especially because this business is almost all about people.

The story of all the technology that was first developed by the people in this community also needs to be told. It was the real estate industry that pioneered multiple image capture and data processing – not just the brilliance of gathering information efficiently but also guarding its integrity. The process of demanding accuracy from industry members was an achievement in itself. Marshalling the ethics and arbitration related to this information is a staggering feat and it is at risk every day. Especially today!

The story of the real estate community is an ongoing diary that should be written as it develops, not just for public relations and media releases but for the members of this industry to access. I fear that there are photos of offices and industry pioneers that are lost each month. We are busy embracing new technologies and communication tools. We have to look back. We have to document the past. We have to appreciate how we got here.

If we don’t, we won’t know how to go forward.

Heino Molls is publisher of REM. Email [email protected].