It might seem that a search for real estate in the resort Municipality of Whistler would be straightforward compared to a search in Vancouver or Toronto. The popular B.C. ski destination is, after all, tiny by comparison. But finding the right property in this village of 10,000 residents can be anything but a piece of cake.
Many out-of-towners are looking to buy Whistler properties but they can be quickly overwhelmed by a set of unfamiliar residential options. Whistler has more than 25 residential property zones including designated tourist accommodation properties with usage restrictions. Nightly rentable townhomes, hotel stratas and fractional ownership of condominium units are among the options open to buyers.
But the search for the right property could be a whole lot easier for buyers (many of whom are foreigners) through WhistlerListings.com, a private listing service officially launched in December by local company Whistler Listings System, which is owned by two local brokers.
The local real estate association fully supports the new listings service. “We’ve wanted to make it easier for our customers to be able to find what they are looking for,” says Rob Palm, president and executive director, Real Estate Association of Whistler (REAW).
Without the assistance of a knowledgeable local Realtor and the listing service, buyers – 75 per cent of whom don’t reside in the village – might be lost.
Palm says the listing service isn’t designed to trump realtor.ca – just simply offer potential buyers a site more specific to what is available in Whistler. “Whistler is unique because of its resort status and it hasn’t been served as well as it could be,” he says.
“As a resort our properties are different than the typical community (city),” says Marika Koenig, a sales rep with Whistler Real Estate. “We have phase one and two zoning; there are time shares, quarter ownership and all sorts of other types of properties.”
Prior to the development of the private listing service, real estate agents in the mountain resort sometimes found they could exchange information among themselves quicker than they could receive it through the local real estate board.
Rob Palm
Realtors in Whistler have used variations of the listings service for about a decade as a “back-end” system that organizes properties in part through the village’s zoning regulations, says Palm. However, last December it was fine-tuned. It is more user-friendly for buyers and now incorporates apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod to better serve the market, which includes nearby Pemberton and properties throughout the Sea-to-Sky corridor.
Koenig, who sits on REAW’s board of directors and has played a key role with Palm in organizing the site’s recent launch, says it has the most current and comprehensive database of properties listed for sale in the resort. Buyers can weave quickly through the property search process to pinpoint their needs because the service is organized by property type and neighbourhood.
With more than 1,000 properties listed, the site includes everything from single-family vacant lots and parking stalls to luxury mansions and rural properties in nearby Pemberton. Users can search for properties by date listed, type, price, location, address and neighbourhood. Photo tours and interactive maps are available.
REAW signed a licensing agreement with Whistler Listing System late in 2010 to market the listing service. All of the 140 or so licensed Realtors in the Whistler/Pemberton area pay a monthly fee to Whistler Listings System to access WhistlerListings.com, Palm says. For a fee home sellers can also list their properties on the site.
The site is not intended to make a large profit. The objective is to provide a service that Realtors, buyers and sellers simply weren’t getting, says one of the service’s founders, Pat Kelly of Whistler Real Estate Company. “As long as it breaks even, we’re happy.”
REAW brokers and agents all remain members of the CREA and BCREA.
Whistler attracts thousands of potential second-home owners from out of town. “We have 10,000 residents but on a busy weekend we can be populated by 50,000 tourists and second homeowners,” says Koenig.
You need ‘critical mass’ to create a private listing service
For anyone thinking of developing a private listings service in their city or town, one of the owners of WhistlerListings.com has some advice: make sure that your community has enough “critical mass” (Realtors and properties, for example) and only proceed if your “brand” is not being heard through the MLS, says Pat Kelly.
Kelly is the owner of Whistler Real Estate Company, the largest company in the region known as the Sea-to-Sky corridor. He co-founded the listings service with Anne Chiasson, managing broker of Sea To Sky Premier Properties.
“I don’t know if what we’re doing would work for everyone, but if you identify that you have a unique brand that is not getting out there or heard, then something like this is worth looking into,” Kelly says.
Whistler was ripe for the listings service because it wasn’t being adequately served by realtor.ca, he adds. “Because we are a recreational resort marketplace, some of the information that our vendors and purchasers want is different from what the standard urban database provides. We have a lot of property that falls between residential and commercial with restrictions on use.
“What we did wasn’t any different than what an individual company would do on its own website with listings. We just extended it over seven companies (the broker members in REAW) to create a common presentation for all of us.”
Kelly advises anyone thinking about a private listings service to retain a good provider that can maintain and support the database. Kelly and Chiasson chose Tarasoft because the price was right and the database is “very dynamic”, which allows operators to quickly and easily address and make changes to the site.
Kelly says to ensure ongoing success of such a service, Realtors have to be prepared to do broker load and provide daily troubleshooting. “It wouldn’t work if you had to hire people to do data entry.”
