Lorne Wallace
To celebrate 25 years of serving Canada’s real estate community, REM asked a small group of real estate leaders this question:
“Who had the biggest impact – good or bad – on Canadian real estate in the last 25 years?
This is not a popularity contest or a marketing exercise. We want to know who you think had the biggest impact on the industry in the last 25 years – even if it was, in your opinion, a negative impact. Your choices could include Realtors, company executives, association executive officers, regulators, service company executives….even politicians! Who has had the most impact during the last 25 years in making the industry what it is today?”
REM took those consensus picks and added our own and the results will be revealed on REM online every day until the end of June. Take a look and see if you agree with these choices, and then let us know who we missed. Add your comments below or drop an email to [email protected].
Lorne Wallace and Des O’Kelly
“As we celebrate the 25th anniversary of REM, few realize that there was another start-up in 1989 that would have a significant impact on the growth of the real estate industry in Canada,” says Bob Campbell, president and CEO of Colour Tech Marketing. “Two entrepreneurs, Lorne Wallace and Des O’Kelly, partnered to launch Lone Wolf, a company that introduced a financial software program to support real estate brokers in managing the office finances.
Des O’Kelly
“Over the years Lone Wolf grew across Canada and across the border. The company and programs evolved in such a way that those who used it never had to worry about a change in ownership of the company or change in direction,” says Campbell. “The support they offered was personal and timely. Over the years they successfully navigated on behalf of their clients the migration from DOS to Windows without any loss of data, the advent of independent contractor status, the introduction and changes in GST/HST, the requirements of commission trust and numerous other changes in the industry.
“Lone Wolf is now a company with over 200 employees that services nearly 10,000 offices in North America,” says Campbell. “The bottom line is that they have brought stability to the back office part of the real estate industry, which is something that Canadian brokerage firms have not had to worry about for the past 25 years.”
