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].
Pierre Beauchamp
Pierre Beauchamp, the former CEO of CREA who retired in 2011, received the most mentions in the REM poll.
“As CEO of CREA for over a quarter of a century, Pierre successfully shepherded the national association through an era of enormous change, helping both to transform the way Realtors do business and to maintain the Realtor’s position at the centre of the real estate transaction – no easy feat in an age when disintermediation has laid waste to so many other professions,” says Betty Dore of the London St. Thomas Association of Realtors.
“Pierre guided CREA through some very choppy waters over his time at the helm and always kept the interests of the members at the forefront,” says Bill Madder, CEO of the Association of Saskatchewan Realtors. Madder says Beauchamp “was also involved in some of the major decisions that changed our industry for the better, including the transition from a private to Realtor-owned mls.ca and then realtor.ca; and the transformation of PAC Days and CREA’s lobbying efforts into a well-oiled machine that is known and respected on the Hill.”
Beauchamp “navigated CREA through the transformation of its management structure first in a move to Ottawa and later through a dramatic reduction in the size of the Board of Directors,” says Alan Tennant, CEO of CREB and a former CREA president. “Along the way he led us through the delicate and emotional evolution with the Competition Bureau, the transformation of Realtor Link to the national stage and the ensuing creation of the MLS and Technology Council. Finally, in his last months before he retired, he had the foresight to facilitate the launch of the Futures Project.”
Lawrence Dale, who as president of RealtySellers launched several lawsuits against CREA, says: “Pierre’s vision transformed CREA from a somewhat peripheral player in the real estate industry into Canada’s most powerful organization in the residential real estate industry. Pierre had the insight before others recognized that those who control property information data will be the power brokers in the real estate industry. However, Pierre also fought to maintain CREA’s position at all costs; a cost that many feel was not worth it.”
In a June 2009 interview with REM, Beauchamp said: “I get satisfaction out of seeing the industry evolve in all these different directions and in coming up with solutions to the various challenges that we have, whether they be technological, political or legal. It’s been kind of fun to help build and participate in what we’ve done, to end up where we are now.”
