I am both pleased and shocked to advise you that this column marks 25 years for me in service to the real estate industry. My last job at a “main stream” newspaper was with the Globe and Mail in 1979.
It’s an old line, but I cannot help but say it. It seems like yesterday.
While I never made much money in the ‘real estate newspaper’ business, I have come to know how little its importance is worth when compared to the value of the relationships and the friendships that I savour today. I have watched an industry grow but more importantly I met the people who developed it. They are my friends.
Through all the years I have become rich with human experience and overwhelmed in the wealth of learning from these good friends. In all that time I have seen many wonderful and profound developments in the real estate community.
I have watched the real estate industry embrace technology with enthusiasm and astounding speed. It is irrefutable that Realtors have been leaders and pioneers in practical, hands-on technology, particularly when it came to information processing and communication. Realtors often developed their own technology where none existed. One needs look no further than the development of MLS information systems, first crafted for and by the real estate industry.
The most important element that I have seen is the willingness that Realtors have to share what they have developed. This industry that has proven to me, time and time again, that technology can be fantastic but the humanity and the grace of sharing it has an importance that can never be matched in greatness.
In the 25 years I have watched this industry nurture technology; I have also watched it bring professionalism to higher levels. Longer licensing courses, greater costs for entry levels, constant upgrades, and ever-higher standards for ethics have elevated legal and moral demands on the people in this business.
The real estate industry has imposed all these professional demands on itself. No one else did it. Nobody came from outside this community and said “we are going to create higher standards for you”. Realtors did it themselves.
It was every day real estate brokers and sales representatives that approached the provincial governments to talk about enhancing the profession, creating business codes for high moral conduct.
There are real estate councils in place across the country today where Realtors play an active role in governing licensing, regulations and ethical standards. The people who pushed for the creation of these councils were Realtors.
I am hardly an expert on the real estate industry but as an observer for 25 years of change in this business, I could easily tell you the one indisputable winner after all this time.
The truth.
The real estate business in Canada is highly intolerant of abusing the truth. It is even unacceptable to exaggerate. There are rules in place that will take your license away if you lie. There are strict laws in place that can have you charged if you are less than honest. It wasn’t like that 25 years ago. I watched it change.
After all the years, after all the changes, and all the changes that will continue to develop, from technology to ethics, if I could say one thing to the entire real estate industry, after 25 years, it would be this.
I’m proud to know you.
Heino Molls is publisher of REM.
By: Heino Molls
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