By John Bowes
John Bowes began his real estate career in 1950 with Ridout Real Estate in Toronto. He was later co-founder of Bowes & Cocks in Peterborough. (Photo: Gordon Parks)
The old joke, “change is inevitable – except from a vending machine,” is as applicable today as it was 60 years ago. Although people are naturally wary about change, there’s no question that our lives have been vastly improved by the evolution of business and industry. Real estate is no exception. The way real estate is bought and sold has changed a lot in six decades, but the principles remain the same. It takes a willing buyer, a willing seller and, in most cases, a qualified agent to negotiate an agreement satisfactory to both sides.
When I started my real estate career in June 1950, I was working with Ridout Real Estate, then the largest brokerage in Canada with some 600 salespeople in Toronto and Southern Ontario. Ridout was one of the first real estate firms to offer in-house training, which consisted of morning sessions in its Bay Street office in Toronto, followed by afternoon cold calling and door knocking. Licensing was as simple as completing an application and filing a $1,000 bond with the Real Estate Registrar. Offers to purchase were brief and often hand-written on the kitchen tables of buyers and sellers. The homes sold from its Danforth Avenue office were typically priced at $8,000. Our usual fee of five per cent ($400) was split 50-50 between the salesperson and the brokerage. Keep in mind that you could buy a new car for under $2,000 at the time.
By the time I was 24-years-old, I was managing the Peterborough branch office, which listed and sold a lot of waterfront properties. A nice lakefront lot with sand beach could be purchased for $1,000. Our office handled a large development in Haliburton, where a cottage and waterfront lot package sold for $2,500. Those recreational properties now sell for $200,000 to $300,000 and more. Of course, there were no computers, email or fax machines. It was not unusual to make the two-hour drive to Toronto to have the offer accepted or signed back, and then the round trip would have to be repeated.
Bowes was manager of the Ridout office when this home sold for $6,000 in 1954. The current owner, Peterborough Mayor Paul Ayotte, found the sign in his garage.
When Bill Cocks and I started our own company, Bowes and Cocks, in 1956 we were required to write an examination to obtain registration as real estate brokers. The test was taken at the home of an elderly local Justice of the Peace. The JP promptly fell asleep on his living room sofa. We both passed with flying colours and went on to build one of the largest brokerages in Ontario. The iconic firm is still active in parts of Eastern Ontario.
Most real estate organizations, like ours, began as small start-ups and expansion was generally regional in nature. A few trust companies were opening real estate divisions, but there weren’t any national real estate chains or franchises until much later. Bowes and Cocks acquired Canadian rights to Gallery Homes in the mid-1960s and established a scattering of franchised offices across the country – a very progressive move at the time. Yet the framework of a multi-office franchise was much different than today. In the early days, there was little sharing of property information among offices, until the introduction of Co-Operative Listings, which later became the Multiple Listing Service.
Even then, change was on the horizon. In 1967, a broker in Baltimore began applying emerging computer technology to real estate sales. Air force veteran Donald Grempler developed a primitive card sorter, programmed to select property listings by location, price, number of rooms and other criteria. Bowes and Cocks was the first in Toronto to install the device. At a meeting of the Toronto Real Estate Board in 1968, TREB president Brian Magee inquired from the stage, “Mr. Bowes, do you think there is a future use for computers in selling real estate?”
To which I replied, “Yes. The time will come when every agent has to have one.” That got a good laugh from the crowd. I wonder what the real estate people of the ’50s and ’60s would think of today’s email communications and World Wide Web exposure.
Meanwhile, in Denver, a new revolution in real estate was brewing. Dave and Gail Liniger may not have invented the 100 per cent commission concept, but they certainly created a pioneering brand that has had remarkable world-wide success. My wife Kelly and I had the good fortune to meet Frank Polzler and Walter Schneider in 1980 when they were starting to build one of the most successful regions in the Re/Max network. In our case, having sold my interest in Bowes and Cocks, we were struggling as an independent start-up company until we joined the franchise, and we have since grown to the largest brokerage in our region with 10 offices and 120 agents.
In the 30 years that followed, the real estate industry has experienced steady evolution. A degree of self-governance of our industry, agent disclosure, PIPEDA, FINTRAC, GST, HST, Independent Contractors and a host of new rules seemed designed to make our lives more complicated. Apart from the changes in technology and regulations, we also have competition from discount brokers, FSBO marketers and their related websites.
Not to mention the rumblings heard down south this winter of Canada’s Competition Bureau vs. CREA. We know that in the U.S. there are few, if any, restrictions on registered real estate people accessing MLS systems. This has led to the establishment of firms like Sarasota-based KeepCommissionRealEstate.com, which takes MLS listings for $299, plus a selling broker fee of three per cent. The broker/owner of this small firm conceded to me that most of her clients are not prepared to take buyer calls, arrange showings and negotiate offers, so instead many opt for further broker assistance at an additional fee. Speaking to established Realtors in the same market area, I was told that the presence of cut-rate listing services on their MLS system has not interfered with the operation or fee structures of full-service offices. As a result, I was pleased to report back to my colleagues on the home front that the real estate world, as we know it, is not about to end.
After 60 years in real estate, Bowes sold a half interest in his Re/Max brokerage to a long-time associate but he says he plans to work a few more years. (Photo: Lance Anderson, Peterborough This Week)
My long-time associate, broker John Hope, has now acquired a half interest in our company, Re/Max Eastern Realty Inc., with a view to moving into the corner office a few years down the road. Despite this significant development, I am reminded that, sometimes, the more things change, the more they remain the same. My son, Michael, is now a Realtor with a full-service brokerage near our winter home in Florida. I guess some things never change…and that’s good too.
