The Muskoka-Haliburton and Orillia real estate boards have merged to create one new board: the Realtors Association of Ontario Lakelands.
The Orillia and District Real Estate Board, which had been in operation since December 1966, closed on August 3. Its 155 members have since joined the 540 members of the Muskoka-Haliburton Association of Realtors. The increase in numbers will provide them with more funds to work with, and therefore more bargaining power, says executive officer Susan Pond.
“We decided to merge because we saw the benefits of increasing membership numbers, which would allow us then to negotiate better contracts with a larger membership base,” says Pond. “And we can reach out to different suppliers that we couldn’t have before because they weren’t interested in dealing with smaller boards.”
Although the Orillia members have lost their office, it wasn’t a space that was being used to its full potential anyway, she says. The Muskoka-Haliburton office offers a “solid administrative support network,” says Pond. The office in Orillia didn’t even have an executive officer.
“They won’t have a board office that they can physically walk into, but a lot of members don’t go to the board office anymore because most things are done electronically,” says Pond. “Our association is used to serving members who live over an hour away because we have a large jurisdictional area. We’re used to running a courier service and sending things by email.
“The best part is that we get to spend some money on public relations that we didn’t have before. We’re going to promote the value of dealing with the local Realtor, and we’re going to have staff to do that,” says Pond, referring to the new public relations and communications officer they’re planning to hire.
With the number of emails and requests coming in on a daily basis, it can be difficult to stay on top of things. The new communication officer will be responsible for all internal communications, through both traditional methods and social media.
“The communications officer will now begin to communicate with our members in a way that they want to be communicated with – on Twitter, Facebook and through better newsletters,” says Pond. “We have a pretty good public website, but we don’t have – we didn’t have,” she corrects, herself, “the resources to make it better and to keep it current and up to date, and now we will.”
Funding is always an issue, and as Pond puts it, you can’t keep going back to the members and asking for money. “You just can’t,” she says. “So by working together, with 700 members, we can do more than we could at 540.”
The Realtors’ Association of Ontario Lakeland will be headed by a new board of eight directors, including David Reed (Muskoka-Haliburton) as new president and Mike Staal (Orillia) as the president elect.
“The leadership will have strong hands from associations at the top of the director’s chain,” says Pond. “It’s going to be great. They’re great guys.”
There are advantages to having a smaller Board of Directors, too. With fewer board members, there’s more funding for training, which in turn makes for stronger leadership, she says.
“Some small boards can’t even afford to send their presidents to assembly meetings – both on the provincial and national level – and this way we have eight directors that we’re going to focus on and they can take all of the leadership courses, they can attend the local conferences and they can become more current on the issues of today,” she says.
“One foot in front of the other and I’m sure that we’ll come out of this very strong,” says Pond. “It’s for the greater good. It’s to ensure that our local Realtors thrive – not just survive – but thrive in the years to come. It’s not easy selling in cottage country when your buyers and sellers live many miles away in the city.”
