Industry Profile: Andy Brethour of PMA Brethour - PART 1

The team at the Toronto Star’s NewInHomes.com headed out to Markham to meet with Andy Brethour, one of the most interesting players in the real estate game. We talked about his history in the business, his philanthropy, as well as his vision for the future of PMA Brethour.

NewInHomes (NIH): Tell us about your start in the real estate industry. We hear it is quite the tale.

Andy Brethour (AB): We will celebrate our 50th anniversary next year. My father was in the real estate business in the 1950s. In the early 1960s, he began the first company providing services to the real estate industry. It was one of the first in North America, providing salespeople, research and marketing to developers. Our first client was a company called Costain, which later became Brookfield, and also another small company called Monarch. That’s how we got started.

In 1977, I had five years of experience in planning with both government and private companies. It’s funny, I always thought I would be a competitor to my father rather than work with him. By the time I was 28, I told myself I needed to make a better living for myself. I had some great experiences doing what I was doing, writing both the Niagara Escarpment plan and the Algonquin Park master plans, but I needed a change. That’s when I decided to join my father.

When I came on board, I started something called Brethour Research, which allowed me to create my own identity within a father/son relationship. I discovered that the industry was not doing much in the way of strong research and analysis. A lot of decisions were made without much information. We started a service that gave these developers more tools to make more intelligent decisions. So we went around to every project for our clients. The relationships we built with our builder clients became very close, and a lot of it related to our market analysis. I decided to take this information and analysis, which was the best out there at the time, and try to sell it to non-clients. What I found was that everyone had copied it under the table. It was such good stuff that everyone wanted it. So I approached Toronto Home Builders, and we worked out an agreement that would see the data published under their name. Housing Data Reports became the standard of the industry for decades, before we merged with RealNet.

By the mid ’80s, I started Homes Magazine, as a way to combat the Star, which was doing excellent marketing at the time. So I partnered with nine builders to start Homes Magazine. They committed for a year for ad spaces and such. That was the start of the Magazine. I was an owner and shareholder with that until the early 2000s. Michael Rosset has taken it to the moon since then.

My big focus over the past 10 years has been training and education. The industry really is quite small, when you think about the amount of active projects in the city. If there are two people on a project and there are only 700 active sales sites, there are only about 1,400 new sales professionals selling homes in the Greater Toronto Area. That’s a small business. Therefore, their skill level becomes an important cornerstone for our industry. That has been our focus for the past 10 years. We have a joint venture with TD Bank called our summit series, which is a free information session for anyone in the real estate industry. We pull together a large group of sponsors who bring in headline speakers who talk about housing-related information. We’ve gotten some great feedback on it.

We also created something in the early ’90s called Sales Masters. We needed to create a standard sales program for all new home sales professionals in the industry. We hired a professional trainer to pull together all of our programs to create these courses. As we began to train our own people, we created a salesperson training program for others within the industry. Some were concerned this was a way to recruit, however, the only reason was to enhance the industry as a whole—if we all get better, the industry thrives. That’s why we put such a huge focus on training. We approached Ontario Home Builders’ Association and worked out an agreement to do it under their brand, while also offering RECO credits. That solved the issues with people being concerned about stealing/poaching talent, while fulfilling my goal of raising the standard of the industry. Today it runs quarterly, while offering 14 credits for their license, which is an excellent thing.

 

NIH: You are extremely busy—what is the secret to your success? How do you handle it all?

AB: The great part of PMA is that it’s not about me, it’s about the team around me. I have a sensational group of managers who help me on a daily basis. For example, the Di Ilio sisters have been part of this organization for over 35 years. I could go down the list, but so many have literally started in the industry with me and continue to work here years later. I’m good at the ideas, but I’m not as strong at executing. Fortunately I have this great team.

 

NIH: We’ve been told you are one of the most charitable people in the real estate industry—what do you do, and why do you do it?

AB: I think it was my father who instilled that in me. When you work in an environment like this, and have the degree of success we have, you have a duty to give back. In the 1950s, he started with a small group called The Friendship Centre, which is a drop-in centre for the homeless and less advantaged.

We have a program there called Dress for Success, where we give less advantaged people suits to wear to interviews, and we even show them how to act in an interview scenario. We put people in a position to succeed in the workforce. We also brought in students from the Yorkville Dental School to come and offer free services. A great opportunity for the students to perfect their craft, while providing dental care for people who otherwise wouldn’t receive it.

From there, we started a lottery called 60/40. Sixty percent goes to The Friendship Centre, while 40 percent goes to the winner, and we would match that contribution. So every month, we send a cheque to The Friendship Centre, and over the years, we’ve probably donated over $50,000.

We have also been more involved with the Yonge Street Mission in recent years. My interest there is that they already have infrastructure that reaches out to children, which is what I always wanted to do. To be able to work with in-danger youth at a younger age allows us to give these kids a real chance. We have been involved for about two years now, and our entire office takes part. At our Christmas party, everyone brings food, money, gifts, whatever they can to donate to the cause. We go down there, help serve dinner and have some fun, dance and such—it’s a great time. In the end, you can’t help but leave that day and have a moment of celebration, elated that you spent a few moments helping someone in need. If we can get more people to participate in volunteering, I think it would help us all.

The other thing that I’m very proud of is the True Patriot Love dinner. True Patriot Love is all about support for our fallen soldiers or injured veterans. It got me the first time I went, and since then, I’ve been deeply involved in the fundraising. The sacrifice these young people have made on behalf of us goes without saying. Imagine losing a limb or even a life, based on something that not even everyone agrees with? But they do it out of duty to their county, and because it’s what they are asked to do. It’s unbelievable. True Patriot Love does everything from housing support to financial support to counseling—it really is a great program.

 

NIH: Well, we think you’re the busiest person we’ve ever met! That said, you must have ideas for PMA Brethour’s next few projects?

AB: Our next big project will be out in China. We have created a relationship with the Bank of China, and are starting the process of putting Toronto real estate in front of the faces of high net worth individuals in China, via the largest bank in the world. At the end of November, our team will head to China to start the process. There is a new millionaire created every minute in China. We already see a lot of that wealth come here, however, we don’t see the developers catering to them, which will now change.

Another thing we are starting up soon is a newsletter and blog called Real Dirt. It will be about what is going on in the marketplace, because we are right there. We have people in multiple projects from Calgary to Toronto to Ottawa, so we have a footing in very important areas of North America, and we have a feel for what is going on in the industry from multiple perspectives.

Stay tuned for PART 2, where we talk to Andy Brethour about Toronto—what makes it great, and what we need to work on.