Our story so far.

Hey, I'm Thomas, the founder of Black Sheep Realty. I'm not particularly good at talking about things in the grandiose 3rd person, so I'm writing this part of our website directly to you, a (hopefully) future client of our brokerage. So, if you've read this far, here is a bit of a story of how this brokerage came about.

The vision of Black Sheep Realty is admittedly a simple one; let's do what works to sell a home, and charge a fee that makes sense to you as the seller. If we're speaking in terms of broader ambition? Our goal is to permanently impact the Canadian real estate industry.

I switched to the "lower commission" side of the business back in 2016. I had started my career at a very big & very established brokerage, but ultimately chose to switch to an "alternative fee model" brokerage after feeling that many of the industry's practices are quite dated, and the fee models and commissions typically charged didn't make sense to me based on the modern price of homes.

I have experimented with fee models & commissions over the years. In fact, real estate commissions are a bit of a passion of mine. Some people can name the capital of a country if you say the country's name. My party trick is that if you say the name of a random country, there's a decent chance I can tell you what the most common real estate commission is in that country. I'm a treat at parties, I know.

With my experience being the "low commission guy" over the years, I have observed what makes a successful brokerage that goes against the grain in terms of commissions:

• Effective property marketing (Our solution: use the established channels like the association's MLS System, REALTOR.ca, and the syndication to thousands of local home search sites, as well as stay up to date on effective social media marketing for your property)
• High quality service (Our solution: have real, boots-on-the-ground agents. Agents who are in control of their own businesses and care about growing and establishing themselves in our market, and having long careers serving their clients. I often say, there are no 1-800 numbers here)
• Ensure full cooperation from other brokerages (Our solution: although I enjoy being a thorn in the side of the industry, we are not here to attack other agents or brokerages who charge different fees than we do or have different business models. Buyer's agents are an extremely valuable service, we operate as buyer agents too, and it is important that you offer a competitive cooperating commission on your listing, and we must be able to give this advice to our clients.)

At Black Sheep Realty, we aim to bring all of these factors together in one cohesive package, with the ultimate goal of getting your home sold, providing a great home selling experience, AND you having as much extra cash in your pocket as possible.

Also, I have always felt there is a level of ambiguity to realty fees out there. I have noticed that a lot of people feel real estate fees are high, but also don't know exactly how much they typically are. We aim to be transparent about this part of process by openly showing you our fee structure, and also clearly explaining some of the other and more common fee structures you may encounter out there in the market from other brokerages.

As an established agent in the Edmonton area, it was time to open my own office where I can have say over the direction of the business, and ultimately have my desired impact on the real estate business as a whole.

The Name

We hope the name of our brokerage brings a certain concept to mind when you hear it. We are the Black Sheep of the industry.

Although real estate fees are negotiable and in not any way fixed or mandated, you will likely find most real estate brokerages out there charging roughly the same amount. So this makes us the odd one out, and hopefully in simply just hearing our name, you have some inclination into what we are about.

Our logo and mascot is Edward the Black Sheep. The reason for his name is that the Black Sheep nursery rhyme, which you may be familiar with, traces its origins to a response to the heavy wool taxes in England under King Edward I in the late 1200's - your random bit of trivia for the day - so I suppose it is somewhat fitting that our mascot's origin story also has an aspect of a rejection of the establishment. But, I also just wanted a cute name for the sheep logo and Edward has a nice ring to it.

The Why

Perhaps you've thought to yourself, why don't you just charge what everyone else does so you can make more? A valid question, and simply put the answers are both altruistic and practical.

For the practical side of things; home sellers are happy to work with us. There are a lot of property owners out there who want the help of a real estate agent, but are searching for a better solution and want to keep more of their home equity. I'm going to take a wild guess here, does that sound somewhat like you? We aim to provide an effective solution, and this results in more home sellers working with us.

For the altruistic side? Well this is the part of our story that goes a bit more "big picture" to say the least. The goal here is to have a lasting impact on the Canadian real estate industry. Our altruistic reasons are just that, altruistic. It is the simple satisfaction of providing home sellers with a better solution, and admittedly, I do enjoy being the proverbial thorn in the side of the rest of the real estate business. Many have said before "other people don't keep me up at night, I keep others up at night" or as the wise Cpt. Jack Sparrow once more succinctly said: "[...]but you have heard of me".

If you've read this far, I'd like to personally thank you for your interest in our brokerage. If you're someone considering making a move in the greater Edmonton area, please contact us, and we'd love to see how we can help you. - Thomas