Shawn O'Hara: Helen, thanks for joining me today. Tell me how and why you got into real estate. 

Helen Jones: Well, after teaching in two-room schools in the Caribou for two years, my ex-husband and I couldn't settle back into the regular school system. So, we decided to buy small rental properties and go into the business of being landlords. In the process, we decided that what Victoria needed was real estate agents who were competent and caring. So we decided to go into real estate as a career. And just as a little story, a side story on that, a few years later, I was at a lunch meeting sitting at a round table with several other agents. The question was posed as to whether a person could be truly honest and be successful in real estate sales. The consensus was that they could not. I was the only one who didn't agree, but I was too shy at that point in my life to argue the case with these successful realtors. 

Shawn O'Hara: Would you argue the point now? Are you more confident arguing the point? 

Helen Jones: Oh, yes, I would have argued now. Things have changed because people can be honest to be in real estate. Now, it was harder than it could be, but well, I wasn't very successful [arguing the point]. So maybe you couldn't be at that time. But I think that you can now, because I look at Roger. Roger being my son, he's my business partner. 

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah. Okay. That's neat. So was that in the Caribou that you got the properties? Or did you move to Victoria to do that? 

Helen Jones: No, we got them down here. We'd go out for a walk, and there'd be somebody taking an open house sign in. And we'd say, well, how much are they going to ask? And they'd say $15,000. And we'd say, well, we'll give you $13,000. And we'd buy it. And the banker would say, that we went to, we were both substitute teaching. We didn't have a full-time teaching job but when he first met us, he said, “Oh, you're teachers, you're rich.”

And he gave us anything we wanted. He always lent us money. And so we ended up with about 34 properties.34 units. And then, a slick talking REALTOR® talked to my husband into selling them all because he said that the NDP government were coming in and, and it would change everything, and they'd take our property from us, and so we sold everything.

Shawn O'Hara: Okay. 

Helen Jones: So, it's stupid, but anyway, there it is. 

Shawn O'Hara: And where, in relation to that, did you get your license? 

Helen Jones: Well, I got the license here and, my ex husband got his first and then I followed him in, because we were going, we worked well together in the school. We would have worked, we would have been better off if we'd taken the license at the same time, because, people were not the same as they are now.

It was really different in real estate. And there was a woman in the office that snatched him up, and she said to me afterwards, years later, she said, “you know, I should have known that I shouldn't have picked on a man whose wife sent him a lunch with a note in it every day.” And I said, “well, that would have been good start.”

Helen Jones: But anyway, he was gone by the time I went into real estate. 

But I'm stubborn. So I stayed on. Then, when he went in, which was 1972, the market was very, very brisk. And then when I went in, in 1974, the market just totally dropped off. Markets are interesting.

Shawn O'Hara: That was the midst of the NDP era, wasn't it? 

Helen Jones: Yes, that's when we first got in. Yes. It was interesting, but it wasn't nearly as bad as we thought it was going to be. And one of them, I was coming up now, we have, now we're getting, now we're seeing that side of things because now we're seeing them taking over, you know, people's property in a sense with the short term rentals and things like that. Now they're getting fiercer than they were. 

Shawn O'Hara: Okay. So it's like the stuff that they, that couldn't be done back then might be happening now. 

Helen Jones: I think so. Yeah. Okay. It's going to be interesting. We're going to be in for an interesting few years. I think. 

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah. When we were at the BCREA, the Managing Brokers Conference, they said this, this province has an activist government, they called it. I wrote that down. I thought that was quite interesting. 

Helen Jones: Yeah, that's a good point. Yes. 

Shawn O'Hara: Compared to the other governments that they said are hands-off or centrist, we have an activist one and the most heavily regulated industry. The most heavily regulated real estate industry is in B. C., possibly. I mean, B. C. is the most heavily regulated real estate industry in North America, possibly in the world. 

Helen Jones: Probably. 

Shawn O'Hara: We have a lot. So, what do you like about what you do? 

Helen Jones: Well, I enjoy the variety that real estate offers. When I began my career in 1974, I found that I learned something new every day. And there were opportunities for education and growth available to me that I had not anticipated.

Each transaction is unique. In 1987, I opened my own real estate company. And then, in 1992, I started tutoring people who are taking any of the real estate-related courses through UBC. My son, Roger, who is my business partner, joined the firm in 2000 and gradually like minded agents have joined us and we also have a property management division now.

So there's always something different to do. I can… any day that I wake up and think, well, I, I don't feel like doing something. There's always something else that I can do that's just as important. So that's a good thing about real estate and always has been. 

Shawn O'Hara: And you now run an online tutorial as well.

Helen Jones: Yes, most of it is one-on-one teaching still with them. And then I've got the online component because they watch me doing the tutorials on the video, but they work with me to do questions one-on-one, and it works out really well. It's a good way of learning. 

Shawn O'Hara: And you enjoy that?

Helen Jones: I do very much. 

Shawn O'Hara: Great. So we were talking about the industry being heavily regulated and it's that regulation has, there's been more oversight of the industry in the past few years. 

Helen Jones: Yeah, there has definitely been more regulatory oversight since the BC government has taken over the regulation of the industry. I attended a conference for managing brokers in Vancouver. Well, that one you were just mentioning, and it's clear that this is an ongoing trend. When I started in real estate, the contract of purchase and sale was two pages long, and now it's 18 to 23, 24 pages on average. In addition, there are at least six disclosure forms for every transaction. The standard forms have undergone changes recently. Realtor. ca is making some significant changes. More changes in listing protocols are coming on January the 3rd, courses are constantly being introduced to teach the new rules, and there's always new rules on the horizon.

Shawn O'Hara: Is that continually new courses, or are they updating the old? 

Helen Jones: They do update the old ones, but they also, every two years they have a new ethics course, and a new legal issues course. And so we have to take those two courses to retain our licenses.

And then we also have to have 18 credits in total of other credits that we get through BC Real Estate Association and through our local boards. They vary, but they're pretty much every topic that you can think of. And so they're very interesting. I took one on taxes the other day and I thought, okay, this is going to be dull, but it was really interesting. I quite enjoyed it. They've got very good teachers, and you can really get a lot out of it. 

Shawn O'Hara: That takes a chunk of time, doesn't it? 

Helen Jones: It does. And money because they're usually a couple of hundred dollars per course, and then they are required. And then, when you get your new license, you have to tell them what courses you've taken so that they can make sure you've had enough courses before you can get your license renewed. Which maybe is as it should be, it's not a bad thing. 

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah. Staying on top of it. So, do you see the regulations continuing to increase or levelling off? 

Helen Jones: I think they probably will increase because, there's so much new stuff coming in all the time. The industry, I think, is adjusting well and creating teams. Some agents have combined resources, and so by working together, the work is divided up so that people specialize in certain aspects of the sale. And then other groups of people, well, like yourselves, with your, some of the products you offer, have stepped up to fill a niche offering special services to real estate agents.

So, some agents don't write their own contracts. There are people who write contracts for you, hang up your signs, create your websites and social media, measure the properties, take pictures, make video presentations, and use drones.

There's all sorts of things. Expenses now to add in. 40 years ago, there wasn't that long list of helpers where we did everything ourselves. 40 years ago, we measured the houses. My children were both quite thin and I used to get them for measuring outside the house. You measure the outside of the house around the edges. And this is before.... one of my building inspectors told us all that we had to stop putting plants right in front of the house. People would have holly trees and stuff right in front of the house. One of my children would have to squeeze in behind the holly bush. And right along with the tape measure to the other end, he always said, “Ouch, ouch,” as he went along. He'd get to the end, and he could do it. They also used to go down into basements for me and measure down there. They're very helpful. 

Shawn O'Hara: Good. Well, it's almost danger pay. 

Helen Jones: That's right. But regulations do increase, and technology becomes more advanced. There's a constant learning curve for everyone. And I think we're hurrying towards a huge change in the way that real estate as a career is carried out. I don't like to speculate on what it might be like because somebody might pick up on it, but I don't think it's going to be something that we're going to be happy about. What'll happen is it probably will be better for the consumer because the people who are making a lot of money in real estate won't have that opportunity to make a lot of money in it anymore.

It's going to change and I think it'll be much less money for the agents. So it'll be more like a job like a civil service job. Some people will get paid by the hour or by the month or whatever, and it won't matter how much you make, or how much you sell, because it's just based on your salary that you're going to get anyway.

So the sales are not going to contribute to what you make. And it'll probably be better for the people because they'll just come to the central source. They'll be assigned a REALTOR® and they'll be looked after. And I think that's what it'll come to in maybe 20, maybe 20 years, maybe, maybe sooner. It could be sooner. It will probably be sooner, but I think that's what the outcome will be, unfortunately, but that's what they wanted quite a while ago. I've mentioned that a bit.

Shawn O'Hara: That's a complete change in the type of personality that would go into the industry. 

Helen Jones: Totally different. Yes.

Shawn O'Hara: Okay. Yeah. Wow. So that's what you, what the future may hold then. 

Helen Jones: Government started taking an interest in the real estate, in the real estate profession in the mid-seventies. And that was when Premier David Barrett ordered a study known as the Rosenbluth Report.

And it proposed radical changes in the way real estate sales should be handled. And if it had been accepted, we would have been all civil servants working for a monthly wage now. And at that time, that was when I first started in real estate. So I took my course a four year program from UBC in urban land economics, because I figured, okay, they're going to hire people that are, are trained and have this course. I took the course, so I would have it if I needed it. And actually, I would have been the kind of person they were looking for because I work very well. I don't work for money, and so I work very well if I'm not worried about money because it's not what drives me. And so, I would have been really good at doing it that way.

It was not so good on commission in those days. I would have been really good. It would have been fine on the other hand, but it would have gotten rid of all the top producers because they're in because they get the money and recognition, which they wouldn't be getting anymore under this new system.

At that time, the Real Estate Council of BC, and this is probably why it didn't go through, was a self-governing body responsible for the Real Estate Services Act and the regulation and training of real estate practitioners. The council had disciplinary hearings as necessary and carried out disciplinary procedures. The superintendent of real estate, a government official, had a relatively minor role to play. In BC, the increase in government control took place during the last portion of the Liberal government's tenure. There were a few scandals, and a very few, maybe, I think there was one office in Vancouver that was foreign or owned, and there were a lot of problems in that one office.

They had a couple of hundred salespeople and not enough management and so forth. And at that time, it was a big thing. There was a lot of talk about money laundering with China and so forth. There were a few scandals involved, really, in Vancouver, and the politicians took the opportunity to point a finger at the whole real estate industry.

Legislation overturned the Real Estate Council of BC and took away our autonomy. The superintendent's role became much more significant, and for a couple of years, we had the superintendent and the Real Estate Council sort of balancing back and forth between the two of them. The last managing brokers meeting that they'd had in Kelowna in 2019 was very interesting because you have these two groups. Each of them, the council and superintendent, were hoping that they would be the one that would be picked because they knew that the government was going to pick somebody to be in charge of the whole thing. They were both hoping it was going to be them. And it was neither of them because both of them got kind of submerged, and the government just took over the shot.

Shawn O'Hara: Was that where they moved it into BCFSA?

Helen Jones: Yeah, and it became the BCFSA. They're the ones we answer to now. So, a lot of changes have been made with minimal input from the industry by people who know very little about real estate, and the result brings confusion to the industry and also to the general public because they have a really hard time understanding why we're doing the things we're doing. You know, we give these disclosure statements to people, and they say, “Well, why are you telling me this?” “Well, we have to tell you this.”

Shawn O'Hara: How do you, how do you feel about that? The whole situation now? 

Helen Jones: Well, I'm glad I'm sort of winding down my career. I wouldn't want to be in real estate anymore. I wouldn't want to be selling houses anymore. It's not as much fun as it used to be, and we're much more restricted about things that we're not able to do anymore than we could in the olden days that were quite all right. And they didn't harm anybody. And, you had people that were loyal to you. If you were a client of mine from 10 years ago, and you want to look at one of my listings, I can't show it to you because I know who you are, but then ten years ago, maybe you were a struggling student ten years ago, and now you're an entrepreneur, and you've got scads of money.

So I don't really know. The government believes that I know, and so because I've got extra knowledge about you, you may have changed, your whole life might have changed, you might have a different partner, you might have different children, you might have, everything might be different. I'm deemed to know too much about you, and so I can't work with you.

And so, I have to say to my seller, “Okay, this man wants to buy your house; it's somebody I've worked with before, so if you, if you're not comfortable with, there's a bit of a conflict of interest here, so if you're not comfortable, you can get rid of me.” So you might say, “Okay, I don't want to work with you because, you know, I might feel uncomfortable working with you.”

But by this time, you're really uncomfortable. So you say, “No, I don't want to work with you.” And the other guy says he doesn't want to work with me, and I'm out in the cold. That's how you do things now. So it's just a totally different thing. Because They seem to feel that we have an influence over people.

We don't have an influence. I don't sort of think, okay, I've got two people here. I want this one to win. And so I'm going to make this one win. I can't; I don't have that influence. I couldn't have it if I wanted it, because I have to think of the best of both for both people. And that's how you have to think if you're in real estate; you have to think about what's best for the client, not what's best for you necessarily, which is something that apparently is a foreign thought to a lot of people in the higher echelons of these decisions.

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah, that's too bad. So what used to happen in the old days when a listing agent could get a hold of past clients and say, I've got this property. Are you interested? 

Helen Jones: Exactly. Yeah. 

Shawn O'Hara: They can't do that anymore. 

Helen Jones: No, no. And it's a shame because that's where a lot of sales came from, and nobody, nobody gained or lost money because of it. It’s still a fair deal. But, you just can't do it anymore, which is unfortunate. 

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah. That's where sales and referrals came from, too. 

Helen Jones: Exactly. And we got referrals from other agents. Like, a couple of times people from another company have asked me to work with them on a particular listing or a particular job, with a particular buyer because I don't know why but anyway, they thought they would help them anyway. And so they’ve gone off, but you can't do that anymore because you can't do things between companies anymore. So, if you're in one company, and I'm in another company, and you have an open house, and then you're, baseball game that you're on the second day of, and if you don't go and play, your team loses, so you have to go and play. So what you're going to do with the open house, nobody in your office can do it. Oh, phone Helen and she'll do it. Can't do that anymore. You know? And we used to be able to. People used to be able to do things like that, and can't now because it confuses the public apparently.

Shawn O'Hara: Interesting. Is it a lower opinion of the public that they're easily persuaded and not that? 

Helen Jones: Well, they certainly have a lower opinion of real estate people. You know, when it first came in, they had it, they, they toned it down. But at the very, very beginning, basically on some of the forms, it came really close to saying beware of the REALTOR®. If you've got any problems, phone us because we'll look after you, from the BCFSA, because, obviously, they thought we were a bunch of crooks, either stupid or crooks, I'm not sure which, but, either way, it doesn't sit well.

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah, I think, I think crooks, basically. It was kind of the attitude that they took. 

Helen Jones: Yeah, I think so. And it's unfortunate because I think of all the real estate people I've known, and I've really known a lot of them, there's very few that I'm not comfortable doing business with, and in any group, you're going to get a few people that you're not comfortable with, you know, teachers or anything is, there's always a couple that don't quite belong.

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah. That's what I'm finding in my talks with a lot of brokers and agents, they don't encounter any even suspicious situations. It's interesting, even though we're recording this and it'll be published much later, but what made the news this week is RBC getting a $7 million fine from FINTRAC, and they're saying there was no suspicion. Yes, they did not follow the procedures, but there was nothing to indicate that there was a problem. And it's basically the lack of the filing, the lack of the procedures. 

Helen Jones: Yes.

Shawn O'Hara: Just quite a big fine. What do you see is the other burdens that all of this is putting on you and other brokerages and other agents? 

Helen Jones: I think there will be more of a team approach developing over the next few years and more specialization within the team and the benefit to that could be that there's more time for the team members to manage and the balance between their life and their work and leisure. But the burden might be the expectation that each team member work harder in order to support the rest of the team. Very few of the students who complete the pre licensing course with me, go into practice by themselves. They either have family members or a partner to work with who is established in the field, or they work for a team.

And their share of the commission is a lot smaller when it's shared among a number of people, but they feel the advantage in learning from others on the team and from having the security of more regular pay. And what sometimes happens, unfortunately, is I've seen people who have maybe been in a team for a year, and then they come to me because they say they'd like to get out of the team, but they don't know anything about their whole little tiny bit that they've been doing on the team because in a sense, the team holds them back because they're only doing one little segment of real estate and they don't know how to handle any other segment. So they would be afraid to go out on their own and have to do it all because they don't know how. And especially if their offers have been written by someone else and so forth.

And so it's a difficult time for people to be in real estate, even as individuals, it's hard to know what to do. They think, well, if I go over here, maybe I'll get more leads. If I do this, maybe there'll be more opportunities for me, but nobody has any more opportunities than any other company. I think all the companies offer probably about the same opportunities. There may be some that offer more, but most of them, somebody's going to be good with whether they're in a small company or working by themselves or whether they're in a larger company. It's the individual that makes the agent. It's not really where they're working, probably, in most cases. 

Shawn O'Hara: How big do you think those teams would be? 

Helen Jones: They vary. Sometimes they're like some people that have, up to about 20 people on a team, which is difficult because of the new rules about teams, every single person on the team individually has to be named on the contract and on the sign and in the advertising, and so that's kind of a tricky sort of proposition. 

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah, I recall a few years ago when the team's rules changed doing a bunch of websites for agents, they would split up their teams. Some retired. They said, it's just not worth the risk, I'm getting out of that. That lack of clarity because others said it's going to be no problem.

Helen Jones: Well, I would think most people want to work with the team leader, they don't want to be shuffled off onto some underling. It's necessary to educate the public that this is not how it is anymore. It's like going into a doctor's office and you've got different people doing different procedures for you and, it makes it difficult for people to understand, and it leads to more problems.

For example, we had a situation not long ago where there was, two people on a team and one person talked to the husband and he said that the fireplace had been capped off, the gas fireplace was getting capped off; if it were relit again, it would have to be brought up to today's standards. The other person had talked to the wife, and she said the fireplace works fine; we have enjoyed fires from time to time over the years with it. 

So, instead of finding out the answer that maybe they didn't want to hear, the agents, I guess one person was telling people about the capping and the other one was telling people about the fires being okay. 

Well, the person that bought the house happened to be talking to the fires are okay person. And so when they moved in, fires weren't okay because they had to get it redone. And there was a bit of a kerfuffle over that because my thinking was that somebody who told them that they should be fixing the fireplace, and it'd be about $4,000 or $5,000 to fix the fireplace. Nobody else that had anything to say about it had that opinion. Everybody else just thought, the buyer just should have got a building inspection, but then the trouble is, if you get a building inspection and there's multiple offers, you might lose the house and they wanted to get the house. So, they said, that's just too bad for them then. It did go to the, it did go to a little bit of a hearing and everybody got to pay a thousand dollars or something.

But I still think it would have been much better if somebody at the beginning had said, “Okay, I'm the one that said it, I'm the one that's responsible. I'm accountable.” And that's something that, I think that's one of the biggest burdens that we have is accountability, and I think that it's really important to be fully accountable.

And if you're the one that says it, or if you're the one that says something that isn't understood thoroughly by someone, then you're the one that needs to fix it. That's just how it is. 

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah, that's what you've said in past conversations that we've had, that that's a big issue. Yeah. And in this case, especially if having that fireplace was a key point of buying the house too.

Helen Jones: Yes, well, it was a picture in the, in the MLS information, and it had a picture of the fireplace going, because I guess somebody thought that would look nice with the fireplace going. There's a lot of misleading stuff going on now that shouldn't happen.

Shawn O'Hara: I know with us, having a working fireplace was one of the features we looked for in a house. 

Helen Jones: Well, there's nothing much worse than a fireplace that's just sitting there. Doesn't work. And why have it?

Shawn O'Hara: You had mentioned, was it the, the Rosenberg report? 

Helen Jones: Rosenbluth, I think it is. 

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah, I'll look it up. I'm curious. It's interesting to think or to speculate. Was this created and then just stuck in the back burners to be brought up decades later, or just coincidence.

Helen Jones: Well, I don't know. It hasn't been brought up lately, except by me, but I just think that's maybe where we're heading, because, the commissions are very high. But they're high because it might take 10 sales, 10, offers before somebody buys a house. People have been working hard with that client for maybe 10 times. There's people in real estate really do work hard.

I've got my little calendar that shows you the sales that we have in our office and each month is a little red dot for every sale and for a couple of months, this summer, there were only three red dots on the whole calendar for the whole month. That's not very good. We've got 15 to 18 people in the office at any time and, and three sales isn't enough to keep things happy and, it's not because they're not working hard because of the Lone Wolf program that we use, I can see how many offers they're writing, and they're writing scads and scads of offers. They're always out there and they're really working hard. And I know from talking to my son, Roger, that he's out there working and bringing in offers, but their things aren't coming together because people don't get the financing because of the stress test and things like this and the interest rates going up, or because some houses that just go so quickly because they're very desirable.

So everybody's trying to get that house. If it's a cheaper house, especially, and it's it's just a difficult time for REALTORS®. There's, I've forgotten how many REALTORS® in Victoria now, but plenty. And I think it's 2000, 1900 or something. It's a lot and everybody, they're not all getting a sale, maybe 300 or 400 a month are getting a sale. That's if everybody's only getting one share, but usually some people are getting more than one. Then you think of the teams, how is that working? There's a lot of people on those teams and they're having to share a lot.

Shawn O'Hara: I think what happens is people see the houses that sell quickly and they think, Oh, they don't deserve that commission realizing it's one of the few professions where there's a lot of rejection. There's a lot of things that fall apart. They can work for weeks or months and then not get anything from it. Once they do get that commission, everybody's after it, because they think, oh, you're a REALTOR®, you're rich, buy my product.

Helen Jones: Yeah, and everything costs a fair bit of money. Even an office that is trying to pare things down, spends a lot of money on different things. 

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah, interesting to see what the future holds. 

Helen Jones: Yeah, it's going to be very interesting. 

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah, and if you go into even a salary type situation or a base salary, even other salespeople will often have some kind of a base plus. Real estate agents don't.

Helen Jones: There's no reason they couldn't, like a particular office could if they wanted to have a salary base, and then have commissions and I'm not sure how they would treat the other agents that sold their listings, but they'd have to give them some, they'd have to still give them a split. Otherwise, they're not going to do it. Probably, you could do it that way. I know that years and years ago, there was a chap I used to work with and he used to say that if he had the money to have an office, that's what he would do. He would pay them like insurance and have them come in in the morning and just have them phoning people and phoning people and phoning people and really working hard and because he would have control over their hours because that's one thing that people don't have. The brokers don't have control over anything for the agents because the agents are independent contractors. And so we can't say, “Well, you've got to go to an office meeting. You've got to do this. You've got to do that,” because you don't got to do anything, and that is sometimes very difficult. 

Shawn O'Hara: Even though you have all of this regulations and, and documentation and so on, that your response, you as a broker are responsible for, you also have to chase your agents to get that documentation in when they may not see the point.

Helen Jones: Well, that's it, and even at that meeting that we were at in Vancouver, there were a couple of people there that mentioned that they don't pay their agents until they've got everything in, and I don't, like, I can't. If they haven't got their FINTRAC stuff in or whatever, I can't pay them because if I pay them and they don't have the things in, if the auditor asks me about them, then I'm in trouble because it's not… Even last year, the auditor was kind of complaining about a document that was given a day late. It should have been given a day before the offer was made, but instead, it was given the day after. People watch the dates on things; they're very particular, and it's hard for agents to understand that. They think, well, what's the difference between this day and the next? But there's a big difference for the auditor and hence for the broker. 

Shawn O'Hara: And the agents just want to buy and sell, put up signs and put sold on them and take the signs down.

Anything that we've missed at all that you want to cover? 

Helen Jones: Yeah. I think ethics is very important in real estate, and I know that we've touched on it already, but I think it deserves a little bit more. The nineties was the peak for genuinely ethical behavior, and that was in business altogether. They called it the ethical nineties. It was really the peak and it has, unfortunately, started to lapse down again. I find that ethics is less important, and there are so many people we can turn the blame on to deflect from ourselves that integrity and accountability are not as important as they should be.

And so I'm going to just close with an example. On the hottest day of the summer, the buyers moved into their condominium. It had been advertised as having brand new appliances, and they filled up their fridge and freezer. Next morning, all the frozen goods had thawed, so they called an appliance man. He laughed and said they couldn't keep the frozen goods in this fridge because it's a kimchi fridge. He pointed out that all the little sections were pressurized at different levels in the fermentation process. Our agent called the other agent and was told that the seller had bought a new fridge, and when it came, he realized he'd ordered the wrong kind of fridge. The store wouldn't let him return it, so he shut the door and hoped nobody would notice.

And they didn't notice. The buyer, the agent, and the building inspector had never heard of a kimchi fridge, and so all they saw was a new fridge. When I called the managing broker, he pointed out, and rightly so, that they got a new fridge as advertised. 

Fortunately one of our agents is Korean and had several contacts with restaurant owners. Within an hour, we had a buyer for the kimchi fridge, and it was off down the road, and the owner was able to buy a new fridge with the money he got. So there's a bit of humor here but it's also disappointment in the lack of integrity and accountability.

I hesitated to use that example because I thought, what if any of those people watch this? And then I thought, it doesn't matter because I still stand on my feeling that it was a disappointment because it was a lack of accountability because I think that the seller was the first one he should have just replaced the fridge and sold it himself to somebody, the other one. If not him, then I think his agent should have borne some of the responsibility.

And I know that if we haven't been able to… because my agent was right there, ready to sell to, to buy the fridge and buy them a new fridge right there. But I said, well, I don't think we need to. And then I, of course, found out that it's Korean, and we were able to fix the deal. But. I think it's really important to have that. Anybody in my office that does slip up on something, and every now and again, everybody slips up on something. They pretty much all realize if they come, and if they don't realize it at the beginning, they come to realize that it is their responsibility, and they do fix it because that's how it should be because otherwise they probably don't belong in our office because that's Accountability is really really important to me. 

Shawn O'Hara: After you first told me that story, I did look up kimchi fridges because I'd never heard of them either. 

Helen Jones: There are some nice ones. You couldn't tell the difference, would you? When you look at them, there are some that are little, but some look just like my fridge. 

Shawn O'Hara: Except they've got more compartments. 

Helen Jones: I think very few people would have one at home. If… Oh, and that was the other thing. That other managing broker said, “Well, if it had been sold to a Korean, then he would have wanted a kimchi fridge.” And I said, “No, he also wants another fridge too.”

Shawn O'Hara: We'll wrap up with any charity or nonprofit you'd like to support. 

Helen Jones: I tend to favour charities involving children's hospitals and animals because both those categories are vulnerable, and it's through no fault of their own. I think that they need extra help, and they often can't ask for it themselves because they're animals, small children, sick children. So those are the ones that I think need the most right now. 

 Shawn O'Hara: Okay, great. Great, this has been very interesting. Thanks.