Photo by Bluefish
BOB THE BUILDER: Robert McLeod wants to change the way Edmontonians see real estate
If a casting agent were looking for someone to play the role of a real-estate professional, they’d be hard-pressed to find a more natural fit than Edmonton’s Robert McLeod. From the French cuffs peeking out from the sleeves of a well-tailored suit to the boyish good looks accented by a faint dusting of grey at the temples, the 31-year-old real-estate agent personifies the balance between friendliness and formality that is the industry’s answer to a uniform. But while McLeod may look like his industry’s archetype, he’s far from being a one-dimensional caricature. After all, despite the clean-cut image, he’s made a name for himself by being willing to get his hands dirty.
McLeod’s early days in the business were spent working on condominium conversion projects, but he made his mark as a troubleshooter, the guy you go to when a project isn’t selling as well as it should. In fact, it’s those sales-oriented survival skills, the ability to salvage stumbling projects and manage other forms of adversity, that has allowed him to thrive in a market that’s been tough for just about everyone else in his business. “The bulk of our growth has come in a down market,” he says. “It’s easy to grow a business in an up market, but working with problem sales projects or developers in default is more difficult.”
Playing the role of troubleshooter has obviously been good for McLeod’s bottom line. As the founder and CEO of McLeod Project Marketing he now leads a team of real-estate professionals working on a wide variety of projects, including a commercial redevelopment at the corner of Jasper Avenue and 101 Street called, appropriately enough, McLeod Tower. But while the conversion business remains strong, McLeod is anxious to get more involved at the front-end of the process. “I’m normally brought into the picture once the problem is realized,” he says, “and what we’re trying to do is put ourselves in the picture from day one.”
One of the reasons he wants to be in the picture from day one is so he can make sure it gets painted properly. “I can generate the traffic,” he says, “but at that point it’s about the message, and what the developers in Edmonton are missing is their message. Most buildings are built with no story. It’s downtown, and it’s concrete, and you get granite. OK. What next? Where’s the story? How do I fall in love with that?” Part of the problem, McLeod says, is that Edmonton developers haven’t given buyers much to fall in love with. “In Vancouver and Toronto, you have jewel-boxing, which is the creation of smaller spaces with more refinements,” he says. “Condos in Edmonton are still a commodity, and we have to work to change that so that people don’t see it that way any more.”
Another reason so many Edmonton projects are missing a story, McLeod thinks, is because developers haven’t bothered to build a space in which to tell it. In other markets, that space is the pre-sale showroom, a living and interactive blueprint in which prospective buyers are given a taste of what life could be like with the right fixtures and finishes. In Edmonton, though, projects are still routinely sold out of unmodified trailers and other equally pedestrian environments.
The Pearl, a new project that will be the tallest residential tower in downtown Edmonton when it’s completed, serves as a perfect example of the Edmonton condo market’s old-fashioned approach to sales and marketing, McLeod says. “You’ve got a big hole in the ground, you’ve got a massive crane up there, you have people whizzing by all the time, and what does it have? It has a website, which is just a placeholder website, with no pricing and no information on it. You should have a trailer there on site, you should have glass frontage on it, it should be lit at night. It should drive people to come and be a part of it, be a part of it being built.”
If McLeod’s attitude towards selling real estate sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it has a great deal in common with that of Bob Rennie, Vancouver’s so-called “condo king” and the architect of the glittering Shangri-La that is Yaletown. Over the course of his 30-plus year career, Rennie has gone from selling real estate to telling developers and even the city itself how it ought to be built. “What I respect about him,” McLeod says, “is that he’s had influence in what has been built.” It’s an influence that McLeod would like to have in, and on, his own city one day.
Dale Williams, the president of Futura Financial Services and the man who gave McLeod his first job in real estate, thinks he can do even better than that. “I would say he’s at least as talented as Bob Rennie, or maybe better. At the same age, Bob Rennie was only selling houses. Already, Robert has moved way beyond that.” In the real estate world, that’s almost as audacious as a talent scout saying that a college basketball player has the potential to be better than Michael Jordan. But Williams, who has worked with both Rennie and McLeod, thinks that the student’s accomplishments may eventually exceed those of the master. “I’ve been in the real estate industry for 30 years,” Williams says, “and he’s probably the most talented Realtor I’ve ever met.”
Williams isn’t the only person who believes in McLeod’s potential. Allan Carr, the senior vice-president of Maclab Enterprises, the largest privately owned residential property holder in Alberta, also thinks that McLeod has all the tools and talent needed to achieve special things. “He just brings a different angle to the equation,” Carr says. “Too many people have looked at things the same old way, and they can’t see the forest for the trees.” One of those angles is McLeod’s willingness to listen to what buyers want instead of telling them what they need. He might admire the work of a so-called “condo king,” but when it comes to selling real estate, McLeod’s more a fan of the democratic process. “The recommendation has been: listen to the customer,” McLeod says. “It sounds really obvious, but it’s not something that many developers have done.”
Despite the challenges associated with selling condominiums and other forms of value-added real estate in Edmonton, McLeod remains a firm believer in the city and its future. “I’ve lived downtown consistently since 2000, and lived in various parts to try to understand which areas I like, and I’ve seen it change an enormous amount in 10 years. Now, you can drive downtown and again we’re seeing cranes, we’re seeing the skyline changed and we’ve got talk of an arena that for all intents and purposes sounds like it’s going to go ahead.” Those cranes, he says, are an important metaphor for the kind of growth and prosperity that people want to see in their city. “Cranes are incredibly empowering for people to see,” he says. “If I ever ran for mayor of Edmonton, I would lease every available crane and I would position them randomly within the city.” If he gets his way, McLeod will be adding a few cranes of his own to the skyline in the years to come.
Next Up is a series of profiles of emerging leaders in Alberta’s business community and public life.
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