Real is happy to announce that North Group has joined the Real family. Led by Founder Amy Youngren, the brokerage had over $200 million in sales in 2021, with nearly one billion dollars in sales since the company started in 2017. They are in the top 1% of the Toronto Real Estate Board, help an average of 300 clients every year, and were awarded ‘Most Innovative Real Estate Team’ by Inman.
We sat down with Youngren to learn more about her real estate journey, about North Group, and about what it means for her and her team to be joining Real.
Question: How did you get into real estate?
Answer: I started in real estate full time in 2013. My business started growing at a pretty steady pace, and I was doing well. That’s when I realized I wanted to build and collaborate within a team. Starting North Group was a way to get a strong team together to really elevate the client experience. But it isn't the Amy Youngren team; North Group’s focus is on building a brand that would attract top-producing agents – entrepreneurs who want to work and partner with us while tapping into our platform.
Q: Tell us more about North Group.
A: North Group officially launched in June of 2017, and we serve the Greater Toronto Area. We had been with Keller Williams from the beginning, and joining Real is our first change. We now have 13 team members and a really robust platform, including operational services that include both agent and client support, marketing, and training. We were always different in not being viewed as “employees” or agents working under a leader, but rather being a collaborative environment in which everybody's a partner. We wanted to be in business long-term with top agents and top producers who can maintain autonomy and an individual brand within the team. Growing your own brand is hard, so we enable agents to do that within the umbrella of a team that gives them the resources and statistics they need to be successful faster.
Q: What’s the Toronto real estate market like?
A: Right now, the Greater Toronto Area is seeing what a lot of cities across North America are experiencing with unprecedented low inventory. There are a lot of buyers and not enough homes for sale. So Toronto is experiencing excessive bidding wars on every property that's listed, and I have witnessed upwards of 50 offers per property. We're in a very hot seller's market. As we edge closer to spring, the cyclical nature of the market does naturally create more listing inventory as more sellers tend to list their homes in the spring. We are slowly starting to see more houses on the market, but it’s still not enough to meet demand without prices spiking more than they already have. COVID created a tremendous shift in the housing market: At first, we saw a massive exodus of homes outside of the core to the suburbs, leading prices in the suburbs to increase substantially. People were leaving their high rises and condos for homes either in Toronto or outside of Toronto where they could have more space, where they could have a yard, and maybe even an additional bedroom for working from home, exercising etc.
Because of that, prices have risen substantially. Now it's become quite unaffordable for many buyers to purchase a house, and that is putting pressure back on the condo market. So the condo market is rebounding quickly.
Q: What brought you to Real? Why did you decide to make the switch and join now?
A: For us, it’s the opportunity to grow without borders. Here in the Toronto area, you have to be licensed with a board and have your license at a brokerage in that board. This means you as an agent can only sell directly within the province and cannot grow your business outside of that area. So North Group couldn't have agents join or be a part of our training or mentorship outside of our brokerage. Real eliminates that barrier and gives us the opportunity to scale.
Now we can provide valuable training, mentorship, resources, and support for entrepreneurs in an industry that can be very challenging. This opens the opportunity for a greater level of collaboration and community that has not existed because of the boundaries that have been in place. We are also impressed with Real’s technology, and we’re just overall very excited to be joining.
Q: If you had a crystal ball, what would the future of real estate look like?
A: I think it's critical for those in the industry to understand that these barriers to growth are real. Today’s consumer is so savvy; they understand that they can hire a real estate team with an entire platform and operation behind them for the same price that they can hire a solo agent. So anything from a technology or a support standpoint that allows teams to scale and grow is so critical for the direction our industry is going and what today’s consumer is going to demand.
I also think it's imperative that our industry embraces the opportunity to allow agents to benefit from the growth of a company, which is what Real’s revenue share model provides. The industry has a huge problem with attrition. People come and go from brokerages or from teams all the time. The Real model eliminates that by investing in people, the right people with the right opportunity. People stick around because everyone benefits from that financially and everyone wins.
Q: What would your advice be to new people entering real estate right now?
Find a mentor! It will fast-track your success, and Real creates that opportunity because everybody benefits from the opportunity to be aligned together. I run a team, I believe in the power of teams and the power of mentorship and collaboration and going further, faster together. And I think Real provides the platform to help make sure that happens.
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