This year marks the 95th anniversary of Royal LePage. Albert E. LePage became the first full-time Canadian real estate sales representative when he founded the company in 1913. He revolutionized the practice of selling real estate by using his car for property showings, offering detailed property listings in newspapers and he made films which he used to market upper-end homes. Today, the Internet has become the medium of choice for MLS® property listings and films have been replaced by Vitural Tours and Podcasts.
Albert LePage's first sale was a single family home on Thorold Avenue in Toronto which sold for $6,500, a lot of money back then. A subsequent venture in real estate involved him selling lots in the west end of Toronto at the south end of Keele Street next to High Park. When encountering difficulties in trying to find buyers for the lots he decided to rename that portion of Keele Street to Parkside Drive.
In the 1970's, LePage introduced the Carriage Trade Luxury Properties program and the quarterly Survey of Canadian House Prices, two initiatives that are still in place today. In 1984, LePage merged with the real estate arm of Royal Trust forming Royal LePage, the largest real estate brokerage in the country at that time. Today, there are several major real estate franchise companies in Canada most of which are transplants from the United States, making Royal LePage uniquely Canadian.
Today there are over 13,000 Royal LePage agents with offices all across Canada. Royal LePage has over 65% of corporate Canada under contract for their employee relocation services and the company continues to expand its services in keeping with the slogan "Helping YOU Is What We Do.
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