From a trailer park in Newfoundland to buying properties and land across Canada, to even buying and selling homes in the United States, Canadian actor and comedian Shaun Majumder has lived all over North America—in many types of homes. His life journey can be mapped through real estates, with emotional memories attached to every move.
On this episode of REAL TIME, Shaun joins us from CREA PAC Days 2024 to share his first memory of home, how his different moves helped shape his journey and experiences, and how finding the right REALTOR® was more about than just who was the most knowledgeable—it was about who was the best fit.
Transcript
Erin Davis: Fill in the blank. Home is? If you thought, “Where the heart is,” you’re not alone, but what does that really mean? It can change as we go through life. It’s your family home where your childhood memories were made. It’s a college dorm room where you felt like an adult for the first time in your life. It’s the home in a new city halfway across the country where you decided you wanted to start fresh.
If you think about it, many of our life stories can really be told through real estate in some form or another. We’re going to have ups and downs, but there’s always something to learn along the way. Hi, I’m Erin Davis, and welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS®, brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association.
Today we’re joined by Shaun Majumder, an actor and comedian who’s been through his fair share of moves and who’s joining us to share his own life’s journey through real estate. Shaun, after all of these years of welcoming you into our homes, it seems redundant to welcome you here, but it’s so good to have you talking with us today on REAL TIME. Thank you for making the time for us.
Shaun Majumder: It is my pleasure. It is so good to be here, and I’m currently in Ottawa, and I believe you are where currently right now as we sit here?
Erin: Southern Vancouver Island. Isn’t technology grand?
Shaun: Very exciting.
Erin: Yes.
Shaun: I know. I’m still on Los Angeles time because I flew in from LA yesterday to be here, so we are on the exact same timeframe. We’re all unified.
Erin: Wonderful.
Shaun: It’s beautiful.
Erin: Yes, and I know we’ll be on the same wavelength today as well as we talk about home and what it’s meant to you and your whole realty and real estate experience through the years, but let’s go back to what is your first memory of home? You’re so good with words. Paint a picture for us.
Shaun: Growing up in rural Newfoundland, I was raised in a tiny town, 350 people with no money. The thing that I was focused on, I think as a little child, was my mom who took great care of us. It was me, my mom, my sister and my wiener dog. It was about shelter. It was about survival. We were literally, we needed to live somewhere.
When I think about the stories that come from the places that you live, as adults, we focus on things like square footage, and we think about the markets and mortgage rates. I had no exposure to this ever growing up and even up until only a short while ago, my real estate education was so bad. I didn’t even understand like buying a house. How do you do that? Can you afford it? What does it mean for your future? Is that an investment or is it just a place to live? All of these things have come to me as I’ve gotten older.
My very first place that I ever remember being inside of and calling it a home, my mom, I think, she basically moved us into this tiny little trailer. It was like a tin box. It was the safe space for me. It held off crazy Newfoundland winter storms. It was a place of love and warmth and safety and security. At least that was from my perspective growing up. Now if you look at it now, dude, it was a health hazard. There were electrical wires that were exposed. There were rats running around. When I think about now, it was like we had nothing. I remember the floors had that roll on plastic canvas. The technology has come a long way now. The smell of mold and mildew.
Oh, God, the memories are taking me back. This was my first home. It was so funny. I was actually sitting down, and I was writing some things out. I actually was like, “Well, what would that place, if we were doing an MLS® listing–” Remember, now, this is a tiny little shack, sort of near the ocean in small town, Newfoundland. Questionable running water at times. Hot? Forget about it. This is how I would try to put this listing up. “Ocean front hideaway with vintage charm.”
Erin: Oh. I love it.
Shaun: “750 square foot, two beds, one bath, ocean views. Step into this exclusive aluminum clad retreat boasting an expansive 750 square foot of rustic charm from the earthy aroma of the authentic moldy vinyl floors to the exposed electrical wiring that gives a peek into the home’s inner workings. Every detail is a testament to this timeless character with cozy six-foot ceilings,” honestly, it was a hobbit home, “creating an intimate atmosphere. You’ll love the vintage appeal of the cupboards, some delightfully loose on their hinges to provide open shelving.” They were falling apart, basically.
“Enjoy the added peace of mind with walls lightly packed with asbestos. A natural fireproofing solution ensuring that no flame will threaten your trailer. Except of course, the occasional whiff of mesothelioma. For nature lovers, the kitchen comes complete with furry residents.” We had rats. Yes, we did. “Under the sink connecting you with the wildlife outside.”
It’s pretty amazing how you can frame something. Again, when we talk about the importance of a home and how it informs you as a human being, these were my earliest memories for me. They were some of the most positive memories for me because it was about the people that were in that home and the creatures that were there, not the rats, but my wiener dog, I’ll never forget. When I started this journey on this planet, that was the bar that was set for me. At a very early age, the concept going from that to anywhere where I am now, that’s the frame of reference. Everything beyond that was a bonus. You know what I mean?
Erin: Yes, I totally do.
Shaun: When I think about housing and I think about where we lived, and it has its pros and cons because now my understanding of what real estate is and how much is too much and what is the value, I’ve never been able to really wrap my head around it, to get a really good compass, unless you sit down and you really, really educate on the academic level exactly what market means and what value means. What is value? I think that’s an important thing, yes.
Erin: Right. Value is what your heart sets and not just what the market says. By the way, that listing you read me, I think it sounds charming. Do you have a price?
Shaun: I think, no. No, it is no longer there. I’ve been back to Burlington many times. Someone bought it, but I think they might’ve bought it for $500 or something like that.
Erin: Yet your memories are priceless. I’m picturing you just riding around the area with other kids on your bikes, making those childhood dreams. Okay, the rodents weren’t your pets, but they could have been. In a Stephen King novel, they would have been. It’s just, that’s the picture of home. I have to fast forward to now with two children of your own, and I know we’re jumping ahead. We’ll go back to the middle, I promise you. If your children ever say, “Daddy, I need a bigger room.” Do you ever go back to that trailer and go, “Okay, wait a minute.” Does it sort of form your entire perspective for what your children have now? Does it give you that foundation?
Shaun: It’s interesting because I’m not attached to my early days of where I lived as a way of saying, “Hey, listen, we don’t need more space.” Because I lived in a place that had no space. I think what it did, it gave me a perspective of being grateful and being thankful and being conscious of what really matters. I think that’s what it taught me early on. Coming from not much, and I say that, graded on a curve because I had everything. That’s how I looked at it. I think what it did is instilled in me, coming from that place, I think, my journey is different than someone, let’s say, who was raised in a seven-bedroom house in a really nice area. Once you start your life there, then everything is about comparative, everything is comparisons and comps at that point.
For my kids now, it’s interesting because my kids, one was born in Los Angeles, one was born in Petoskey, Michigan. We have a nice house in Los Angeles. She only knows the nice house in Los Angeles, the house that I now live in currently. Both of them, both girls, one is two, one is five. It’s interesting because now I think, “Okay, well, wherever we go next, and what the future will be for them, that’s their baseline.” However, we go back to Newfoundland a lot. We spend time in one of the houses that I did buy, which is another property that blows me away.
Now I’d be curious to hear what the listeners think of this. My journey in real estate, again, it goes from small town, Newfoundland, to probably Ontario, then to Los Angeles. That’s a combination of renting. That’s a combination of owning some things. Owning came later, and I’ll get to that. By bringing my daughters back to the same place where I was raised, I think is a very grounding thing.
We have a small house there. Very small. It’s a little box that’s maybe, man, it’s maybe 50 by 50. It was an old saltbox house, that when my dad, before he passed away, he wanted to go back to Newfoundland. He’s from India. His story is an amazing story, too, which would be a different podcast. I remember my dad was about ready to retire in Mississauga. He was living in Mississauga at the time. He was done working for Petro-Canada. He was like, “Shaun, I think I want to go back to by the ocean. I want to retire there. I want to have a nice life there.”
I was home one year, and I asked around, I’m like, “Is there any houses available? What’s going on?” There was one house that was on the ocean. Beautiful spot, beautiful little piece of land. I asked, I go, “Can I get that? Is it available?” “Yes, they might sell to you.” By now I’d been on TV for a little while. They were going to take me for a ride. They were like, “Oh, Shaun Majumder, he’s rich.”
Erin: Yes. He can afford it.
Shaun: I ended up buying a house on the ocean for $25,000. It was a rip off. A rip off in the way that other people were like, “You paid what? That is way too much.” I’m like, “Wait a minute.” I live in LA now. I know that the value of this house on the ocean. $25,000. Nevermind that. Before I bought this house, I actually bought another property. This is even crazier.
The very first thing I ever bought was I went home, and I was asking around for land generally just for me. A friend said, “Oh, yes, I think the school that you went to when you were a little kid. I think the guy who owns that now is looking to get rid of it. Do you want to talk to him?” I said, “Yes, sure. How much?” I talked to him. The school that I went to in the middle of a town by the ocean $2,700. $2,700. This is before I was on TV a lot. It was just enough. He didn’t try to take me for a ride. He was like, “Yes, take it 27.” There’s still back taxes that are owed on it. Is another $750. I got nailed on that. Still a piece of land anywhere on planet Earth for $2,700 near the ocean, and the school that I went to, it was crazy.
Erin: What did you do with that school? What did you do with it, Shaun?
Shaun: The school, it was a decrepit building. Locally, there were people who went, and they took it down and they reused some of the wood and they took the copper out and they cleaned the site. Basically, it’s a land that exists there now. When I think about value, and I think about the amount of money and then I go to LA, I’m at an apartment building that I’m renting there for $1,250 a month, which actually was really good at the time. It was locked in. The life experiences I was having there were amazing. Then they were turning those condo buildings, they were going to sell them. We had to leave.
I was like, “Okay, well, what am I going to do?” I met my current wife now, we were living there as a couple. She was like, “Yes, you got to go buy a house?” I’m like, “I can’t afford a house. A house in LA? Are you kidding me?” Then my business manager at the time, he applied for a loan, and I was approved for a half a million-dollar loan. Half a million. I was like, “What? Half of a million. A million, half of that I get to have and do something with for a house? Oh my gosh, I’m going to buy a mansion. This is it.” I didn’t know that I could do that.
Again, this all goes back to my tiny trailer in small town Newfoundland. Then also $2,700 for a piece of property, $25,000, half a million. I get this loan and I’m like, “We got to find a house.” Then we started looking and there was nothing like that was livable for half a million. Again, it’s all perspective. We ended up buying my first house, proper house in an area in Los Angeles, California that was a little outside the main area. It was a small two bedroom. I believe the square footage was 2,600 square feet. It wasn’t a big house, but it was up on a hill facing west, beautiful sunset views, everything that we could ask for. Me and my new-found love of my life.
I literally carried her across a threshold. We bought a house, it’s amazing. The area was amazing, at least up on the hill, because then we started watching a TV show called Gangland. There was an episode of Gangland that was talking about this one particular group called the Avenues Gang. There was a story about a beheading, literally a beheading that happened. I was like, “Oh, wait, that street looks familiar.” It was just down the hill from where we had just bought this house.
As it turns out, the area that we were in, we drove through that street all the time. It was like a hornet’s nest of gangs that still were there. We’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is insane, right?” It didn’t feel unsafe. It wasn’t unsafe. It was unsafe. The house itself was up on the hill. Again, I’m not the same as my girlfriend at the time. Being female in Los Angeles is a different experience. I’m sorry, but it is. Meaning like, again, as a man, we don’t think about the same things that perhaps she would think about it. She said this to me, she’s like, “You have no idea. We think about everything differently when it comes to security and safety.” I’m very, “Ah, nothing bad will ever happen.” Which is not the best approach.
Erin: You’ve had a lot of experiences and even before, of course, your marriage about 12 years ago. Let us get you back from Newfoundland and you mentioned Ontario briefly and then on to Los Angeles. Let’s carry on down this road of adventures and how you felt with each progressive move, Shaun.
Shaun: Yes, each progression really informed me of different things at different times in my life. I think that’s something that, again, I was never educated about the importance of home purchasing. I never thought of real estate as real estate. I never did. All I thought about was, “Where am I going to live and where am I living now?” I didn’t think about at the time, like when I moved from Newfoundland to Ontario, that was an interesting journey because my parents had split when I was a baby. That’s why I was living with my mom in small town, Newfoundland, with my sister and my wiener dog named Wiener, by the way.
Erin: Creative.
Shaun: Awesome name, mom. Awesome name. When I lived there with my mom and my sister, and then I guess there were some high-level discussions between mom and dad about mom moving back in with dad, but for the sake of the family. That was the thing. It’s like, “Let’s all live together as a family and, mom, you can leave Newfoundland and come to Ontario.” I guess this was the discussion they were having.
We picked up and we left my childhood home. I remember we were in a U-Haul and we were driving down the highway and I was leaving my town behind and I was sad and it was very hard. I knew I was going somewhere that I was a huge fan of, and that was Toronto. Toronto was everything to me because my dad lived there and I looked up to him and I was a fan of him. I was a Toronto Blue Jay fan back in the day of the Ernie Whitt days, the Alfredo Griffin days. I was a huge baseball fan. I was a huge Toronto Maple Leaf fan. I bled blue and white, and I guess a little bit of red for the Jays. It was just like, everything was Toronto and I’m going to Toronto. We got on the ferry and we were heading up and we got there.
I remember driving and seeing the CN Tower and we kept going and we kept– I’m like, “There’s Toronto. Why are we still driving? Toronto’s back there. Where are we going? Dad, where are you taking us?” “Mississauga.” “What? Mrs. What?” This is ’80s Mississauga. Not cool, sexy, one of the greatest places to live in the world now, so they say. Mississauga with their absolute towers. By the way, the architect must’ve been drinking a ton of Absolute while designing those buildings, they’re beautiful, but they’re a little twisty. I don’t know.
Erin: Yes. The Marilyn Monroe. Yes.
Shaun: Yes. We ended up at Mississauga. It wasn’t Toronto and it was very different than what I imagined. He had said we’re moving into a semi-detached townhouse. Is that safe? I’m like, “Wait, it’s semi-detached. Is it fully attached? What are we talking about?” This description of a building, a semi-detached townhouse did not feel secure and safe for me as a kid who– I’m just trying to want a secure place to live.
We ended up at a place 2315 Bromsgrove Road in a semi-detached townhouse, a condo, which was very strange for me, but it was like a little community because it was in one of those townhouse complexes that had their own road. It was like a campground, but it wasn’t. It was very interesting. It turned me to the gang life because I was a little Brown fella that had a little mustache. I looked ambiguously ethnic. I fit right in, but they were recruiting me, the new kid, and we would do terrible things like throw crab apples at cars driving by and water balloons.
This new place that I live now with people of all these different ethnicities, which was amazing to me, it blew me away. Now I was in this multicultural, rich, diverse, Jamaican, Trinidad, India, Asian culture, everything was there mashed up, which was a far cry from where I was before, in small town, white Newfoundland. I thought I was white. I didn’t know I was anything but white growing up, but then apparently no, I’m ethnic now. I was like, “Okay, I’m ethnic now. I love it.”
Living in Mississauga was like, “Oh my gosh, this is such a strange and amazing place,” but I loved it. I loved it. It took some getting used to, but the parents moving in with each other, not a good idea. Not a good idea. Bad. They were divorced for a reason. Now we’re living in a townhouse. I’m like a young teenage tweenage fella with a mom and dad who are always fighting. Me and my sister always fought. I brought my wiener dog, and he had a Springer Spaniel and those dogs were always fighting. It was a very stress-free, relaxed, casual vibe in Mississauga where I was living.
My teenage years of thinking about what Mississauga was like, semi-detached condo, it was community, but it was definitely a stressful time. Then my mom moved out and we went into a high-rise building on Bodmin Road, which was not far, which informed me of a whole new life where now it was high-rise living.
Erin: Elevators.
Shaun: Elevators. That was huge. It was also interesting because my mom, she was working at an old folks’ home. She was a nurse. She would literally, it was me and my mom, my sister stayed with my dad in the condominium down the street. Then it was me, my mom, she would work from 11:00 at night to 7:00 in the morning. Then I had an apartment to myself from 11:00 till 7:00. That led to me, like you would when you’re 15 living in Mississauga, you pick up the keys to the Hyundai Stellar and you’re going to go for a little drive because I still had gang ties. I use gang very loosely here, guys. I wasn’t really a part of a gang.
Erin: The crab apple gang, yes.
Shaun: The crab apple gang. We would take my Hyundai Stellar and we’d go for a ride around just that street area at night. One night, I’ll never forget it. This is all because of where I live now. Keep this in mind. This is all real estate related. Because I lived in this apartment, I remember we parked the Hyundai Stellar next to the Miracle Food Mart. We all went in because we were going to go get some gum. Came back out, car was gone. I was like, “What’s going on?” A guy goes, “Is that your car, bud?” I looked and the car was out of park and rolling towards traffic slowly because it wasn’t a steep.
I was running towards this car and luckily the grass and the curb stopped it just before it went into traffic. I was 15. What that would have done to my life if that car went out into that thing. Again, this was all because of where I was living at the time in a very low rent place. Again, speaking to the low rent side of things, I didn’t understand what that meant. How hard that must have been for my mom too, who was just fighting to work long enough just to pay rent. This idea of rent and stresses around rent was something that I was unaware of until later in life. Anyway, yes, these are just little stories about where I lived and how it informed my perspective,
Erin: It’s sad that the year that you signed on with This Hour Has 22 Minutes is the year that she passed away. Did she get to get even a glimpse of the success that you were about to achieve, Shaun?
Shaun: She saw some early successes. She saw me on YTV. That was huge. That was huge, working on television. She saw me doing lots of standup and stuff like that. She was an amazing mom. She passed away in 2003, and it was interesting because we went back into that apartment, the same apartment I’m talking about, after she passed away. Her sister was there, and she said something really powerful.
I remember we were going through all of mom’s stuff, and my aunt, she was really upset, obviously. One thing she said was she was like, “This may not be a lot where we are right here in this place, but she was doing everything she could to make it the best place it could possibly be.” Again, that goes back to the trailer, the original trailer that we lived in, where there was no moment in my life where I felt like we didn’t have. There was no moment in my life where I feel like we were lacking in any way, shape, or form.
That’s powerful when you think about it, when we think about real estate, and we think about purchasing things, and how it informs who we are as people. We attach our identity to a lot of things. I think that no matter the square footage, no matter the value of your house, no matter how big or fancy, coming from where I came from, and the way mom instilled that value system in me, again, it goes back to the good and the bad of that.
When I think about my education and my knowledge of real estate, it had the ups and downs. I think at the core, it definitely makes me super thankful for everything that I have moving beyond that. Then to instill those values in my daughters as well. I think that’s going to be very important. It’s hard. It’s hard when your first thing that you have is something really nice.
Erin: Yes, it’s true.
Shaun: How then do you navigate managing expectations, I think, from that point on?
Erin: So true. Let me ask you, Shaun. When you lay in bed, either in the trailer and a bed, undoubtedly that you shared with your sister and of course, Wiener, the Wiener dog.
Shaun: Exactly, and a few bed bugs.
Erin: Yes, well, we’ll leave those out for the next podcast.
Shaun: Please do.
Erin: Then the next iteration in the semi-detached townhouse that you thought would be so close to the then SkyDome. When you lay in bed, what did you think of when you thought, “When I make it, here’s where I’m going to live?” What was that dream or what you pictured and did it come to fruition?
Shaun: I didn’t have a dream. I didn’t have a dream. I didn’t. Again, this goes back, this is what I’m saying. I never dreamt of the nice house. Again, I was like, “I need to make enough money to pay rent. I need to be able to have a decent place to live.” I didn’t think in my mind that– it’s about value. Again, I didn’t have the dream. It’s so interesting because the dreams only came when the wife came. When Shelby came into my life.
Now this is interesting because she is incredibly astute and knowledgeable of the things that I was not. Value, real estate. For some reason, she was obsessed with real estate from very early on. She loved markets. She loved seeing what houses were selling for what in what neighborhoods. Thank God she came into my life, because she was the one who was first to say, “Hey, look, I think you should purchase something.” This is in Los Angeles, but I was like, “I can’t afford it.” Of course, I can afford it. I just didn’t understand how the system worked.
When I saw the price of a house, I was like, “I can’t buy that.” You don’t buy that. You get a loan, and you understand leveraging value and understanding your interest rates and monthly payments. I did not know any of this stuff. When we bought that first house, I think that was the first time where I started to see is like, “Oh my God, Shelby, you’re right. Buying a house, not only is it an amazing investment, but it’s also something that then moving forward gives you leverage to get you into whatever that next thing is.”
That first house in Los Angeles, again, it was 665,000. We put maybe 60,000 to 100,000 into the house. We bought that house, I think it was in 2005. We were like, “Boom,” we saw that value starting to go up, to go tick up. I wasn’t tracking value. Again, I didn’t even understand what that meant. I didn’t look for that. Then 2007 rolled around, then 2008 rolled around.
Erin: Yikes.
Shaun: Shelby was freaking out. I was like, “What do you mean?” She would track it, she’s looking, she’s like, “Our house is now half the value that it was only a few years ago.” That was a scary thing. At the same time, I was like, “Are we selling? We’re not selling, so it’s going to come back. I’m sure it’ll come back.” She was like, “No, it’s never going to come back.” Luckily it did come back. We were also on the backside of that, I think it was in 2000 and– we held on to that house for a long time.
Then we were in a position where, again, Shelby was dialed into the real estate market and she found a house that was over in one of the nicest areas in Los Angeles, one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Los Angeles. She’s like, “It’s a screaming deal. This is a screaming deal for this house.” It was north of a million dollars. Again, I’m sorry, but as a tiny town Newfoundland guy, I’m like, “Hey, a million bucks. Are you kidding me? We can’t afford that.” She was like, “Of course you can. What is wrong with you? We have the leverage of this house versus that house.”
Then we were like, “Okay, well, we’re going to sell this house and we’re going to buy this other house.” She found a house that she really liked. I was like, “Oh, my God, it’s an amazing house,” but I was nervous about it. The way that it worked was the only way we would get approved for the house over here was if it was contingent on the sale. Our house over here didn’t appraise at the value. It was under what we were listing it for.
The buyers were like, “No, we’re not going to take it at that price that we agreed to already. Now that it is appraised here, you got to sell it for here.” It would have put us even on this house. As it turns out, we were getting a screaming deal on this house over here. It ended up working out. That’s now the house that I’m in right now, which is a house that has appreciated exponentially over the last bunch of years.
Again, not something I could have imagined or foresaw because I just was never wired or taught, and I think that’s important to take away now when I look at it now with the– I’m stoked on real estate now. I’m like, “Oh my God, I want to know more. I want to do more. I want to buy more. I want to educate myself.” It’s a little late in the game for me, but it’s never too late to really dive in.
Over the years too, not only that, I’ve bought buildings, I’ve bought buildings with partners that have been up and down. One of them, I invested in a small hotel that was in Santa Barbara that my business manager said, “Throw me 30K and we’ll say that broke even.” I found out later, this is a funny story, that the same company that had that hotel wanted to buy a small hotel in Newfoundland, the Battery Hotel in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and they wanted to call it Hotel California. I was like, “Hmm.”
Erin: No. You can check out anytime you want.
Shaun: “I think managing expectations there.” Probably wouldn’t call it that. Don’t call it that. I’ll invest in it, but I will– I bought another building with a partner of mine, Ron Lovett, who is doing incredible work. I just got to give him a huge shout out. He has a company called Vita Living. He is reframing the affordable housing market. He’s blowing it up. He’s doing incredible work. Look up Vita Living, Ron Lovett.
I bought one of my first buildings, and I think one of his first buildings, we bought together just outside of Halifax, understanding the rules around the tenant laws and how incredibly hard and difficult that can be to manage. Thank God I wasn’t managing that, he was. Over the years, I’ve done different things in the real estate market. Again, a home is a home is a home. That is what really matters to me now when I think about buying currently for my family, my little nuclear family. That’s going to be really interesting moving forward.
Erin: I know you don’t want to give advice. That’s not what you’re here for today. You’ve done such a wonderful job of painting pictures of the places in your life that you have lived and your adventures. Where do the basic skills and talents of the good comedian, the good improv artist, the yes and, and the listener, the person moving the conversation forward as being in kindred spirit with good REALTORS®?
Shaun: Yes, I think your relationship with your REALTOR® is one of the most important ones. Seeing a REALTOR®, meeting a REALTOR®, hearing their pitch, hearing how they manage expectations I think is a really important factor when you are partnering with a REALTOR®. I’ve had several different REALTORS®. I’ve had different agents as an actor, and I think bottom line, authenticity is one thing that I feel like is so important.
A person who is authentic, a person who is a great listener, I think a person who is a great no BS kind of a person too, because I think that you can have an agent who can tell you so many great things that you want to hear. One thing that I’ve learned, whether it’s in the industry that I’m in as an actor, as a creative person, we can be susceptible to hearing the things that are going to get us excited about partnering because they’re going to promise the world. “We’re going to do this, we’re going to get you this, and this is going to happen.”
I find that, in both the acting agent world and the real estate agent world, the grounded, practical, but also forward-thinking strategic REALTORS®, they’re the ones that I’ve always responded well to. We’re actually talking to a REALTOR® right now. There were two REALTORS® that I spoke with over the last little while. This is really interesting. We met with a guy who came to our house. He’s a star of one of these reality shows and he’s a great guy. He’s a super great guy, but he deals with $10 to $50 million homes in on the Sunset Strip. We met with him, come look at our house, talk to us about– he was enthusiastic out of the gates when we sent him a note.
It was like, “We’re going to come, we’re going to have a conversation.” His conversation is immediate reaction to the house. When we were talking about the number that we were looking at, hoping to get, or we had a general idea as to what we were hoping to get, his first reaction was, “No, you’re never going to get that. You’re never going to get that.” Then I was like, “Okay, well, I don’t mind being schooled on what the market is doing right now.” He had answers before the questions and that was something that turned us off no matter what, maybe he’s absolutely right. There was an initial interaction with us that really was a bit of a turnoff.
Then I met with another guy. He sat down, he was the warmest. He said, “Listen, we’re not even going to think about a price right now. What we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about your needs, what you’re looking to do. We’re going to be honest about what we think is realistic. We’re going to come up with a strategy, but we’re not going to come up with any pricing until we get to that place. Because also the market is like the wind, who knows what’s going to happen with the upcoming election? Who knows what’s going to happen with interest rates? Are they going to go up? Are they going to go down? Let’s see what the buyers are.” This was the conversation we were having.
Immediately I was like, “I love this guy. I love his vibe. He listens, he’s practical. He knows my local area incredibly well. He’s got a good team.” It was just that vibe immediately that made me go, “This is somebody that I can work with and that I really want to work with to make this. If we’re going to put our house up, this is the personality that I would be interested in working with.”
I think, any advice that I can say to REALTORS®, I guess, from a buyer or seller perspective, I know that you guys do workshops. I know that you guys have trained through the wazoo. I will say on a very simple person to person, experience. Being a great listener is one of the most important things and I’m going through it right now. I just had that experience that it made me feel really comfortable with this REALTOR® who listened to where we were at, what we wanted to get from our house. He was also very grounded and practical at the same time.
Erin: You have made better listeners of all of us today, Shaun. You really, truly have. It’s been such a pleasure.
Shaun: I hope you can make sense of some of the crazy.
Erin: Are you kidding? What a life.
Shaun: Yes. I hope you can make sense of some of what I was talking about.
Erin: Absolutely.
Shaun: Yes, for me, I’m driven by story and real estate has become such a huge part of my story, not in the buying and selling perspective, but the places we live. I think we can lose sight of the importance of where we live and experience, and the value of that when we talk about real estate. It’s not all about numbers and value in the market. It’s about value in life. When I think about all of this, it’s more about the ROI in the life experience versus dollars down.
Erin: Shaun, just before we go, we have heard where you’re from and now you would like our listeners and viewers to go to from. Can you make sense of that sentence for me, please?
Shaun: I can. From, people are freaking out about this show. It’s a show we started making in during COVID. It’s shot in Halifax. It has a Canadian connection. It’s a horror series that Stephen King loves. He thinks it’s one of the scariest shows on TV. It’s a really cool show about a small town where people get trapped, and they can’t get out. At night monsters come out and eat you. Just like my experience growing up a small town, Newfoundland. It’s a great show. I would encourage you all to go watch it from the beginning. It’s the same people that did Lost. It’s a puzzle show, you got to figure it out. For those of you who know, you already know, it’s taken the world by storm right now. Thank you for having me. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation.
Erin: Congratulations, Shaun, on that, on everything. Thanks again for joining us here today. We’re so grateful.
Shaun: Thank you so much.
Erin: As always, if you liked this episode, and we’re sure you did, please tell us by giving us a rating or review on your preferred podcast platform. We always appreciate it. REAL TIME is brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association, CREA. Production is courtesy of Alphabet® Creative, with tech support from Rob Whitehead. Thank you so much for watching and for listening. I’m Erin Davis, and we’ll see you next time on REAL TIME.