Bruce Gemmel on new homes in Grande Pointe Meadows

Adrian:

I'm joined today by Bruce Gemmel, who is a sales representative in a Qualico community development. Bruce, would you tell me a little bit about yourself and your company.

Bruce:

Yeah, I'd be happy to. Adrian, thanks for having me on. It's interesting. I have a 42 year history of being a pilot as being my main career. And when I reached 65, I retired. And so I've been in new home sales with Qualico for two and a half years. And what's interesting for me in the transition from a career as a pilot to now a career as a new home salesman is everything that I ever did in my job was checklist related. So even starting the airplane, you never did anything by memory. You just followed your checklist.

Bruce:

And so I've been able to adapt a really great checklist for myself when it comes to selling new homes and keeping the customer from falling through the cracks. It's been a really fun transition for me because of the checklist approach, because in two and a half years, you don't know everything that there is to know about selling a new home. So I really liked the checklist approach and I've been able to adopt that to help my clients make sure they don't fall through the cracks. There's so many moving parts with a new home that we actually enjoy the process together.

Adrian:

And what about Qualico? Can you tell us a little bit about your company?

Bruce:

Sure. Qualico has been around for 65 years and they specialize in single-family homes for the most part. They have four divisions, Broadview homes, Sterling homes, Kensington homes, and Fox Ridge homes. So we can offer any kind of service that's required by the customer. If you want a complete custom built home, we have Fox Ridge. If you want to have kind of a basic priced house with options that are flexible, we start with our Broadview home brand and then move up to Sterling and Kensington. And so every time we move to a brand, you have different inclusions for options. But the thing that I love about that, Adrian, is that now we bring so many more people into the process of being able to buy one of our homes based on the brand that they choose. Not everybody wants to operate their house because of budget reasons, but it doesn't mean that they can't get into a new house. I'm really happy with the four brands that we have to offer our customers. It's awesome.

Adrian:

What are some of the unique benefits of the community that you're currently representing?

Bruce:

You couldn't ask for a better place to live. I love Grande Pointe Meadows for a number of reasons. Every time I go out there, it's quiet. The air is different. The sun sets differently. I know it sounds stupid, but you're just only seven or 10 minutes from Sage Creek. You go down Highway 59, you get home and you're completely isolated from city life, but you have city life advantages because if you want to go to Sobey's or the bank or the liquor store, McDonald's, Tim Hortons or any of the couple of restaurants that are there, it's just down the street. It's a non issue. And yet you have such a peaceful environment to walk home to, and the people that are moving into the community of Grande Pointe Meadows, Adrian, are super, super fantastic. I call it happy hour central because everybody's super friendly.

Adrian:

Why should someone choose a home built by your company compared to another?

Bruce:

Yeah, that's a good question. Houses are priced differently. The customer service that Qualico has through the entire build and then long after is outstanding. And I'm the first one to say that things could go wrong, will go wrong, and when they do go wrong, Qualico has got my customer's back. I see it time and time again, Adrian, customer's not satisfied. They come to me because I'm their point of contact because I sold them the house. I know who to go to in the company. That person gets back to them right away and we solve any issues. So we have a really big customer service department, and I think that'll set us up far and away beyond any competition that's out there.

Bruce:

We have another really great attraction if you don't mind, if I could just say. We have a design center that often people buying a new house, they don't know what comes standard with the house, but we have a design center with fantastic qualified professional designers that take you through every aspect of what goes into a new build, flooring, plumbing, countertops, lighting, all that stuff, inside and outside. And we actually take the customer literally by the hand and walk them through every department inside the design center. And at the end of that exercise, they are very comfortable with what's included with the house and the new build and what are available options. So those two aspects set us apart. We have the best warranty in the business. We have the Qualico design center and we have fantastic customer service after the build.

Adrian:

At the time that we're recording this episode, there is a severe shortage of homes for sale in Winnipeg. Can you perhaps touch a little bit on how a new home built to spec could be a great alternative for someone that is finding it challenging finding an available home for sale in Winnipeg?

Bruce:

Well, I think if you're getting a first time home buyer and their budgets in the $300,000 range, they're going to have to stay with the used market and work with a real estate agent who will help them find the home that they are looking for. But once you get over a $450,000 in terms of purchase price, you should be starting to look at new homes and new homes with Qualico because we can get you into a brand new home with a 10-year warranty where everything's brand new, and we can fit a budget starting at $450,000.

Adrian:

What advice would you give to someone looking for a new custom built home?

Bruce:

So what I do is I say, what style of house do you want, bungalow or two-story? And then we go through our plans and we come to a consensus of why this would be my dream house. And then further to that, we can tweak that dream house to make it fantastic. What I mean is we can move walls, open up cupboards, make your kitchen different, bring your laundry room from the main floor to the second floor and vice versa. We can do lots of tweaks inside the plan that you choose. So the first line of defense is to choose a plan that you like, and then we'll make it so that you love it. That's number one. Number two is find the lot that you want. We have certain communities around the city, and if you're looking for a bungalow, bungalows require fairly large frontage wise. So you're looking at Grande Pointe Meadows or Oak Left for Taylor Farms, and then we go from there. It's a process that's really fun for the customer.

Adrian:

Can really sense that you have a passion for what you're doing now. What do you love about Winnipeg real estate?

Bruce:

Well, I love the new homes of course, and happy to service my customers to the best of my ability in the new home sales. But to answer your question, Winnipeg is super unique in terms of having little pockets where an experienced real estate agent can really earn their money for you by taking you to some of these little pockets of communities and neighbourhoods, especially if you're new to Winnipeg, areas like Kingston Crescent, Old San Patel, streets like Egerton or South Drive, North Drive, Kilkenny Drive. An experienced real estate agent knows where all these pockets are and they make Winnipeg exciting for their client to find what these little pockets.

Adrian:

For someone who would like to learn more about buying and building a home in one of your communities, how can they reach you?

Bruce:

Well, thanks for that, Adrian. Please give me a call Bruce Gemmel at (204) 688-6868.

Adrian:

And email address?

Bruce:

Bruce.Gemmel@qualico.com.

Adrian:

Thank you, Bruce, for joining me on this episode of I love Winnipeg Real Estate.

Bruce:

My Pleasure. Thanks, Adrian.