Review staff
There’s been a bit of reshuffling in the local real estate market following the retirement of long-time realtor Garry Geigle, formerly of Royal Lepage. As a result, his partner Jeff Collins has opted to join up with Wendy Stevenson of Coldwell Banker who coincidentally, also found herself working alone.
“Basically, for the last eight years Garry Geigle and myself have been working out of one office – the Royal LePage office, and Garry had been doing it for a good number of years and decided to retire at the first part of December, so I was left there to work by myself,” Collins said. “I tried it for a little over a month, but the problem I found was every time I had to go to the bank, or the post office or down to the Rimbey Review or what have you, daily routine stuff, I had to lock the door.”
As a result, the possibility existed that Collins could very well have missed out on some opportunities to move properties giving another reason why the merger is good for business.
“We put our heads together and one of us had to make a move, so in the end it was myself who decided to do it and I’m very much looking forward to it,” he added. “We’ve worked on different deals over the past couple of years and always managed to get things put together so I think it’ll be a good fit.”
As for the situation outside of the office, Collins said while things have slowed substantially since the realty boom of two years ago, he said properties in and around the community are changing hands.
“Well, after the past couple of years there’s been quite the rush on properties and they were moving fairly brisk compared to normal. We were selling 60 houses basically in a year in town when before we might have sold 25,” he said. “The rush hit us just like everywhere else and you can see it from the housing starts. In the last eight to 10 months, obviously everybody’s noticed it’s slowing down.”
Collins estimated that there are approximately 30 homes currently for sale in Rimbey but was quick to add that in most cases, it’s simply a matter of patience. During the boom period, he said it usually took between 30 and 60 days to sell the average home whereas now, that time period is closer to 90 to 140 days.
Nevertheless, the properties are being sold.
“It’s just the way it is. Houses will still moved, the country will still chug along and people will still be buying. It just won’t be as brisk of a pace as what we’ve enjoyed for the last two years,” Collins said. “Renters get tired of renting and young couples get married and have families and need room to grow, so all that’s just ordinary life so we know places will move and those that are selling are going to have to be a little more patient than they had to before, and those that are buying are going to be maybe a bit more selective, just because of the inventory that they’ll have to look at.”
A veteran of 17 years in the industry, Collins said he’s seen both the slow and boom periods before and while he acknowledged that real estate tends to run in cycles, there’s no way of predicting exactly what the future holds.
“There’s no actual set pattern because obviously we’d all know when to buy and sell, but there’s always ups and downs,” he said. “Sometimes they appear in the same year, other times they stretch out a little further. But there’s always going to be down times to offset the up times. It can’t always go in the same direction.”
Either way, Collins said he’s very optimistic about the future of both the real estate market here and the community itself.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed every year that I’ve been here and I think Rimbey, in my opinion, is one of the best places to live in the entire country.”
There’s a bit of an ironic twist to the story of the merger between Collins and Stevenson in that when he first arrived in Rimbey 27 years ago, his first job was at Rimbey Ford-Mercury where for seven years, he worked side-by-side with Roger Newman who just happens to be Stevenson’s father.
And while she opted to let her new partner do most of the talking, Stevenson said she too was thrilled with both the merger and the prospects of working with Collins.
“I would like to welcome Jeff to Coldwell Banker and I very much look forward to working with him,” she said. “I think we’ll make a great team.”