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Picture it:
It’s October 2012 and Brendan and I are about to hire our first agent. The BREL team is just two people – Brendan and me (BRendan + mELanie…get it?). It was time to grow.
Our first interview was with a newly-licensed REALTOR, Ashton Childs. Ashton had spent 10+ years working in real estate offices and was excited about starting her sales career. Over coffee at the Gladstone Hotel, we chatted about our vision of building a different kind of real estate team – one centred around clients, with wraparound services for our buyers and sellers and a heavy focus on technology and gorgeous marketing. These were unique concepts at the time; back then, real estate was still done by fax and most agents “marketed” themselves by door-knocking, cold-calling and sending out postcards in the Comic Sans font. We didn’t want to be those people – and neither did Ashton.
You know how you just vibe with some people? We vibed with Ashton that day. We loved her energy and passion and her approach to working with clients. In between trying to convince her to move from a Blackberry to an iPhone (it was 2012, after all) and persuading her to get an iPad, we recognized the skills and traits we knew would make her a successful agent. Ashton was authentic and real. She was smart. She was a great communicator. And she genuinely liked people.
But as fate would have it, we didn’t expand our team for another six months, and Ashton started her sales career elsewhere. Over the years, we watched her career grow as she learned from some of the best teams and brokerages in Toronto.
Fast forward to 2024:
We’re thrilled to share that Ashton has (at last) joined the BREL team!
Things look a lot different than they did in 2012 – the BREL team is now recognized as one of the top-rated and most successful teams in Toronto. Today, we’re a team of 19 people, with an in-house staging/design team, marketing and admin, 2 offices and a staging warehouse.
And Ashton? She’s proven our initial instincts were right. Her impressive track record of helping buyers and sellers isn’t just the result of hard work and hustle – it’s the reward for always advocating for her clients and doing the right thing. And yes, she traded in her Blackberry for an iPhone.
We’re excited to welcome Ashton to the BREL family and look forward to getting to know her wife and menagerie of pets. You can read more about Ashton here.
