ATHABASCA - Who would have thought that real estate would be a such major seller during a pandemic? But local real estate agent Shahira Bury with Royal LePage County Realty has reached a major milestone doing just that and is now being recognized for her work.
Every year Royal LePage Canada announces awards for their realtors based on their marketplace and in Alberta, Bury received the Red Diamond Award for being in the top two percent of all Royal LePage agents in Alberta for properties sold.
“So, every year the top 10 agents are listed in order by Royal LePage Canada, and this year per units sold, because there’s two categories and the one I placed in was units sold, I made No. 4 out of all of Alberta which is freaking awesome,” Bury said.
She credits being located in lake country with helping her reach the milestone which is rare for a rural agent to achieve because they are going up against urban agents.
“There's always been lake buyers, I mean, we're lake country, we've got so many lakes in our county,” she said. “But there were a lot of lake buyers in 2020 that I accredited to COVID in the sense that not knowing where you can travel because of the restrictions in place a lot of people that may have been on the fence to buy a lake property, took the plunge.”
She added that it was not just seasonal properties, noting she sold to three different families from the Calgary area who permanently moved to the Athabasca region to get out of the city.
“Normally we are oil and gas driven — that is our major industry — and employment and the university and all these places that haven't been hiring many people for years now,” Bury said. “So, it was kind of neat to see that was another element; just people strictly wanting to get out of the city and have a rural property that's affordable, because buying rural in southern Alberta is a lot more expensive than here.”
Royal LePage County Realty owner Trevor Yurchak said he is happy for Bury’s success and says it is in large part to the way Bury treats her clients that brought that success.
“We're really proud of her; this is an accomplishment that we didn't even think was possible in a small community like ours. So, yeah, she's worked hard, she's focused, she's set some huge goals, she does real estate very methodically, and that's the neat thing watching her system over the last five years,” he said. “You know, in spite of economic times, or in conjunction with economic times, real estate still sells and she understands that; she's confident, and she can make it happen.”
He noted the agent who placed second in Alberta also reached the top 10 in Canada, emphasizing how close Bury was to that even higher honour.
“It's about service to clients,” Yurchak said. “So, her goal is to do well, but it's driven by customer satisfaction. It's driven by customer service. It's not driven by ‘I'm going to achieve No. 1 or No.10’ or any of that stuff. So, I think the neat part is it spins off into our community as being some superior service for our community.”
Now that Bury has achieved this award, she plans to do it again, but knows it will be difficult competing against realtors in larger centres.
“So, to be in a community where we have less than 3,000 people and an average price point of less than $250,000 to achieve this is pretty, pretty amazing because it's up against those ones in Calgary, Edmonton, Grande Prairie, Fort McMurray, major centres in Alberta that their properties on average are $400,000 plus, so, yeah, pretty cool. I want to do it again,” she said.
