UBC students (l-r) Daanyaal Sobani, Léo Chazalon and Aditya Chinchure are behind the Realtors of Vancouver Instagram page. Photo Dan Toulgoet
They pine for pizza, love themselves a downward dog, watch Netflix and even enjoy the occasional cup of joe.
Indeed, there are realtors out there who are just like the rest of us.
That’s the portrait being painted by the Instagram account Realtors of Vancouver. Online since late last year, the account focuses exclusively on the personalities behind some of Vancouver’s real estate movers and shakers.
The Instagram feed is the product of UBC students Leo Chazalon, Daanyaal Sobani and Aditya Chinchure. Their goal is to promote what Chazalon calls “humane marketing,” which he describes as emphasizing personalities rather than professional pursuits.
“It’s about quitting all the commercial B.S. around what the real estate agent does for home buyers or home sellers,” Chazalon told the Courier. “It’s about going straight to the point as to who they are.”
Only a few criteria must be met in order to make the grade: prospective realtors have to be on Instagram, concerned with things other than dollars and cents and be “interesting” in the eyes of the three-person team.
Candidates are sent a direct message with an interview request and then meet with the threesome at a coffee shop near UBC. Chazalon says interview subjects don’t get to vet questions in advance, nor does the group receive any money from the realtors who are interviewed.
“By interesting, we mean they post stuff that’s not commercial B.S.,” Chazalon said. “We’re not here to promote their businesses, we’re not here to bring them more customers. We’re here to find the real estate agents who put themselves forward on Instagram as human beings in the first place before real estate agents.”
Chazalon got the Instagram idea off the ground in December 2017. About 20 profiles have been completed and the page has close to 1,000 followers. A business student, Chazalon naturally takes care of the business end, while Chinchure, a computer sciences student, covers the photography and web design. Sobani’s background in electrical engineering lends itself to tech questions and marketing.
Oddly enough, none of them want to work in real estate once their time at UBC is over.
So, why the interest in realtors?
“The logic behind having 15,000 realtors in Metro Vancouver is very hard to understand to me,” Chazalon said. “So what we’re trying to do here is to filter through all of them and see who are the ones who are most worthy of being good real estate agents to work with.”
Another puzzling point is how topics specific to real estate — foreign ownership or the affordability crisis — are never touched upon. In fact, when realtors wade into those waters, Chazalon points them in other directions.
Their brand is about “entertainment” and “relatability” and crushing homeowner debt doesn’t fit in either of those categories.
“That’s a question that’s expected whenever you talk to real estate agents or whomever you talk in Vancouver — there’s always this problem of the affordability crisis,” Chazalon said. “It’s something that’s very recurrent and almost repetitive and almost boring. We’re always looking for an answer to that question, but in the end there is no really true scientific answer for it and nobody knows what’s going to happen in the future.”
The future for Chazalon and company is a bit more concrete. They plan on launching a “humane marketing” public relations firm. They also build websites, of which four have been sold to real estate agents after their Q/A was completed.
“We love listening to people, sitting over coffee and chatting with them. Not only do we network, we find interesting stories and we have fun,” Chazalon said.
The trio’s Instagram handle is @realtorsofvancouver.
@JohnKurucz
