101: Bringing Eminence at Knox Mountain's Resort-Style Living to Kelowna with Meridian Development's Colleen Wilson

Taylor Atkinson: Alright. Welcome back to the Kelown Real Estate Podcast. I'm your mortgage broker host, Taylor Atkinson.

Matt Glen: And I'm your real estate agent host, Matt Glenn. What's shaking today, Taylor?

Taylor Atkinson: You don't got spoiled this weekend? Happy Father's Day to you, Matt?

Matt Glen: Yes. You too.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. It was good. Yeah. We just hanging out, you know, had some brunch, went on the boat, played pickable, softball, just all the all the dad's side. Nice.
Yeah. It was a great weekend. You know what? Like, summer's here. And I know last summer we were kinda talking about, like, tourism's down and businesses are suffering, but feel like some really great entrepreneurs in our circle, you know, one of them, Tina Steele, who runs keys to corona, just pivot so well.
Like, looks at regulations, it's, you know, coming down provincially, federally, and it's like, hey, I may not, like, have the best business right now in like Airbnb models, then opens up a wicked coffee shop, wicked location Yeah. On Lakeshore. Like, if you haven't been there, check it out

Matt Glen: right across the street from gyro beach.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Yep. She is just like a top like, performer. You know? Like, everything she does is, like, incredible.
So, yeah, we've been there a few times now. And you'll see her walking around the blocks, checking out her places at Kibana and Aqua and then running for coffee. So, yeah, shout out to Dina just wicked job. Awesome. Awesome to see.
Yeah. Summer's here. We're just enjoying the local community.

Matt Glen: I think this summer is gonna be a little bit more up. Right? Like Yeah. More than in last year. I think this is gonna be a good summer for Kelowna.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. And there's a few new businesses popping up and some existing ones seem to be doing well and just like Yeah. Just pivoting. So love to see it.

Matt Glen: No. I like Yep. Me too. Yeah. This episode too was also a ton of fun to record.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. I mean, I probably speak for you as well. I love speaking to developers. It's kinda like Yep. Some of my favorite shows we've had you get, like, pull back the curtains a little bit.
So today, we have on Colleen Wilson. She's the co founder, president, CEO of Meridian Development. Started out as a lawyer, but she was also on TV for, like, twenty five years.

Matt Glen: And it comes through on the podcast. She's she should be hosted this show.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Honestly. Yeah. She was great. So we did have a previous podcast with the Meridian group.
They're developing on Knox Mountain. So evidence if you haven't listened to that podcast, go back and relisten to that one. But you can go and check out their sales center. Phase one is, I think, mostly sold out now. There's still a couple of units left, you said.
Phase two is open for sales. Yeah. Really cool project right on NOx. So It is

Matt Glen: a cool project to check out. No doubt. It is built right on NOx Kosta Town. Beautiful building. More coming.
The amenities aren't even there yet, and they're gonna be nice too. So

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Like, something she said was they're building, like, pathways in collaboration with the city in Tinnocks as well. Yeah.

Matt Glen: I didn't know that. That's pretty cool.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. More walking trails if you're a dog person, pet friendly. Or a hike person Yeah. Or a bike? Anything?
Anything knocks. This is where you wanna be.

Matt Glen: Yeah. That's funny. You know, when I was in my road bike phase, I rode my road bike up to top of Knoxbridge to the top. And it kinda cruised through magic estates at the top, and it came down clifton right past him and it's and, like, I had a speedo on my bike and I would I hit ninety k an hour coming down. Really?
Yeah. That's the fastest I've ever been, and it was terrifying.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. When were you in a road bike phase? I didn't know this.

Matt Glen: I still have a bit, but Yeah. Not as much yeah. A few years ago, I had got a bike and ripped on it. But yeah. So I was all proud of myself for going up NOx, which is a feet that's own.
And then he hit to the top and then he just ripped out Clifton and holy shit. That was yeah. It was awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
So every time I drive up Clifton or go see evidence. I always think about that.

Taylor Atkinson: I mean, yeah, I've been biking a lot too, mostly hauling the kids to day care and back in the trailer.

Matt Glen: Oh, what? That sounds awesome. It is.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. It's a quick, like, five k there, five k back. But Yep. Everyone enjoy the show and enjoy summer, get out and support some businesses.

Matt Glen: Absolutely. And this episode, like every episode sponsored by Century twenty one Assurance Realty, Best Brokerage in town. We're in a real estate office, residential. We do commercial real estate. We have property management.
Basically, if it's real estate related, we do it. Reach out. If you are a person looking to buy or sell commercial lease call for the agent or if you're an agent looking to make a switch for the brokers for you. Yeah. It's a great place.
I love being there. It's my spot. I love telling people about it. Enjoy the show.

Taylor Atkinson: Okay. Calling Wilson. Thanks for joining us. Pleasure to be here. So how would we like to just start our show connecting you with our listeners?
Just what's your perfect Friday look like? What do you do?

Colleen Wilson: Well, you know, the old thank goodness. It's Friday. I think we all feel that to some degree. I like to go into Friday thinking I'm going to wrap up a lot of loose ends from the week. Sometimes that happens.
Sometimes it doesn't. But in a perfect Friday, that's what would happen. A lot of things I knew from the beginning of the week that needed to get dealt with would feel like they were reasonably well dealt with, not that I wouldn't be working on the weekend, but I can work with a clear conscience, a clear mind that those things have been dealt with. So That feels like a good Friday to me. I still, like I said, we're Saturday and Sunday, but I like to know that I cleared off my plate what I intended to get cleared off by Friday.

Taylor Atkinson: Nice. And where are you geographically located?

Colleen Wilson: I'm born and raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I'm a Western Canadian Prairie girl. I've been fortunate to travel a lot, and I have a home in the US as well. But that is my home. That will always be my home.
And we keep our head office there, but my husband and I, our company, has operations in the United States. We have American companies. We they are American taxes and everything down there. And the extra tax we sometimes have to pay in Canada. That's a whole other conversation, but we do business a lot of places, but we're really ingrained in our community there, and I love Saskatoon.
And so that's still home to me.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Well, obviously, you love Kelowna as well because you're

Colleen Wilson: I love Kelowna.

Taylor Atkinson: We're here today in the studio, and we're talking about eminence.

Colleen Wilson: Well, I have a bit of a history here because I have my dad's family. A lot of them are in BC, and I have cousins here in Kelowna. I started coming to Kelowna when I was a little girl and I have wonderful memories of coming here. So the thought of developing here is great. My husband and I have done some commercial development here as well.
So I love Kelowna and everybody in my company when they get a chance to come to Kelowna is like, think I need to come to Kelowna, calling. Yeah. I I need to come on this trip. So we all love it here.

Matt Glen: Yeah. So is that why you chose Kelowna as a place to develop?

Colleen Wilson: My late business partner loved Kelown. I think it was one of his dream locations. He'd like gotten Beverly Hills. And he's Yeah. And I mean, it is a beautiful place to come and as part of Canada, which makes it easy.
Yeah. And we kind of have a model and this goes back to my husband and I we don't really wanna engage in any work in places that we don't enjoy going. So it's probably no coincidence that the places where we develop property, whether it's here in the United States, are places that we like because we assume other people will like them too. And so that was part of the impetus for coming to Cologne. And we thought there was a lot of potential here as well.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. And we will highlight, like, yeah, we did record an episode with Carl or your your late business partner. Awesome episode. We just love speaking with him so much. Like, the energy he had was dancing.
And the

Matt Glen: way he talked about m s two was Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: I was very passionate about

Taylor Atkinson: it. Fine. That's what's so important about presales is to learn the developer, which it's really hard to do when these big projects go in. So feel that's why, like, the podcasts are so nice. But Mhmm.
Yeah. You're obviously carrying on the project. And, yeah, you just wanna kinda highlight Sure.

Colleen Wilson: Well, I think something that we always believed in was before we did a project, we always want to put our head in the space of the person that we thought would be our target market to see if we were them what we would want. We did it when we built student residences at the university. We did it with every condo project. And even our recent apartment projects that we've done, we give people resort style living because we think if we were in an apartment, that's what we'd want. So we always do that.
So we try to imagine who our end buyer will be, who's going to be living there and what they want. So we become very inspired by who we're building for and also where we're building and everything we build, we try to make it fit with that part of the community. So with eminence, we're on the side of Knox Mountain Regional Park, beautiful area, we think is a super special location. It was not an easy project to get approved and developed because of how special the location is because you've got that feeling that you're in, you know, the Pacific Northwest, which being from Saskatchewan. We wanna feel that when we're here.
Right, the feeling of the mountains and the trails and that lifestyle. But we want to be close to the vibrancy of downtown, and we're like a six minute drive from imminent to downtown. So we get the best of both worlds. So we also want it to be cognizant though of something that would blend with the architecture of the mountains and would look good there rather than maybe just something that was a box.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Like, when I envision NOx, I'm thinking, hiking trails, dogs.

Colleen Wilson: You've got it. We're always pet friendly. Yeah. So every building has a beautiful view terrace on the top of the building that all of the residents of that building can use and enjoy. Part of phase three, there will be a clubhouse built with a pool of fitness center, some kind of facilities for outdoor dining and indoor self serve bar area, you know, beautiful pool and spa.
So it's going to have that resort feel and we've developed that concept. Initially, we tread into that with our apartment buildings where we have resorts still living and people really like it. We're course, taking it up a notch with condominiums where there's pride of ownership. So that comes with phase three. So we're just completing phase one now.
But even each building has this beautiful terrace and the views from that terrace are breathtaking. So I can already picture it. I can hardly wait to get the unit there, so I don't have to stand at the hotel, I'll have a home at Eminence when I come out, and sitting up on the terrace with friends and neighbors and enjoying a glass of okinoggin wine.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: I'm gonna try some of those wines or cup of coffee, you know? I and I'm a Chai tea latte drinker. Up on the terrace because the views are spectacular. And when Carl and I first walked on that property, we went, wow. Like, you know, we were kind of trying to envision climbing up and I had high heels on off the side of the mountain a little bit to see what it would be like like we're gonna have views from here out over the valley and to the mountains around and from the back, you know, literally the mountain is in your backyard, so the hiking trails are there.
You mentioned about dogs, they're we're all animal people at Meridian. And at Eminence. So it's all pet friendly. And what a great way to, you know, kind of enjoy some time with your dog going up the trails?

Matt Glen: Yeah. Eminence is built, like, right into the side of the restaurant?

Colleen Wilson: It is. When you're on the back, like, the mountain is there, you will see wildlife. Yep. Come by. We've seen some deer, and you are living in the Pacific Northwest right there.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: And at the top of that mountain is the late Kathleen. And it's a lovely hike, you know, off the mountain and it's part of our commitment to the community. We're building some hiking trails, one with each. Phase to augment the trail system that's already there. So it's great for the whole community.
But for people who like mountain biking and that, you can keep your bike there, just ride up the trails. So

Matt Glen: Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: If you look out the back, you've got the Pacific Northwest, you look to the front, you've got the Okanagan Valley in a six minute drive to downtown.

Matt Glen: So And the six minute drive to downtown, it's an easy drive.

Colleen Wilson: It's really easy drive. Kelowna is, you know, a great place to go. Enjoy going down to the Marina. And, you know, I've heard it describe this isn't me saying it. I've heard people say Kelowna is the Lake Como of Canada.
And it is. I mean, we don't have European architecture here, but it has that charm and that feel that Lake Como Italy has. Definitely has that. And I think it makes it super unique. I mean, the lake all the water activities in the summer, and then in the winter, you've got all these world class ski resorts and

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: Year round wineries. Yeah. I mean, wineries here.

Taylor Atkinson: When is occupancy for phase one? It's preseason.

Colleen Wilson: It's happening over the summer. People will be taking up residency in their unit somewhat. We call it as phase one of eminence this summer. So we'll start moving people in in July and then gradually Not everybody's gonna move in the same day in July. We'll have that in an orderly way.
But they will move in over the course of the summer. Yeah. I've moved people into apartments too many at one time. I I know we don't do that. We just wanna orderly everyone to get in and get settled in.

Taylor Atkinson: I imagine as a developer, this has to be like, I mean, outside, acquiring the land and kinda getting the vision for this has to be the most exciting part, like, seeing it come together.

Colleen Wilson: It is. And, you know, it's so rewarding even years later when you find a great fit for people because I was just in the store recently in SaaS the tune. A lady came up to me, introduced herself. And she said, you won't remember me. I thought, oh, you know, because I told you I worked a long time in TV, and I thought, did I meet her somewhere along the line in TV?
She said, no. I was one of your buyers in the first Hano project that you and your partner did in Saskatoon years ago. And she said, I just wanted to tell you, I just love living there. And she sold her unit at one point. Somebody talked during to buy something else.
So unhappy, she got rid of that and bought back into this place she'd originally been, and she said, you know, I just wanted to tell you, it it changed my life. It was wonderful. Another girlfriend of mine bought into our luxury condo in Saskatoon. She said moving there actually changed her life. And so that's what we want.
We want to enhance people's lives style. We don't just build buildings. We create the envelope for you to have a terrific lifestyle. We're a lifestyle company, really.

Taylor Atkinson: Nice.

Colleen Wilson: Yeah. That's pretty cool. We build your lifestyle for you. Cool. Yeah.

Taylor Atkinson: So I guess at this point, like, If people are interested, are you gonna have showroom up there?

Colleen Wilson: We do. We have our presentation centers open, and we have a model in addition to the presentation center. So people can go in, get a look at the finishes. People are telling us they really love the way our show home is looking. And they're free to go up.
We're open five days a week. We have people up there. I can't go through the hours right now, but go to our website eminenceliving dot c a. Yep. And you will see that, and we've got Josh and Chris and Karina up there, and they'd be happy to welcome people and give them a tour.
If you're a little interested or a lot interested, we're happy to see you and just show you what we're what we're doing.

Taylor Atkinson: And so availability in phase two and phase three, I guess when are those going to be coming

Colleen Wilson: So I still have a few select units available in phase one that are beautiful units. We are selling now in phase two, not in phase three yet. The market has shifted just recently. We've got a lot of sales activity going on, a lot of people coming to us. Both on phase one, but also on phase two.
So for people who are looking for something right away, phase one, for people who are thinking, you know, a move down the road a little bit, this is the reality. This is not a developer speaking. This is just the truth. Yep. Construction costs are going up.
That was even before tariffs. They're just going up. It's a reality. We've got our phase two price down. We've been holding the prices.
The reality is, I can't really justify building it. For what I'm selling it for now. So at some point, those prices are gonna go up. So now is the time to get in. When you buy in pre sales, it's always when you get the best deal because the developer knows you've gotta hang in there till it gets built.
And so you're getting the advantage, not only of pricing, but you also get the advantage that you can semi customized at eminence at that time. Once the units are built and done, you can walk in and see it, but it is what it is. People can now go and pick out their color scheme. We've also got a few options they can select from an options list or a few sort of different features in phase two. So they have the ability to really put their own stamp on it still at this point.
So great time to buy and like What happens is the developer's margin shrinks. Even if you put the prices up a bit, because our construction costs are going up more. Mhmm. So great time for people to buy in phase two now. We can feel people getting more excited again.

Matt Glen: You had, like, for example, buyers reach out since the GSE team rebate or

Colleen Wilson: We've had some questions asked about a lot of people seem a little confused as to how it works. Our sales team can certainly walk people through that. I think some people were hoping it applied to every new home, but it's for a first time homebuyer.

Matt Glen: Yes. We've talked about that one.

Colleen Wilson: Yeah. Best to I think people would have loved it if it had been, you know, more broadly extended. I think developers would have loved it especially because we love VC, but the environment for building condominiums and BC is not conducive to encouraging developers to build here. It's the cranes like we talked about that you see in the year around Kelowna, they're for apartments.

Matt Glen: Howard Bauchner: I think we're going to feel this because, like, and this is being built. There's a couple other condo buildings that are in construction, nearing completion, but there's like no nuance coming.

Colleen Wilson: That's right. People even kind of sitting and waiting, and some people want a single family home. Some people want a rental apartment for their main home. But there's a whole broad range of people that love condominium living. It's lock and leave.
So, young professionals like it. People that are empty nesters like it. Some of them go to Arizona, California, Florida, taxes for the few months of in the winter. Yep. They like it.
The odd times see a family. You know, we'll take a condo and a stack unit. It's not done as much here, but in big cities, you see that all the time. Not just townhouse families being attracted to townhomes. They also buy in development at our like more the apartment style extract units.
So there's a lot of people that really want condos and right now that product, developers are not interested in building it. I'm not sure if your provincial government is aware It would be great if they would maybe engage with some developers, find out why they're not being built. They say they want more housing built, then you've got to make sure you're covering all the bases, not just single family homes and not just apartments. There's going to be a lot of apartments here in Kelowna, but not everybody wants to live in an apartment.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. I mean, maybe you want to touch on this a little bit. Like, as a developer and the few that we've spoken to, it seems like VC is really putting handcuffs on you guys, like financially, is it really worth. It seems almost more of a passion project to be like, hey, we love

Matt Glen: to

Taylor Atkinson: just clone and build something, but, like, does it make sense and more ability?

Colleen Wilson: It doesn't. It's going to create a void in the market where there is no product like that. I'm still gonna be there because I'm, you know, trying to forge a head here, but I really wish the government would take a serious look at how developers rely on lenders, how that works when you have to tie that into how Red Mother Real Estate Marketing Development Act works, and how you have to have all your presales done within a year, or there's an opportunity for your buyers that are now supposedly committed buyers to rescind their contracts. It creates a whole feeling of uncertainty. It's not realistic to think that's gonna happen in a year.
And well, it's great to have offered buyer protections. I don't know that in the end, that's helping buyers have certainty either because a developer may just decide, you know what, this is a making sense. I'm not gonna do it. And that's what a lot of developers have done, and they've put other projects, condo projects on hold, some of them have abandoned them altogether. But like I said, we're there.
We're committed to seeing this done. And so I think at a certain point, people are going to go, oh my goodness, we want a condo. And there's not a lot of selection. But I think the government really needs to jump on that and have a look. And you know, sometimes when people are working in government, they're busy.
There's maybe a bit of a disconnect between them and what's really going on. I think it would be really worthwhile for your premier, his key ministers to sit down and talk to developers who are investing time and money and want to be a part of the British Columbia communities. And for us here in Kelowna, they're not making it conducive to us. We recently had the first minister's conference was held in Saskatoon and I was really hoping that your premier would be there because I was invited to some events where some of those people were there and there were connections. I was hoping to be able to have a few minutes to speak to him and because again, sometimes You need to enlighten them.
You need to make them understand from your point of view. This is not about being a greedy developer who wants all these things. It's just it's the reality of the way it is. The environment here is not great for people who wanna develop condos.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Can you maybe walk us through the presale process then? So you guys, obviously, you come up with your your design, you monitor the land, you propose it to the city, and then you have to release it in phases.

Colleen Wilson: And Right.

Taylor Atkinson: You have to meet a certain threshold showed of presale within that one year for phase one and the same for phase two.

Colleen Wilson: That's right. Or people get an opportunity to walk on the deal. But lenders are not prepared to say, well, you don't have enough presales, but we'll waive it and we'll say that you have your financing confirmed because you need to have your financing confirmed. And as with all lenders, they're looking for a certain pre sale commitment. Mhmm.
And you think you've got a certain number, and then all of a sudden, if you fall short by a few, that date comes up and now decrease all this uncertainty. And by the time a developer gets to that point, the amount of money you've got committed in land value, the cost of getting it to development stage, getting all your architectural drawings done, and then taking out the building permit, which triggers the development cost charges, the DCCs, it's like a tax, very expensive here in Kelowna, more expensive than I think any place, including places in the U. S. That we've encountered. So there's that huge charge on top of it also.
You've got all of that money in. And maybe even quite a few buyers that want to buy, but you're left in this limbo of uncertainty because of the way the government regulations interact with what lenders require to make it possible to build these.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. What would be easier solutions for that? Would it be, like, extending that year or decision period from a year to two years?

Colleen Wilson: Or That would help. It'd be

Taylor Atkinson: delaying DCC fees until, like, project completion.

Colleen Wilson: That would be a help, but certainly they've got to look at having a reasonable length of time for pre sales. I guess they're trying to protect the buyer. But if you're creating a situation of uncertainty where they thought they were going to have a unit and then other people, maybe their circumstances have changed. Now the developer goes, well, maybe it doesn't make sense to go ahead with it. You're really causing problems for some buyers.
So I think, you know, people need to look at their future and decide should I buy there. And then The developer has to have a realistic amount of time to get those presales. Other jurisdictions do not have that. Eventually, I have not encountered it in the US either. We've built condos in Washington, California.
I've looked at building condos in Florida, we built them in Arizona, nowhere have we encountered those kind of restrictive provisions. Perhaps all well intention for buyers, but when it gets to the point where developers don't want to build that product anymore, because that's one of many things that are plaguing the market. You've got flipping tax. Now as they like to call it, which I should point out, there's the two year hold period. So people who are interested in being an investor, they should buy pre sales because by the time you take possession, those two years will have passed.
Yep. But still, it's another. It just sounds bad. And for people that are buying units that are ready right now, they know they have to hold them for two years. People that are investing don't want restrictions on them even if they thought, well, I probably want to hold it that long.
Anyway, they don't like the idea that they're being told they can't. The other thing that's problematic is the vacancy tax. I have people where I live in Saskatchewan that have said, Colleen, we back condo from your side and seen, they know we have very well known reputation in Saskatchewan as quality builders. They go, we buy it from your side, and we love Corona. We love going there, but we don't want to rent our unit.
We wanna go out, when we wanna go out, we don't want to have to keep track like we're living in some communist regime, like how often we're there. We want to come and go to our vacation home and we don't want the vacancy tax. Another deterrent, then there's the federal foreign buyers ban. If California, Arizona, Florida, Texas, they all took that attitude. I don't know what would happen to their economies.
I mean, the snowbirds wouldn't be able to buy any homes down there. There are American buyers that have said, like, look how far our dollar would go in Canada, We'd love to come by a condominium to Canada sounds exotic to a lot of Americans. We have friends in Washington. They'd love to have a place up here. They ski.
They can't buy. They're prohibited from buying one more layer, so you'd start loading all these layers on in a seat.

Matt Glen: Well, I feel like these layers come on when the market's hot and we were in, like, kinda, was hot for a long time. But then when the market cools, it's just, like, a massive wait to try and get the industry out of this.

Colleen Wilson: I know. And yet, I'm sure that the premier wants the best for the province, but I think they need to engage with developers to really hear their side of the story and understand that they're making it so it's not conducive to both condos in British Columbia. There's still people trying to do it, but it's tougher in some areas than others. Columbia is not a huge market. So it's not like, you know, we'll build it and they will come.
You've got to be a little more strategic as a developer and when you're encountering all those hurdles most of which were not in place when we started building Mino's.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. But when we started

Matt Glen: this podcast, almost every week, so there's a new law or instance.

Colleen Wilson: I know. I'll tell you even some of the realtors I don't think clearly understand the way some of the laws work, like, Yeah. Who is actually a foreign buyer? And then they have language in the forums that is difficult. Like, you have to declare that you're not non Canadian.
Like, it's kind of a double negative Yeah. But you have to think about it for a minute and then decide. And I think that it's it's confusing to people. And I'm a believer very much in a more open market Mhmm. Free enterprise type person.
I think people should make their own decisions about purchasing.

Matt Glen: So, see, like so right now, we're in a bit of a spat with the US And there's a major brain drain

Taylor Atkinson: of jazz.

Colleen Wilson: It was bad. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Glen: I don't know if you've heard. But Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: So I've

Matt Glen: been thinking about this a lot, obviously. There's everyone else. But, like, there's an opportunity for a major brain drain from the US to the Canada. And we just have this stupid foreign buyers back that says, come here, but you have to rent in one of our billion buildings.

Colleen Wilson: You can't you can't buy a vacation home here. It's it's crazy. And I mean, this spat, trade war, whatever they wanna call it, we live in the longest undefended border in the world, you know, next to the United States. We are gonna be trading partners regardless. We will get it worked out.
I have great confidence that that will happen.

Matt Glen: Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: And Canadian and American people love each other. Like, it's not, you know, so we kind of end up being the pawns in the game as this stuff is going on and the Americans are trying to protect their turf and we're trying to project our turf. But in the end, we all know the reality is we have to work it out. I think it's great if Canada expands, you know, to other markets and finds other markets. That's always a healthy thing to do in any business.
Yep. But we are going to end up trading with the US. That's all there is to it. We live too close to one another, and we're so similar in so many ways. So we will get it worked out.
But why would we want to put your own ambitions up? I hear people say, oh, we don't feel welcome in the US anymore. Not true. I feel completely welcome in the US. And I'm happy for any of our US friends to come to Canada at any time.
Again, there's there that's created about it that serves certain purposes and that's just not reality.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah, we're in Mexico over the winter and actually have, like, Americans apologizing for tariffs. We're so sorry this is happening. Not your fault.

Matt Glen: Yeah. I

Taylor Atkinson: don't wanna support the government. I'm definitely not known to be, like, you know, applauding their efforts. But I do think some of these policies, like, have good intention. It has good intention. And, like, media wise, they're great for the media.
But if everyone just had their head in the sand and was not hearing about these policies, the market would be fine.

Colleen Wilson: It would be fine. I know. But they scare people.

Taylor Atkinson: That's all they need. You know, we've spoken to Brennan Ottenstein, chief economist, and I was just at a presentation in his last week. He's, like, the most charismatic Economist that reads he's so awesome. But his data on all of this, like, speculation vacancy, foreign buyers, like, it does not move the needle at all. It is a zero impact.
Other than this massive impact of, like, our mindset of, oh, no. What's gonna happen now?

Colleen Wilson: You know? I know, but, you know, we've seen the media do that before. And I say it with fondness because I've worked in media for many years. They have a lot of power and they have to be careful how they use it. And sometimes things are not represented exactly is they should be even the whole narrative about it being a trade war.
I think that was not an appropriate narrative. The American government did what they thought was right for the United States. Maybe they were just sending a wake up call If I were in charge, I would have reacted in a completely different way than they did. That's me. I think I would have been more successful reacting in a different way.
It will work itself out. There's no point in making bad friends, but actually as a developer, the thing that hurt us the most was when our country reput retaliatory tariffs on. That's when people really start to feel it. We were finishing a hotel in BC, and we were doing business with some American suppliers. It cost us.
I don't even want to tell you how much more because of the tariffs our government applied. For us bringing in American product.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Kind of on that. No. This is something that, like, is always interesting to me, but let's say somewhere in the prairies compared to somewhere in BC, like, cost per square foot or what it for that finished product.

Colleen Wilson: Mhmm.

Matt Glen: Why is

Taylor Atkinson: it I don't wanna say more affordable, but just, like, more cost effective elsewhere. Like, DC seems so expensive to do cost of business. It's a land acquisition or, like, labor or, like

Colleen Wilson: Well, your land is more expensive here. Your DCCs for a developer. I mean, people in retail businesses have a different set of rules. But for developers, those DCCs are brutal. Timelines are pretty slow here.
It's not easy, as easy to develop in BC as it is in a lot of other jurisdictions and codes. Codes.

Matt Glen: Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: Well, you know, the codes are getting, I think, more restrictive all the time. Even if Saskatoon, our city council has seen fit to take us to tier two for sustainability for new homes. Other cities are not doing that. I don't think they understand it's just shifting more costs to homeowners. You've got to be careful when you're trying to do all these sustainability.
Everybody's all in favor of it until it affects them. So in the end, if you have to tell buyers that this is going to cost you more, that's just one more deterrent. Right? And then they kind of blame the developer for it. Why is this costing that much?
Because there's code issues or environmental compliance or sustainability compliance issues that are costing us more to build it?

Matt Glen: You know, like, on Taylor's point, you see a house like, in Texas. I don't I don't honestly you're really

Colleen Wilson: behind that.

Matt Glen: Because I don't know those discussions on this. So, like, like but Texas, you see, like, this mansion Yeah. Like, forget how much acres is on, but it's, like, it's, like, a six bedroom just a massive thing. Yeah. And it's, like, six hundred thousand.

Colleen Wilson: I know. I saw that a lot in North Carolina. It was crazy.

Matt Glen: Yeah. Yeah.

Taylor Atkinson: I

Colleen Wilson: went there and I looked in their home magazine and these beautiful homes for sale for, like, a fraction of what we pay in general. Part of it is labor. Part of it, I think the labor is less down there. The taxes are not as bad in a lot of places in the US. California is another tough one to build in.
California and BC have a lot in common. Majority of people get their way, but the reality is when you look on the map, they represent just a very slender sector of that province Yeah. Or state, but they're the local ones that seem to get their way in there, the ones that have all the votes in their regions. But they both create an environment that are very difficult to do business in. Both California and British Columbia have a lot in common in that they are so beautiful.
They should have everything going for them in the world and they don't because of laws messing things up.

Matt Glen: Yeah. You

Taylor Atkinson: know, it's funny, like, I do have some clients that bring up the same point we're talking about. It's like, well, why would the market not equal them? Like, why should we see not come down at a home price. And I think it's kind of a compounding issue. Right?
Because if it is cost of labor, you know, that cost of labor, they have to live here. And it's expensive to live here. It's expensive to buy that home that they're building. So, like, we have to pay them

Matt Glen: to be able to afford

Taylor Atkinson: to live here. So, I don't see it ever coming down, like, the cost to bill. No.

Matt Glen: I don't think so. I don't

Colleen Wilson: think so.

Taylor Atkinson: It's also like, you know, you're comparing California and Kelowna and these beautiful and like Como. Like, you know, they're expensive places because they're beautiful.

Colleen Wilson: They are. But if I'm running the province, I'm going to want to encourage, you know, development in the province. And I think, you know, there's some people here too that are maybe not so interested in having it developed, but it will get developed. I mean, it's progress. It's what happens.
Right? And you do want to develop in a responsible and sustainable way. But again, there's a balance. So when code and regulatory requirements start imposing a ton of costs, it ends up shifting to the buyer in the end and puts housing at a reach. So the dream of owning a home becomes more difficult.
Know, for people.

Matt Glen: One is well insulated.

Colleen Wilson: Yeah. It's well insulated. That's right. It's well insulated. Cool.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: Cool. Yeah.

Matt Glen: Yeah. No. I agree totally. And I just when we're talking about affordability is, like, the name of the game seen in the last few years, and then he just Like a thing known as just adding more.

Colleen Wilson: Do they realize they're doing that? Or maybe we just need to sit down and have a face to face conversation with stakeholders Yeah. And government people making the rules so that they understand how in the end, it's affecting the buyer and not allowing them to buy. It's gonna get worse. That's why I say, now is a great time to actually buy before everybody realizes this shift is gonna happen.
People are going to go Okay. We feel things are starting to stabilize. We're starting to buy. We can feel it shifting now, but when that happens, there's not a lot of condos out there. That will drive the prices of what's available out.
Supplied demand.

Taylor Atkinson: Right? It is compliant.

Colleen Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

Taylor Atkinson: Right now, like, there's some saturation. There are some good deals to buy. But if no one's starting any new projects, you know, three years from now, there's not gonna be a lot of

Colleen Wilson: So if I were an investor, I'd point I'm gonna go into a condo project that's being sold now at prices now that's gonna be ready in a couple years. I don't have to close for, you know, two, two and a half years. I'm gonna buy it now, lock in that price. And in two and a half years, there's not gonna be a lot of other stuff because we know what's going on in the market. Supply and demand is gonna be worth more money.

Matt Glen: So to build on that a bit, like I told to agree. So you have that prices, like Dan just said, the price to bill is not going to go down. Like that. No. We're not going down.
Materials are not going down. The lab prices might come down, but they're not gonna come down a lot. Maybe, like, a correction of ten percent of some exchange is not gonna change the price without it. So the only way these condos are gonna get built in the future is when the market appreciates to the point where it can make sense for the developer again.

Colleen Wilson: That's right.

Matt Glen: So you're basically buying on the low end of where it's gonna go.

Colleen Wilson: That's right. So I think an investor came in and say about five units in a condo building now, presales knows that he's not gonna have to come up with that money for two and a half years Yep. Then those two years for the flipping tax to gone. Yeah. He's probably got it.
He or she probably has a great deal, where then they can sell it and make some money.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Right

Colleen Wilson: away, because there's just not gonna be any product around it. People are still gonna want condos and the pricing will have gone up. So if a developer starts to build one then, price can be that much higher.

Matt Glen: That's interesting too for evidence because all the other convalescent towns seem to be completing the next two to six months. Right? So, like, you're probably one of the few that are on the docket for the next two or three years.

Colleen Wilson: That's right. Yeah. And It's a beautiful project. We It really is. And we take a lot of pride in what we build and we take pride in meeting our buyers.
We've had a couple of buyer appreciation. Nice where we've met our phase one and some of our phase two buyers already. And That's great. Like, we like to know those people because like I said, they are actually the inspiration for what we want to build. Right.
The land, the community, and knowing who they are, and what we can build for them.

Matt Glen: And you're gonna be having a condo in there too, so you're still

Colleen Wilson: gonna Yeah. I'm gonna be there. There's no more I am.

Taylor Atkinson: There's any deficiencies in the document. Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: You know, and I stay at our friends' hotel when we're here. It's great hotel. We built it for him. Yeah. And we stay there, but it'll be nice to get moved in there and to be more a part of the community.
And have a chance to kind of live the life that we've imagined for our buyers. Like, I love coming out here and, you know, being able to hike up the trails my cats. I don't know if they're gonna cooperate as well, but I'm always up for a dog. For your other I would say my husband, your son, Bo wants a dog that's one of our cats. He loves dogs.
So I need to get a little dog and Yeah. Big dog, little dog, any dog at all. I'll do, you know, and spend some time on the trails, either that or teach Fin and Bo to lead better.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. But a

Matt Glen: cool situation with data developer in the hotels, you get to stay at all these places that you built over the years.

Colleen Wilson: Oh, yeah. That's like It was crazy the other night. I stayed last weekend. I was out in Chilliwack for our new hotel.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: I was the first person to sleep in the hotel. My husband was in the room already sawing a log. I was the first person to sleep in the hotel, and I got up two thirty in the morning and just walked around the halls. And I took a little video and I put it on social media. And I said, this is the weirdest feeling ever.
We're the only people in the hotel. He's sound asleep. I'm roaming the hallways at two o'clock. It didn't feel at all like the shining. Yes.
So, you know, it felt really good. But I actually locked the gate on the construction site that night myself and locked the front door of the hotel. Very strange. Yeah. And it is neat.
I know when we opened our hotel in Vancouver to be sleeping in there the first night we got occupancy and our just our internal staff were in there that night, but it was a it's a neat feeling. Yeah.

Matt Glen: Yes. So what hotel did you build in Plumbing?

Colleen Wilson: In Columbia, we built the Holiday Inn Express. We don't own it. Our partners pay our hotels. So we're partnering with another hotel. They convinced us to build that hotel for this.
So we stay there and I Yep. A little favorite restaurant in there, and Thor will give him a little flag there. It's great for you. Yeah.

Taylor Atkinson: Just to kind of close this out before we get into our wrap up questions. For for phase two of eminence, where are you guys at in the presales? Like, have you met your threshold?

Colleen Wilson: No. We haven't met it yet, but we're working on it. We've got actually five sales right now in progress. Like I said, things are starting to pick up. So we're hoping that we will, you know, meet that threshold and get there.
We're committed. We wanna get this done.

Taylor Atkinson: I would imagine that as a developer, you basically not sell at a discount, but sell aggressively to meet that threshold. And then after You're

Colleen Wilson: exactly right. So all the more reason this is the time to buy it. You know, I've come up with money for quite a while because it's the waste down the road till it's gonna be done. And by then, you can won't have a flipping tax issue. You'll have owned it for well, not owned it, but you'll have been under contract for more than two years.

Taylor Atkinson: And what percentage do you have to

Colleen Wilson: You know, it depends on the lender. Typically, you can expect fifty percent is pretty typical. Some lenders are a little more lenient. It just depends. It depends how much equity you're going to put in as well as a builder, but remember how much you've already got in by the time you

Taylor Atkinson: Mhmm.

Colleen Wilson: Buy the land, pay for your architectural drawings. Building permit. Everything's got to be done for that that process and pay your DCCs. You're in deep.

Matt Glen: Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: So that's why it's kinda hard to turn the ship around after. That's why we're in it and we're going forward. But I very much believe in the project, the more I come out and I see it looking so good where it is and our buyers coming over and really enthused at what they see. The reaction we're getting from people who are interested in buying now despite all this background noise of what's going on in the economy and everything. I think we will come to agreements with our partners to the south of the border, our trade partners, and it'll be good.
And in the interim, if we expand our market more, explore Canada a little bit more, that's all a good thing too. So it's all gonna be okay. But it's created this great opportunity to buy, so I've got some great units still left in phase one that people can move into right away and some wonderful units in phase two. And, you know, there's even in terms of condos, If people are looking for the cheapest thing on the market, that won't be us, but we're not giving you the cheapest finishes either. I think we're the best value in the market.
There's multi million dollar condos you can buy, but not everybody wants to spend that kind of money. On a home. So I think we did a demographic of a lot of people. Like I said, young professionals. We have some single people that have bought in there.
Younger single people, older single people. It's a very mixed group of people, but they're all people that I think have discerning taste. They're not out looking for the cheapest thing, but they're looking for value. And that's what we wanna deliver is really good value. I've never felt the cheapest thing, but I've always wanted to know that they're getting more than they expected.
And that's been the reaction we've gotten from people that have have seen that when we opened our sales unit, we were over on Saint Paul Street for a while, then we opened our sales center and model on-site. And that's the reaction we have from people and that's what I want them to feel. That we've taken the time and the care and I put some of the best people out there. I've got a terrific crew making sure that all the details are taken care of.

Taylor Atkinson: Well, we can't wait to come out and

Colleen Wilson: stay behinds. We'll have to come out and seeing

Matt Glen: I've been there a few times, but not lately.

Colleen Wilson: Bring your clients

Matt Glen: Yes.

Colleen Wilson: And you get the mortgages in place for them. And

Taylor Atkinson: we'll dive into our wrap up questions, if that's sharing with you. I mean, this one seems obvious, but maybe it's not if you could buy one property in the Okanagan in the next twelve months, what would it be?

Colleen Wilson: Would it include mine?

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: I would you know what? I would love to and we'll have a condominium in our project even at the end when all is said and done and it's built. I'd love to to have an Ontario love coming out to Kelowna. But if I took that off of the table, maybe I'd want a winery. Awesome.
But you know what they say about wineries? What do you call a billionaire after they buy a winery?

Matt Glen: A billionaire.

Colleen Wilson: A billionaire. Well, I'm no billionaire, so I can't risk that kind of downgrade, but I think it would be a wonderful idea to buy how wine is that? I have family that got in the wine business here many years ago, and I I'd like to be able to spend more time out here to explore some of that myself because I know that it's so great. I just love going down around the waterfront by king tops. And packed as gloves, all those restaurants there is beautiful.
And we found some other great places to eat. And the wineries have wonderful food.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: And you got some nice microbrews here as well.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. That's how I convinced my wife, Emily, like, we're relocating back from overseas to Kelowna. And I was, like, we could, like, live on a vineyard if we moved to Kelowna.

Colleen Wilson: Oh, yeah. I'm just gonna

Taylor Atkinson: I gotta plan a couple of cakes in the backyard.

Colleen Wilson: It's funny. Alright, Colleen.

Matt Glen: If you could give your twenty year old self any advice would it be?

Colleen Wilson: Expect the unexpected. I've been through it in space. You hear people say that, but it is the reality. Always hope for the best, but always have a bit of a rainy day backup plan because things can happen that you're not expecting. And always be in a business that you're passionate about because even when you're passionate about it, some days will feel like work.
But at least you're working in an area that you really like. So for anybody out there, whatever it is, they're passionate about, that's what they need to pursue. And then they need to figure out how to make their passion into their business. BMO has asked me to speak if they're celebrating women event or women in business. And I said, well, what do you want me talk about?
Just talk about your career, they said, and what inspires you. And the truth is I've taken all the things I enjoyed in life and turned it into business somehow. Like, I love design. I love building things. Even when I was a little girl, I loved looking at architecture.
But also loved animals. So our buildings are pet friendly, and I've combined a lot of things that I like to do the things that I enjoy. I've had young people come to me and say, I wanna be an entrepreneur. How do I do that? Well, the first thing is, what are you passionate about?
You don't just become an entrepreneur to sell widgets. You gotta wanna sell those widgets. You have to have a passion. Like, we never sell a condo that I would not live in myself. I don't build an apartment to rent somebody that I would not live in myself.
I can't do that. I don't build boxes. My partner and I didn't. My husband and I don't because I wouldn't be inspired living in a box. Mhmm.
So do something, whatever it is, whatever, you know, inspires you, do that, pursue that as a business, follow your heart.

Matt Glen: Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: Because you've gotta find a way to pay the bills. So you've gotta find a way to make what you love into a business that can sustain you.

Matt Glen: Good answer. That was a good answer.

Taylor Atkinson: What's your favorite charity or how do you get back?

Colleen Wilson: Well, I probably alluded to it. I do a lot for animals. My girlfriend and I ran an event pre COVID for fifteen years called pets in the bark. We raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for homeless animals. I like to do a lot of work with that.
My husband and I contribute to medical matters where someone in our family has been touched. By something that matters to me. And I enjoy the arts as well. So we've done things to support the arts, but I have to say children and animals are probably my weakness.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: My husband likes a lot of things related to kids support. There's no kid that ever calls them and needs some help with something that he says no, which I probably shouldn't say that publicly, but he does. You know? But we kind of work people that kind of like to see more tangibly what our efforts have done even with the animals. I love it when people come back and tell me stories of how something that we did or gave to them.
Help them with their animals. Even all my years, twenty five years in television, while I was doing this at the same time, people still come with me on the street and say, you know, call me remember where you did your segment to adopt animals for the rescue organization. I adopted that dog from you years ago or that cat, and that, like, changed my life, and it was, like, the best thing that happened to me. I love those stories.

Matt Glen: Awesome. Yeah.

Colleen Wilson: That is awesome. Awesome. So Emily's is Pat friendly, of course.

Matt Glen: Yeah. Well, that's great. Alright. How can Taylor or I or listener? Get back to you.
How can we help you?

Colleen Wilson: Well, we'd love for all of you. You two guys included to come out to our sales center and see our show home and eminence. Please come out. It doesn't mean you have to buy something. Just please come out and see it.
Maybe you know someone who would like to buy there. We want to be part of your community. Go to our website, eminenceliving dot c a. Our sales center is open five days a week. Spread the word, come see us.
If you see me on the street, stop me, people who knew me from TV often do. So come up and introduce yourself, I'm always happy to talk to people and watch social media. We're gonna share some social media. You guys are way younger than me. So this social media thing is still something I need people help me to understand, but I do know that it works.

Taylor Atkinson: No. We're not gonna social dance.

Colleen Wilson: Ours, you know, you people who do that. Right? You have Nikki and I have Nikki. Yeah. We have different Nikki.
So both Nikki. Yeah.

Taylor Atkinson: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on today.

Colleen Wilson: It's been a pleasure.

Taylor Atkinson: Yeah. Enjoy your stay out here until

Colleen Wilson: I will. We always look forward to our trips out to Kelowna, and they will be more frequent going forward. And yeah. And then I'll be out there with all of our buyers as well. Awesome.

Matt Glen: Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much.

Colleen Wilson: Thanks so much.