Brothers’ firm gets CAFE award
Company prefers Sask. focus
The Probe boys, Tim and Wade, tell a story about their father, and how, even in retirement, he’d come to their workplaces and get them driving with him to Moose Jaw to take care of the family’s rental property there.
Looking back, they remember it fondly: Not only a chance to hang with their Dad, but a lesson in the importance of hard work and keeping busy — which paid off this week when their firm, PR Investments, was named Family Enterprise of the Year by the local chapter of the Canadian Association of Family Enterprise (CAFE).
The story of this firm, which owns and manages more than 425 suites in Regina, Moose Jaw, Fort Qu’Appelle and Yorkton, can be traced back to about 1984, when their farmer-father bought a 46-unit rental property in Moose Jaw.
The challenge was keeping it solvent. Interest rates in those days were over 20 per cent, the Saskatchewan economy was a mere shadow of what it is today and the building “was the worst you can imagine,” Wade recalls.
He jokes that if he’s not exactly enamoured of garage sales, it’s because he spent so much time in those days driving around Moose Jaw, shopping for used vanities for the apartments.
The battle to keep that building, and to constantly upgrade it, took almost a decade, but the brothers say it was a good training ground.
Tough — but they kept at it, with Wade still in university and Tim in his first job (at Xerox) because they figured it was something they could do weekends and evenings.
Focusing next on Regina, they and their siblings bought a six-suite apartment building, then a commercial building, and a string of other properties.
About a decade ago, they opened a full-time office, changing their business away from what Wade called the stereotype of the landlord as a guy who drives around collecting rents from people who try to dodge him, to something that was much more professional. Suddenly, the 24/7 demands were gone, tenants seemed to view them in a different way and life became easier.
“That was the key to enjoying the business,” said Wade, who added that “we have great management caretakers — and that’s the key to the success of this business.”
PR Investments has 19 employees, with Wade working as the firm’s controller and Tim as its construction manager and “on-site guy.”
The brothers — so finely tuned to each other that they can finish each others’ sentences — have no plans to go expanding, to, say, Calgary or Vancouver, preferring to focus on Saskatchewan.
They do, however, develop and rent executive suites (under the name of 2nd Home Suites) and take great pride in some of the buildings they’ve acquired and refurbished, with a test of, as Tim puts it, “would you let your daughter live here?”
They recently acquired an uncompleted Eastgate property that will be a mix of rental apartments and condos.
What’s more, they still like each other — a realization, Wade says, that “every decision that you make; it’s nothing other than a business decision — it’s not a personality decision.”