Million Dollar Sales Club
In 1967 the directors of the Edmonton Real Estate Board approved the formation of a "club" to be known as the Million Dollar Sales Club. The qualification for membership then was the accumulation of $1 million in sales "points" in three consecutive calendar years. Points equated to the dollar value of the selling price of a home. Thus, if a home sold for $40,000, then the listing and the sales broker were each awarded 20,000 points. The amount was set to be achieved at a time when the average sale price of residential property was approximately $16,000. The first club member was Fred Kurylo.
As land values went up, the qualifying time period was decreased, eventually to one year by 1976. In 1978 procedures were revised further. A formula was prepared to maintain the level of difficulty regardless of market conditions. The formula involved dividing the average residential sale price of the past year by the average residential selling price of 1975 (established as the base year) and multiplying the result by one million. Using this formula the qualifying amount reached $1,591,000 by 1979, $1,801,000 by 1985 and $2,556,000 by 1995.
In 1980, the directors established a Five Million Dollar Sales Club, and a Ten Million Dollar Sales Club effective in 1981. The qualifying volume for both clubs was fixed at five and ten million points.
This article is extracted from John Gilpin, Responsible Enterprise: A History of Edmonton Real Estate & the Edmonton Real Estate Board. (Edmonton: Edmonton Real Estate Board, 1997). The Heritage Community Foundation and the Alberta Real Estate Foundation would like to thank John Gilpin and the REALTORS® Association of Edmonton for permission to reproduce this material.