Brokerage Excellence
Oakwyn Realty Headquarters
Sponsored by Trail Appliances
REW Real Estate Awards
Brokerage Excellence award winner Oakwyn Realty Headquarters
Oakwyn Realty puts its core values into practice every day – putting people first, innovative service, creating a community, being real estate nerds, leading by example, pursuing growth and learning, embracing and driving change. With a team of dedicated agents, Managing Broker Shawn Kambo and Oakwyn Realty aim to bring their best to every client, every day. They lead by example in the industry and believe that if you “work hard and stay humble” you will win.
Oakwyn Realty started over 12 years ago with the mission to build a brokerage centred on community, learning and serving clients. “I remember going through the newsprint version of Real Estate Weekly and wishing to be in there myself, and now running a company that has won an award from them is amazing,” says Michael Uy, Managing Partner at Oakwyn Realty.
“We try to innovate and drive change in our brokerage,” says Morgan Browne, CEO and Partner at Oakwyn Realty. “That may be in the scale of education or it could be in our services that we provide, our technology or our brick and mortar offices that we present for our agents.”
Allowing agents to find their own path to success has meant that Oakwyn Realty consistently excels in attracting and retaining agents along with clients. “I find my creative outlet is working on my brand and figuring out how to market myself and be a little bit unique,” says member agent Pete Shpak. “They've got no problem with that. You know, that was a big thing for me when finding a brokerage. They're allowing me to be creative and be who I am and make something that I'm proud of.”
"It's all about the people at Oakwyn,” says Michael. “We’re values centred and principled, which produces great results for the general public. I'm really proud of our agents.”
They agree it's the people at Oakwyn Realty that make it such a great place to work.
Integrating technology and innovation into their work has allowed agents at Oakwyn Realty to go beyond the traditional brokerage model to serve their clients in personalized ways. “Any tool that helps the consumer to be introduced to real estate is really great,” says Michael. “Any tool that increases awareness of home ownership and pride of homeownership is a wonderful resource.” Therefore, any Oakwyn Realty agents are REW One Members, including Jenny Wun, Alec Abbott, RealTours cast member Adina Dragasanu and more.
But despite the brokerage’s many accolades and recognitions throughout the years, including numerous acknowledgements from The Globe and Mail as one of the fastest growing companies in Canada, Oakwyn Realty retains its commitment to staying humble. “I think that there's a reason why there's so many realtors, professionals that decided to be a part of our community. And a big part of that is because we're focused on putting people first,” says Morgan. “We believe in that mentality of work hard, stay humble.”
Pete can back that up with his experience at Oakwyn Realty. As he says, “I've seen a few different brokerage models and I've seen different environments to work in and all that, and after going through it all and being at Oakwyn, I just love it.”
Oakwyn Realty's listings
Vancouver
A Q&A with Michael, Morgan and Pete from Oakwyn Realty.
What it’s like to win an REW Real Estate Award.
How does it feel to be an REW Real Estate Awards winner? How do you think winning an award will impact you and your brokerage’s journey in real estate?
Michael: I remember going through the newsprint version of Real Estate Weekly and wishing to be in there myself, and now running a company that has won an award from them is amazing.
We’re very grateful, because of your history in the industry and REW is a great company that supports agents. We’re excited to attend the gala! It is positively going to impact our business and lead to attracting new agents. We want Oakwyn to be known for having the best agents in the industry.
Morgan: Well, I think that it's a great honour to be receiving this Brokerage Excellence Award, because I think REW really stands for not only the realtor, but also for the general public. So for us, it was wonderful news and it will impact us in a big way, because we do have a lot of agents that have enrolled in the REW One Membership. We encourage them to have a great commitment to the industry as a whole, but also to continue to push on innovation and personal growth. I think it will drive our mission even stronger.
Pete: The big thing right now is we’re relatively young as far as real estate brokerages go, but I think there's still a segment of the people out there that say, y’know, “I got to work with another agent” or whatever it might be, one of the older “typical” real estate brands. And I think just getting more exposure for Oakwyn in general is fantastic. Getting in front of a lot of people and showing how much business we do.
As the recipient of the Brokerage Excellence Award, what do you think led to Oakwyn’s success over the years, and where do you think it will lead?
Michael: It’s all about the people at Oakwyn. We’re values centred and principled, which produces great results for the general public. I'm really proud of our agents. They really care and they really want to see the clients succeed. It's something we take a lot of pride in.
Going forward, we would love to be BC's top-selling brokerage, but also be top-ranked in service and marketing. We want to be the local BC brand that wins the market, and awards like this are steps and milestones to achieve our target. We’re always looking to increase the quality of our service, marketing and commitment to clients.
Morgan: What has really led Oakwyn to success, or what our “secret sauce” is, is I think a couple of things. I think one is our really strong community of realtors and the culture that we're constantly trying to build off of and keep fresh-minded for our agents specifically. I think another big part of that is sticking to our core values.
A lot of people have missions and credos and slogans and core values. And that might just be something that they put on their wall. We live by that. We make choices by our core values. And it's really, I think, at the core of what Oakwyn is about.
Pete: It's really interesting. I really think it's kind of top down. Morgan and Michael and Arlene, you know the owners and the lead managing broker are just such wonderful go-getter people and they just seem to have endless amounts of energy, and they're always coming up with creative things to keep the group engaged, learning and make it fun. I honestly think it's just the people at the top are kind of infectious with their passion and love for real estate and growing the business.
What advice would you give others looking up to you after this win, and to other brokerages?
Michael: My advice for other brokerages is to really look at how to improve their professional development. Look at your core values and why they want to run a business.
For agents, it’s to be customer obsessed. Focus on buyer and seller journeys and stories. Nothing is too small to consider. I’d recommend getting granular in making your marketing and service plans. That's going to create a lasting legacy. And instead of being transactional, be transformational. Each client is going through something transformational in their life, whether they’re looking to buy, sell, upsize or downsize. Be their steward and create surprise and delight.
Morgan: We really set up our mission because we felt that there had to be a change in the way the brokerages were run. Thank you very much for even giving us the applause, but we do feel like we're a startup still. We just really stick with that servant leadership and the servant mentality. I mean, we believe that it's the soil that makes a really great farm, a great blossoming group. And for us, it's many different pillars that's in our community, our culture, but also in our brand and our education and our leadership, our managing brokers.
We really have that core credo of building on that servant leadership, making sure that we're serving to the best of our ability. And it's really about that at the end of the day. And we make choices for that.
That's my biggest advice. Definitely just lead with that servant mentality. And I think you'll do wonderful.
Pete: It’s a bit tricky because there's so many different types of agents in our brokerage. I really love our brokerage and I obviously didn't start here, but for people that are new to the industry, I think that we really do provide some amazing support for new agents. We have something called Oakwyn University, which kind of guides people through the beginning; y’know, you get your real estate license and sure you've got a license to sell real estate but all you've really learned is how to cover your ass and not get in trouble in real estate.
And then they say “okay here's your license,” and you really don't know how to prepare a listing or how to host an open house or how to create a database or client connection and ongoing relationships and make those contracts work. So I really feel that for entry level agents, they've got an amazing program to get people on their feet and running in the right way. For people that are joining that are more sophisticated and savvy, I really think the value proposition is good.
But because we have so many agents now, the value proposition is quite good. I look at some of the other models and how much they charge on a per-deal or percentage and stuff it, and it just doesn't make sense to me. And I think Oakwyn has done a really good job of scaling up and making it just a really good value proposition. I don't want to say it's “cheap” because that's definitely not the right word. But, we've definitely created a lot of value with the brand, and it's not overly expensive; it's not going to break your bank account. And you're getting a lot of return for the money that you're spending with the brokerage.
Quote
25/05/2025
“We really have that core credo of building on that servant leadership, making sure that we're serving to the best of our ability. And it's really about that at the end of the day.
Morgan BrowneCEO and Partner at Oakwyn Realty
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Oakwyn Realty Headquarters
Name
Oakwyn Realty
Office
Headquarters
Address
3195 Oak Street, Vancouver, BC, V6H 2L2
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Phone
604-620-6788
Awards
2025