Former Calgary Flames legend Jamie Macoun gearing up for real estate’s busiest time of year

This is the time of the year when the Calgary Flames gear up for their most crucial part of the season – the run for the playoffs and a chance to win the Stanley Cup.

Realtor Jamie Macoun, with RE/MAX Real Estate (Central) knows how busy, important and critical this time of the year is for National Hockey League teams. After all, he was a legendary hockey player for 17 years in the NHL with the Calgary Flames, Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings.

And he was on the 1989 Calgary Flames’ team that captured the Stanley Cup.

Today as a realtor, he’s gearing up for the same crucial time of the year but this time it’s in the real estate industry as the market prepares for the flurry of activity in the spring and early summer.

“It’s kind of like a store in a mall. Even though the store is there 12 months of the year they seem to do most of their sales over two or three months. Making contacts, getting some listings and making some sales in the springtime and early summer is usually pretty important for a realtor,” said Macoun.

“You can survive for sure if you’re just selling the year-round but the buyers or sellers come out in spring. So now’s the time to get hot and get busy more importantly.”

Macoun’s interest in real estate dates back to the 1980s when he was playing with the Flames and he bought a RE/MAX franchise in the south part of the city.

“The NHL was a different beast back then. Many of the times that you came to the arena or whenever you played a team a year later, the turnover rate was pretty good. A lot of those players unfortunately were sent to the minors or out of the game completely,” he said.

“So I was always looking for an escape route – something that when I left hockey I could say that I got something out of it other than just the joy of playing hockey. So I did that.”

Then he got traded to Toronto where he played for a few years before being traded to Detroit.

“In amongst all those years I kept getting asked to sell it (the real estate office), sell it. So finally I did sell it and I then invested in other businesses. When I came back to Calgary I was doing a bunch of different things but I’ve always enjoyed real estate. So I’ve had my licence back for about five or six years,” said Macoun.

He has been with RE/MAX Real Estate (Central) for about a year now. Today, Macoun has licences for residential, commercial and rural real estate.

When asked what he likes most about real estate, he replied: “I just dropped off some paperwork for a young couple. They’re 23 and 25 years of age and they’re buying their first property. That’s the sort of thing that I really enjoy – the opportunity to help out. You’ve got some young kids there that really didn’t know much about real estate . . . So to be able to steer them in the right direction and help them pick the right property and get them into the housing end of things, for me that’s the real joy of it. I really quite enjoy helping people . . . The majority of the people really do need a little support and to be able to steer them in the right direction is great.”

Macoun said one of things he does is try to ensure that his clients don’t overbuy, especially younger prospective homeowners.

“When you put your head down at night, I want you to be able to sleep,” said Macoun. “That’s kind of my attitude. I’ve done the job if they can sleep at night after they’ve moved into their house or their apartment  or their condo.”

The fact that he is a famous hockey player whose name is very well recognized throughout the city can be both a blessing and a curse for Macoun when it comes to the business of real estate – but mostly a blessing.

“I got in front of people because of my name but you’d be surprised. There is a percentage of people that because I’m a hockey player will not use me because they don’t like the Flames. Seriously, I’ve had people say ‘well I’m not a Flames fan so I’m not going to use you’ sort of thing. But overall I think it’s a positive. It does open some doors and hopefully as time goes along it becomes less and less important,” said Macoun.