Marcus Boekelman

Marcus Boekelman didn’t learn the Toronto market one sale at a time. He learned it by helping bring roughly 15,000 homes and condos to market through some of the city’s most significant developments.

Growing up in Toronto, real estate was in the family long before it became his career. His father was a broker and small-scale developer, and Marcus went on to study urban planning and economics at the University of Toronto. He also spent three seasons as a running back for the Varsity Blues, which taught him early how to take a hit, keep moving and perform under pressure.

After getting his real estate licence, Marcus took an entrepreneurial detour, opening some of Toronto’s well-known nightlife venues, including Element and Habitat Lounge on Queen West, before joining the team at Ink Entertainment. Running a packed room at 1 a.m. and hosting massive events teaches you a few things: how to read people, build relationships, protect your margins and stay calm when things get crazy. As it turns out, this was great preparation for the residential real estate bidding wars to follow.

Marcus later moved into commercial real estate during the early transformation of King West, then transitioned into development. As VP of Acquisitions and Development, he oversaw project planning, sales and marketing for several leading Toronto builders. He was in the room when the biggest decisions were being made: which land to buy, what to build, how to position it, how to price it and how to bring it successfully to market.

More than 15,000 units went to market with his involvement. That experience gave Marcus a perspective few residential agents ever develop. He understands how a pro forma is built, how to assess risk, why a floor plan looks the way it does, the importance of community, location and building quality, where value gets created and where it gets lost. He can spot an overlooked opportunity and is an expert in finding and creating real estate value.

Marcus continues to focus on residential real estate for a simple reason: his passion and dedication to working directly with people. Development and sales of an entire tower project is ultimately a numbers game. Helping one person or family make the right move for life’s biggest investments is personal. That is where Marcus does his best work.

Condos, lofts and townhomes are where he built much of his expertise, but Marcus is far more than a “high-rise guy.” Whether he is evaluating a detached home in Rosedale or a hard loft in King West, the questions are fundamentally the same: What are the client’s long-term goals? Where is the real value? What are the risks? And how do we execute the plan properly?

Clients trust Marcus to see the bigger picture while staying fiercely focused on their interests. After more than 25 years in real estate, he has worked through very different market cycles and sat on almost every side of the negotiation table. He knows when to push, when to wait and when the best advice is to walk away.

Marcus is relentless when it matters, but never for the deal’s sake. His goal is to help clients make decisions they will still feel good about years later.

Outside of work, Marcus is usually on the water or around a table with friends and family. He is a lifelong sailor, racer, instructor and member of the Etobicoke Yacht Club. Muskoka is his second home where he loves to spend time with his wife and daughter, or on his restored 1960 Shepherd runabout, the kind of boat that rewards patience and punishes shortcuts.

He cooks, hunts down new restaurants and unfamiliar cuisines with the same seriousness other people bring to their investments, and travels to the Caribbean and Europe whenever he can. He has also been to Ibiza 24 times, which he considers entirely reasonable.

Marcus works hard so he can enjoy it all with the people he loves, and he is not particularly shy about saying so.