Team Lorraine Mondello sets up shop in Caledon, brings a familiar face on board as housing sales heat up once again

June 21, 2018 · 0 Comments

Written By CITIZEN STAFF

She just sold the most expensive subdivision home in the history of the Bolton market, and that’s not even the aspect of her business that most excites her.

Realtor Lorraine Mondello has opened a new location in the heart of Bolton and her husband, a long-time and well-known contractor in the area, is joining the company.

“We’re thrilled to have this new location,” she said. “We opened here at the end of April and there are four of us who work from here. We decided it was it was time, since we do so much Caledon business that we have our own space and our own location here and it has just worked out beautifully for us.”

The offices at 2 Holland Dr. are tastefully decorated and comfortable. It feels like the antithesis of a business space. Rather it’s much more of a place where one can sit, feel at home, and talk. That it’s located in Caledon is the cherry on the sundae for Ms. Mondello.

“I’ve been a realtor for 20-some-odd years but I’ve always had the base of business in Caledon. Over the past four to five years, though, it’s grown immensely where I was the No. 1 agent in Bolton for the last two years running No. 69 in all of Canada, so we’re really pumping out business in Caledon, that’s for sure. And we’re all residents of Caledon, so that works out very well. We don’t have anyone on our team at all, including our stagers, painters, cleaners that are not residents of Caledon.”

In fact, according to Ms. Mondello, her team holds 74 percent market share in Caledon.

As if things aren’t already going well enough, she is thrilled that her husband is joining the firm.

“It just got to the point where I’m just too busy to manage on my own, so what better a person to bring on board than someone who knows everything about housing?”

He’s been a contractor for the past 30 years, mostly working with custom railing, but Ms. Mondello said he can also build you a home from scratch.

“He’s a great person to bring in with us if a client has any questions, if they want to know if this is a structural wall, if this can be moved, if they can do that, so it gives us a bit of an edge above and beyond other realtors on what we can tell a client that’s going to be happening with their product when we go through.”

He also has a degree in social media, which will allow Team Lorraine Mondello to step that side of their business up to a new level. She said the reach of social media has been a game changer in real estate.

“It has changed it dramatically. I go back to the days where we had a briefcase and we picked the houses out of a little paper book,” she said with a laugh. “Now they do the research and they tell you what they want to see and they say ‘We’ll see you there.’”

As for the affordability of living in Caledon, Ms. Mondello said the prices have risen sharply recently, but they’re only now topping out at what they should have been all along.

“The prices have risen over the past five years dramatically, but I have to tell you that I’m a major part of what that happened because they were always far too low. When I started to work the Bolton market, I couldn’t understand why a house was $358,000, but when I went to Brampton it was $598,000 and it was nicer to live here. So they have dramatically pushed up I would say a minimum of 35 percent over the past four years.”

As for that expensive home, which sold for well over a million dollars, Ms. Mondello said, “That’s a nice feather in our cap.”

And so relocated and reunited with William, it’s on to the next happy client.