It’s Always About the People

Nicholas Carels and the story of Streetside Developments

Nicholas Carels grew up on a family farm in southern Manitoba and began his career with Pepsi as a merchandiser at age 15. He progressed through various roles, including delivery driver and sales representative, before joining a management training program in Calgary. However, he later reevaluated his career path and moved on to managing a restaurant at Fairmont Lake Louise, where he discovered a passion for real estate. 

After moving to Lethbridge and working in the hotel industry, he joined Qualico (Streetside Developments’ parent company) in 2008 as an assistant sales and marketing manager. Over 16 years, he advanced to vice president of Streetside Developments, driven by teamwork and a love for real estate. We met with Carels to discuss the changing trends of home building, the significance of the right team, and the three most important pieces to keep in mind when working in real estate.

Tell us more about Streetside Developments and what makes them a unique company?

We’ve brought ourselves from being a mid-sized home builder to the biggest builder in Edmonton over the last few years. Our team has this never-ending hunger to create the next new home that the market needs, and for us, there are three important pieces we’re always balancing: livability, desirability, and affordability.

We need to have all three to be successful. The livability part is creating a house to fit the family or the individual. Considering fundamentals like number of bedrooms and bathrooms, as well as parking. The desirability part means we want people to walk into the home and say, “I love this!” The third part (it may be the most boring part, but it’s also the most important) is that they have to be able to afford it.

We all love to tour these million-dollar lottery homes and they’re great eye candy. But for the great majority of people, budget’s a real thing and we have to be sure we’re building homes that people can afford and love. We often start with the budget and then ask ourselves, “How do we create a home that hits this price point while still meeting their needs and giving them something they will be very proud to call their own?”

Can you speak to the sort of trends you’re seeing in multi-family buildings?

When I started in Edmonton, we were a very practical market, both with single or multi-family housing. It was all price per square foot, or “I want the biggest thing I can afford.” 

However, when you walk into a 2,000-square-foot house with only two people living there, you can’t help but wonder if that space is being properly utilized or if this is just extra space that requires more cleaning, heating and taxes. One of the trends we’ve seen in multi-family housing is that buyers are more focused on getting something unique and nicely finished, instead of getting the biggest space possible. 

Our buyers want to travel and experience life outside of their homes too. They’ve travelled the world and they want to bring back trends and designs that they’ve seen abroad. This has led us to focusing on how spaces function and how they feel, instead of just how large we can go.

How can one capture a sense of luxury in a multi-family home type of house?

I’ll refer back to the balance of the three important points and say luxury is about mixing desirability with affordability. When it comes to desirability, we generally focus on the finishes. We have our interior design centre, Design Q, and they provide the opportunity to personalize and create that luxury component of our homes. 

The perfect home doesn’t need to be a 3,000-square-foot mansion. Maybe it’s an 1,100-square-foot condo that we dress up to the nines with Venetian plaster walls and ceiling medallions, or an elaborate fireplace. We’ve seen clients deck out garages to rival an auto body shop or create a spa-like ensuite you’d see in a 5-star hotel. This is where our homeowners can let their imaginations run wild. You don’t have to spend a million dollars for a home to feel luxurious; it’s through that experience of the communities and the space that allows our home buyers to focus the luxury where they see fit. All of this comes while being able to afford their home and their lifestyle. That’s luxury. 

What is your favourite Streetside showhome that you think our readers should check out in person?

My current favourite is our Hayes model in Uplands of Riverview. I’m a little more traditional and like the modern farmhouse style. The elevations throughout the community and the home itself is a very unique project for us. It is a 1,600-square-foot, detached home, but it is built on a multi-family lot, so it is a single-family home that is also a condo. It’s a very special space.

What has been the best part about your role at Streetside?

The gift of Streetside is the talented people I have been lucky enough to have around me, both within Streetside itself and then our parent company, Qualico. We use all that strength and all that history to be able to create the perfect home for our clients.

The home building business is actually a very simple thing. It’s land, money, and great people. Qualico is the biggest landowner in our city and so a big part of my job is often buying land. We’ve got a 74-year-old company behind us, giving us the financial strength and flexibility to go make it happen. But the great people—that’s the most important part of my job.

We have the right folks on the team doing great things and our team’s better than ever. I have a lot of fun working with all these people and they are a talented bunch. That is what I’m most proud of: the team that we’ve put together here. That’s been the best part, not anything I’ve done. It’s people. It’s always about the people.