Scott Ullrich
Vanessa: I want to thank you, Scott, for inviting me to your beautiful home. Congratulations on being named a Real Estate Legend.
Scott: Thank you very much. It’s very humbling.
Vanessa: It’s very well deserved. I want to talk about your beginnings because I know your parents grew up in the industry, and you followed suit. Then you decided on a different path. Talk to me about what it was like growing up in the real estate industry with your parents.
Scott: It started in 1964. I was five years old. My mother and father, Bert, 19, partnered with a gentleman, Harry Gillespie, and his son Ken. Ken and Harry were developers and builders of multi-family rental buildings. My parents have a property management background. They partnered up to form what became Gateway Property Management. I was an only child. Because both my parents worked, I tended to follow my mom and dad throughout the business. At one point we had a fire at one of the complexes at three in the morning. I got out of bed to drive to the fire and they told me to go sleep in the back seat. In high school I worked summers, doing janitorial work and painting. I was a lifeguard at one of the pools. I pretty much grew up with the property management background. At the dinner table, that’s mostly what we talked about.
Vanessa: You didn’t exactly jump right into property management. You have a bit of an alphabet soup going on after your name. Let’s go over some of the designations. You have a BA, a CPM, a CPA, and I hear there’s more.
Scott: I have a diploma in urban land economics as well. When I graduated high school, I got accepted into the University of British Columbia. What they called urban land economics was a real estate course. It was a five-year program. This has never happened before and never happened since, but for the midterm in the accounting 101
course, there’s 400 people in the course, I got the top mark in accounting. I thought, now this is easy. I made the decision to switch over to accounting. I wanted to switch universities because I could do it in four years at Simon Fraser University. I did the four years, got my Bachelor of Arts with a major in commerce or business, and articled with a firm called Deloitte for three years, which was the minimum amount you have to article. I wrote my exams, got my chartered accountancy designation, and then realized that accounting wasn’t for me. I went back to UBC and got my diploma in urban land economics. I’m a fellow of the Royal State Institute of Canada. RC is for registered condominium management and the CPM is for certified property manager.
Vanessa: You took all of those and decided to go back into property management. You became the controller at Gateway Property Management. Tell me about the journey coming back to the industry. What was that like?
Scott: After I got my management economics diploma, my father said, “Time to come back.” I came back and started at Gateway as the controller. About a year after that, I indicated to my father I’d like to get a small portfolio and do property management as well. And then I got involved in doing the marketing and started working on bringing in clients. I started in 1983. In 1984, I brought in our second client. That turned out to be our largest client, more than 5,000 units over the years. My parents retired in 1990. At that point, I became president of the company.
Vanessa: Now you are with Tribe because there was an amalgamation in 2021. They handle 50,000 units and over 2,000,000 square feet of commercial property. Talk to me about how this merger came about.
Scott: Tribe Management is a wholly owned subsidiary of a proptech company called Tribe Property Technologies Inc. I was introduced to
them in 2019. They were turning into a major competitor of ours. They were a startup company but growing exponentially in the Vancouver market. They had a lot of technology I wanted. They started to buy up management companies. They wanted to buy me. A friend and business associate of mine got me and Joseph Nakhla, who’s the CEO for both companies, together and throughout 2020 for the better part of the year during COVID we hammered at it. On December 31, 2020, I signed over the company.
Vanessa: It’s been 42 years you’ve been in this industry; that’s a long time. What keeps you motivated?
Scott: In our industry, no two days are alike. Every day is a new day. Everything’s a new challenge every day. Some simple and exciting. Since I sold to Tribe, I initially moved away from the operations side and got involved in acquisitions and we’ve acquired a number of companies over the last four years in British Columbia and Ontario, plus portfolios from other management companies. About a year ago, I got back into operations temporarily. I’m running both now.
Vanessa: I know your motto is “Managing with integrity, delivering with excellence.” Talk to me about what that means when it comes to the real world, especially in high pressure situations.
Scott: Our business is always high pressure. We’re absolutely there. We don’t set management fees or rates. The market does that. Our focus is on churn. What we want to do is provide the best possible service to our clients. Number one, I think we’ve done a good job of that. We have a number of clients that have been with us in excess of 20 years. The first two buildings we managed back in 1964 are still with us to this day. It’s turned out to be profitable for us and for them.
Vanessa: Let’s talk about more of the personal side of things. I know you love the open road. From what I understand, you’re a member of the Iron Butt Association. Recently you did a thousand-mile ride from Surrey to Palm Springs, California. How long did that take you, and what were you thinking while making that journey?
Scott: How stupid. I was about to join the other bay association. You have to do a thousand-mile continuous ride in 25 hours or less. I left the house at 5 a.m. on whatever day it was, rode 18.5 hours to Palm Springs, straight line. I stopped for coffee, coffee, and more coffee, a little bit of gas, an occasional bio break. At the end of it all, my hands
were like this for about five days before I could really straighten them out.
Vanessa: Let’s talk about your beautiful family. You have a beautiful wife and three daughters. Talk to me a little bit about them. What do they think about your very full life?
Scott: My lovely wife, Cheryl, we actually met at Gateway. Cheryl started there in 1994, and in 2001 we got married. She is the rock behind all of this. I contribute a lot of the success to Gateway and the growth, the Gateway funding, from her support behind me. I have three lovely daughters. All three have graduated in business and various roles. My two older daughters are in sports management, my oldest is the director of communication for the Vancouver Canucks. My oldest is Victoria. My middle child, Sabrina, is the manager of academy operations for the Vancouver Boys Football Club. My youngest daughter, Samantha, is in finance with Manulife Wealth in Montreal.
Vanessa: What do they think of all of this?
Scott: They definitely support me. If any one of the three had any interest in how to manage, I would have never sold the company. But they had their directions. They wanted to go. Of course, I would never stop them from doing that.
Vanessa: We talked in previous conversations about work-life balance, and you said you’re still working on trying to find that. How do you balance hobbies, ambitions, passions, work, and family?
Scott: It’s a work in progress. I’m still a bit of a workaholic. A couple of years back, we decided we’re going to do a bucket list vacation every year. The first year we decided to hop on down to Antarctica. I thought you would definitely be away from work and all the rest of it, fortunately or unfortunately. Thanks to Mr. Elon Musk, they have satellites. I was doing a couple of Teams calls from the cruise ship. We’re working on it, but it’s getting better all the time.
Vanessa: When you’re not in meetings or riding your bike, what can we find you doing?
Scott: I love hockey. My wife and I recently got involved in pickleball. We do that, and the rest of the time is basically relaxing with my wife and the kids when they’re over.
Vanessa: Very nice. I see you got a pickleball court here behind you.
Scott: We installed that during COVID to keep us busy.
Vanessa: With everything you know now Scott, if you could go back and tell your 12-year-old self something, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Scott: I’m not sure I would change much. I think I would tell my 12-year-old self that when you get older, you start looking to invest more, give up as much as you can. Don’t be in a huge rush to necessarily sell it. Outside of property management, the acquisition of real estate has been very beneficial for myself, the family, and I’m proud of it. I wish I did more of it.
Vanessa: I know you’ve said retirement isn’t in the cards for you yet, but you may take a step back. Maybe take a board seat. What do you think your five-year plan is?
Scott: I have no intentions of leaving Tribe Management anytime soon. I’ll probably be looking for a successor, certainly on the operations side. I hope to continue with the acquisition side of what we’re doing. But I also would like to get more involved on boards. I’m currently on two committees with the Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia, their Finance committee and their Impact Investment committee. I’ve done that for a few years. But I’d like to expand on that a little bit for the industry and get involved in some corporate boards as well.
Vanessa: Let’s talk about the industry. Forty-two years you’ve been in the industry and seen it go up, down, and all around. How have you seen it evolve?
Scott: If you’ve ever seen the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” there’s a section where a property manager is referred to as the rent collector. That’s how this industry started. When I started with it, there was overseeing the property and not much else other than maintaining and collecting the rent. But, as legislation changed, we
had to become a little bit more qualified lawyers, paralegals, and experts on capital expenditures. As markets changed, we had to get involved with marketing. Today, social media is a big part of what we do. We’re spending a lot of time on artificial intelligence right now. As property managers, I like to say we’re generalists. We know a little bit about a lot of stuff, but the lot is getting a lot and a lot and a lot more.
Vanessa: What advice would you give to somebody who wants to start out in this industry?
Scott: You want to build strong relationships with your clients, employees, site staff, trades, and suppliers. You want to master the details. It’s important. Our industry involves building trust, communication, and consistency. Always be curious and always be professional and treat every property like it was your home.
Vanessa: I want to wrap up this interview, Scott, with a little game. I know you’re a wine lover, so I’m going to call it Scott Uncorked. Are you a cat or a dog person?
Scott: Definitely a dog. Especially if it’s a golden retriever.
Vanessa: Favorite movie of all time?
Scott: Casablanca. What’s not to love in a bar. You fall in love.
Vanessa: Is there a bucket list place that, if you could ride your motorbike, you would like to go?
Scott: There’s a group of us, we have a local motorcycle club, and we always do a trip. In September of 2019, we were going to do Switzerland and northern Italy, which was a hotbed at that point in time for COVID. That trip got cancelled, or I should say postponed. It’s still on my bucket list, and I’m hoping to do that in the not-too-distant future.
Vanessa: Scott, you’ve built an impressive legacy. You are as comfortable steering a company as you are a motorbike through a thousand-mile ride. It’s very easy to see why you were named Real Estate Legend, and I want to thank you again for having me here, to your beautiful home and to meet your wonderful wife.
Scott: I absolutely enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
Vanessa: Thanks so much, Scott.
