Three real estate industry veterans have pooled their talents to form Pathmark Partners, a strategic advisory firm focused on helping organizations navigate growth, complexity and change.

Howard Drukarsh is the co-founder of Right at Home Realty, which opened in 2004 and grew to become Canada's largest independent brokerage with more than 6,000 agents. He’s also served on the board of directors for the Real Estate Council of Ontario and as a director with the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board.

Dan Steward was the president and chief executive officer of Pillar To Post and led the company to become the top home inspection franchise in North America, with more than 600 offices across 49 American states and nine Canadian provinces. He also spent more than 15 years as a member and group leader with CEO Global Network, where he mentored and advised CEOs on leadership, strategy and business performance.

Adam Price is a marketing and technology executive with nearly two decades of experience building and growing real estate brands, brokerages and technology platforms across Canada and the United States. One of his positions involved working with Drukarsh as marketing director of Right at Home Realty.

“The three of us came together on another initiative where somebody brought us together for advice and input, and that was fun and enjoyable and we helped that business advance,” Steward told RENX in an interview which included all three men.

“We all come from a place where we'd like to help other people and that gave birth to this idea that we could come together and help realtors in certain ways, brokers in certain ways and team leaders in certain ways.”  

Pathmark is attracting early interest

While the company is new, several organizations across real estate and adjacent sectors have already reached out to discuss the issues they’re facing and how the diversity of experiences and skills offered by Pathmark can potentially assist them.

“Our story is three very experienced, highly successful entrepreneurs taking time to help others,” Drukarsh said.

Pathmark is looking to work with:

• independent brokerages looking to scale or evolve;
• franchise and regional operators navigating growth or transition;
• ownership groups preparing for succession or structural change; and
• proptech companies and real estate service providers seeking real world industry insight.

“The real estate industry isn't going back to whatever it was,” Steward said. “It always goes forward to whatever is next, and frankly that's kind of the fun of the industry.

"You get demographic changes, you get economic changes, so we will continue to learn and you’ve just got to shape-shift to find out how to be successful in whatever the conditions are.”

Pathmark’s services

The three primary areas of services offered by Pathmark are:

• partnering with brokerage leaders to build and scale their organizations, covering areas from multi-office expansion to compensation design;
• advising CEOs and executive teams on strategic planning, board effectiveness, succession and navigating the complexities of franchise expansion, acquisitions, recapitalizations and exits;
• and advising on brokerage marketing strategy, lead generation systems, technology stack evaluation and the practical integration of customer relationship management, transaction and artificial intelligence platforms into existing operations.

“Some consultants say, ‘Here's our menu, this is what we do and we're going to tell you what you need from us,’” Price observed. “We're not going to work that way. We're going to assist them in trying to find out exactly what their challenges are and how we can use our knowledge to assist.”

“Our business model is more like a subscription service,” Drukarsh added, noting Pathmark can help companies modify their own business models “enough to help them survive and to address challenges in their individual markets.”

Technology and proptech

With the proliferation of new technology becoming available to people in the real estate industry, one of Price’s roles is to guide them in discerning what tools will be the most helpful, and potentially eliminating expensive contracts with third-party providers of services that aren’t being used effectively.

“It's very important to be able to navigate that and provide some assistance,” Price said.

“In the proptech world, there are a lot of ideas and there's a lot of great product development, but there’s a gap in linking that to a customer who uses it,” Steward said, adding he believes Pathmark can help bridge that gap between proptech and real estate companies.

“We're there to provide expertise to save people from making big mistakes,” Drukarsh added.