Fred Waks likes to joke that his family was so deeply enmeshed in the real estate business, they practically "threw a game of Monopoly" into his crib. Even so, he never developed a passion for real estate early on.
His maternal grandfather, father and brother were all in the property industry, said Waks, now president and chief executive of Trinity Development Group. "My grandfather was a financier. My father was a developer. I had no interest in any of it. I cleaned out catch basins for my father one summer, and thought I would never do this."
Thinking back about the younger version of himself, he jokes he was "too busy having fun" before meeting his wife Linda 44 years ago in university. Then he realized it was time to choose a career.
"My wife was doing her Ph.D. One of her brothers was doing a Ph.D. and another a master's," Waks said in an interview. "They were a very ambitious, competitive, and successful family, and I realized that if I am going to keep up with them I better get my stuff together. I needed to challenge myself."
Waks graduated from the University of Toronto, and he figured if there was a pathway to a successful career, it was on the road his family traveled. So, he went in the real estate business, albeit in his own way.
His first professional real estate memory was taking a client down to his property in Grimsby about a 100-kilometre drive southwest of Toronto, said Waks, who had initially owned a Jeep. "He had a broken arm and couldn't get into a Jeep, so the next day, I bought myself an Oldsmobile."
Diving into real estate
Around 1980 when he was in his early 20s, Waks worked as an office boy driving people around for $12,500 a year, an advance against commissions, But he took the job because he wanted to be with one of the top real estate agencies and an industry legend named Rick Matthews, who was working at Royal LePage Commercial at the time. He had to wait six months for them to hire him.
"I wanted to be with the youngest, most successful person, and I told him I would do whatever I had to do," said Waks. "The first thing I had to learn was how to get up in the morning because you don't learn that not working."
Waks quickly found the success he was looking for, being named LePage's "rookie of the year at commercial." One of his strategies was to sell any property, even those that "no one else wanted to take," including a school he once sold to a charitable foundation.
"I would take on anything," said the executive who stayed at LePage for over three years. "But I knew I didn't want to be a real estate agent" five years later.
One of Waks' clients, who owned the Lawrence Plaza and the Dixie Value Mall, asked him for some advice on selling the shopping centres. Maybe against his own interests, he told the client not to sell right away because the price would be impacted by the space being 30% vacant.
That was in 1984. Waks had an offer for his client for $11 million for Lawrence Plaza and $14.5 million for the Dixie Value. The client agreed not to sell immediately. Six months later, Waks was named the first vice president of leasing and marketing at First Plazas, the client that owned the properties.
Years later, Lawrence Plaza sold for $55 million and Dixie Value for $85 million, the latter including some additional land.
"I made my first million-dollar commission," said Waks. "The malls had to be repositioned, and it was hard work. Today, it all goes through a broker." Waks said he went on to complete 60 deals at Dixie Value Malls, "and only one was through a broker. It was hustling."
Desire to lead
Waks said he recognizes he came from an affluent background, but he still did whatever he could to get ahead: "I had no discipline, so I did anything for discipline," he said, adding that he would even "change my boss's tires."
Waks eventually landed a job at RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust in 1995, when it had just eight employees. He left the retail landlord giant in 2014 after rising to president and chief operating officer.
"It was a perfect combination working with Eddie" Sonshine, said Waks, referring to the former CEO who still serves as chair of RioCan. "But it was time. I wanted to lead my own thing."
In January 2015, Waks joined Trinity. John Ruddy founded Trinity, a firm that has developed over 32 million square feet of retail, commercial and residential space. These days, Waks is raising money and just finished one fund that bought $250 million in real estate. Now Trinity is trying to purchase another $400 million of real estate with a second fund.
While he may not have played much Monopoly, Waks knows his family background weighed heavily on his eventual career and his first job.
"No question it had an impact, and all my friends were in real estate," he said. "I knew I would love it because it's always been the dealmaking. The transactions."
The one thing he has learned in his first job and others that he would pass on as sage advice to Trinity's 45 employees is that "nothing replaces hard work and there is nothing that replaces always doing your homework," Waks said.