Adrian Bell, Century 21 Prospect Realty

08/07/2026

🛠Come work with us! As of August 1st, Century 21 Prospect Realty is officially in the property management business! We're managing six apartment buildings, formerly owned by Northview, in downtown Yellowknife.

Over the next two years we'll be managing an ambitious schedule of renovations and improvements to units and building envelopes (windows, siding, roofs, etc.). But we can't do it alone! We need the help of building maintenance technicians!

These positions are employees of our client, Balto Capital Inc., but report to myself and C21 team member Sasha Maksimovic. Please share!

Location: Yellowknife, NT Company: Balto Capital Status: Full-time, permanent About Balto Capital Balto Capital is a fast-growing private lending and real es

07/31/2026

Busy days, and I don't want to bore people with my editorializing on this particular chart, so I'll just leave this here. Long story short, we have an insanely low level of housing construction (the red line) for a town in the grips of a housing crisis. Source is CMHC's recently released Northern Housing Report.

07/29/2026

Fun with AI on a Tuesday night. I'll just leave this here for all my Yellowknife and Northwest Territories commercial real estate people.

07/21/2026

Have you or has someone you know had to leave Yellowknife, or had to turn down a job here, because you couldn't find suitable housing? And by "suitable" I don't just mean price, but also the type of housing - size, shape, neighbourhood amenities, construction style, accessibility, whatever the case may be.

I just had a call from a local CBC journalist who would love to speak with anyone who has had this experience. If you or someone you know would willing to be interviewed, on or off the record, please let me know, share this post with them, or DM me your contact info and I'll pass it along to the journalist.

Thanks!

06/10/2026

This was great work last week by MLA for Range Lake, Kieron Testart. His motion was aimed at breaking up the log jam that is the GNWT land transfer process, which is clearly keeping the City of Yellowknife in a perpetual land and housing supply crisis. In his statement following his motion, he made several points that I hope will be repeated by others who are equally concerned about this issue. I particularly liked this passage:

"We must confidently assert that the boundaries go both ways. Interim land withdrawals draw a definitive line in the sand. Inside the withdrawal, land is unavailable for any kind of development or disposition until land claim negotiations are finalized. Outside the withdrawal, on the other hand, regular governance and economic development must continue, whether in the city of Yellowknife or any other community in the Northwest Territories."

Thank you, MLA Testart, for standing up for Yellowknife and for your efforts to put an end to the myth that "when it comes to the management, lease, or sale of public lands in the NWT, the government's hands are tied."

This Hansard is the unedited transcript and will be replaced by the final copy soon (generally within 5 business days). In the meantime, direct quotes should not be used, when the final is published it will seamlessly replace this unedited copy and any existing links should still work.

05/26/2026

The NWT Chamber of Commerce's new website is up and running! It's hard to think of a time when the businesses of the Northwest Territories have needed a unified voice quite like they do today. Please consider signing up, and join us at the AGM on June 23, 2026 from 10am - noon at the Genesis Room in the Nunasi Building. Big things ahead for the NWT Chamber of Commerce in 2026 and beyond!

Fostering sustainable and progressive business growth through strategic networking and partnerships for businesses in the Northwest Territories.

04/15/2026

Sometimes City Hall gets it wrong. And sometimes the development community gets it wrong. As Yellowknife City Council prepares to review the draft Community Plan today at noon, I want to share a couple of anecdotes that will hopefully remind Council to try to steer the ship without oversteering.

Developers and builders (and real estate brokers...) often complain that the City is trying to do to much - trying to socially engineer our city in ways that make development too challenging. They need to simply go away, and let the market dictate what gets built. But we've seen, right here in our city, what happens when developers are left to their own devices.

I'll cite one specific piece of land, because it has been the site of both not enough and too much meddling by City Hall. What is now home to the Greenstone Building on Yellowknife's main street, Franklin Avenue, used to be home to a sprawling, hideous, windowless department store - the Hudson's Bay and later Canadian Tire building. Legend has it, it was a huge collection of ATCO-type trailers, stitched together into what can only be described as a one-storey precursor to big box stores, with pale yellow stucco exterior, minus the high ceiling and windows.

I used to own coffee shops on either side of it, and as I began to take an interest in downtown revitalization, the Canadian Tire building became for me a symbol of development run amok. Long-time residents may recall that a local artist, Dawn Oman, was commissioned to paint a mural on the main street facade in an attempt to make it less hideous. Images of this seem to have been scrubbed from the internet, which is perhaps understandable.

Then in about 2003 an urbanists' miracle happened. The federal government announced that it had bought the old Canadian Tire and planned to build a shiny new LEED Gold "legacy" office building in its place - the Greenstone Building.

The main-street-facing side of the building was to include a spacious park with landscaping and benches, an oasis of public space to be enjoyed by all as they make their way down main street. But then City Hall got involved. The main-street-facing side was also designed with a dramatic curved facade, complete with solar panels. But the solar panels were designed to face...westward. Well, everybody knows that's no way to maximize solar exposure, so City Hall and City Council insisted that the building be flipped around so that the panels would face south. And that's why the Greenstone Building will forever have its back to our main street, and a lovely public park completely hidden from view. Many people don't even know the park exists.

All this to say, somewhere in the middle, between the planners and Council and the developers, is the right approach. Here's hoping City Council takes the time to run the draft Community Plan by Yellowknife's shrinking development community to see if it strikes the right balance.

Photo credit: Kyle Thomas

04/01/2026

Yellowknife's next great Aurora Tourism property!

🏠New Listing!🏠

3321 Yellowknife Highway, Engle Business District - Yellowknife, NT

Yellowknife’s next great aurora tourism business!

Fee simple title to a huge, 4-acre property with nothing to the north but federal seismological array lands, which offer a network of snowmobile trails and lakes. Growth Management (GM) zoning allows “commercial recreation” as a discretionary use (City Council approval required). Currently assessed as agricultural.

The property is the former home of North Country Stables. Improvements include a 3-bedroom, 2 bathroom, 2-storey home with vaulted ceilings in the living room and impressive views to the north and an approximately 13,400 square foot warehouse/barn formerly used as indoor stables.

Located a mere 11-minute drive from Yellowknife’s main hotel district. Don’t miss this once-in-a-generation opportunity to create the tourism business of your dreams!

For more information click the link below!

https://www.century21yk.ca/showlisting/50672/3321-Yellowknife-Highway-Engle-Business-District-Yellowknife/

03/28/2026

What a nightmare. I'm not a mortgage specialist - I would certainly run this advice by a trusted advisor or two before recommending that my clients rush out and take out a HELOC - but it certainly seems to make sense at first glance. Identity theft, mortgage fraud and wire transfer fraud are huge and growing problems.

Here is the text of the post for anyone who doesn't have a LinkedIn account. The author is Kevin Boucher.

"A Brampton woman paid off her home.

Then a letter arrived from HomeEquity Bank telling her she owed $405,000 on a reverse mortgage she says she never took out.

The Toronto Star recently investigated the case of Darlene Early — a story that made me angry, but didn't surprise me. Because I've seen how this happens.

This wasn't a bank problem. HomeEquity Bank is a federally regulated Schedule I bank. They are reputable, they are the standard in this space, and they are the reason thousands of Canadians 55+ are living better retirements. They have stated publicly that the alleged fraud involved a third-party broker — not their institution.

This was a predator problem. Unscrupulous actors — door-to-door salespeople, a broker now facing criminal charges in an unrelated matter — who targeted a vulnerable woman with a paid-off home and worked the system against her.

Here's what nobody is talking about:

A free-and-clear home is a target.

I tell every client I work with — if you have no mortgage, at minimum establish a HELOC, even if the balance is zero. A registered charge on title creates a barrier. It adds a layer of friction that makes opportunistic fraud significantly harder to execute. It is one of the simplest protective measures available, and most people have never heard it.

That's what a specialist does. Not process a transaction — protect a person.

Reverse mortgages are a legitimate, powerful tool for Canadians 55+. Done right, with the right guidance, they change lives. Done by someone who sees your equity and not you — the consequences can be devastating.

If you work with clients or parents who own their home outright, please share this. And if you have questions about how to properly structure protection around home equity — I'm here.

Link to the Toronto Star article in the comments."

A Brampton woman paid off her home. Then a letter arrived from HomeEquity Bank telling her she owed $405,000 on a reverse mortgage she says she never took out. The Toronto Star recently investigated the case of Darlene Early — a story that made me angry, but didn't surprise me. Because I've seen h...