Austin Keitner On Moving His Family From Toronto To Collingwood

Urban life and GTA real estate sales are fast paced, exciting, stressful, at times demoralizing, rewarding, and often fun. Truthfully, all of that can be true for Blue Mountain real estate sales, too, but no traffic, beautiful scenery and easy access to nature make life in and out of work somehow more peaceful and enjoyable. For Austin Keitner, founder of The Keitner Group, a top sales team in Ontario, making The Blue Mountains home base for his family happened completely by accident. In this exclusive interview, we delve into Keitner’s motivations, challenges, and the rewards of his decision to relocate his family and to expand his business.

Austin Keitner’s story is one of chance, and surrendering to the circumstances of his life and what was happening in it at the time. Quite simply, COVID lockdowns forced his kids into homeschooling at the last minute leading into January of 2022, and with 4 kids aged 3 months to 6 years at the time, there was no way Austin and his Wife, Jocelyn, were going to be able to scramble to find the required help to school and care for their kids so that they could maintain the level of service their business required. Months earlier, Austin had learned of an outdoor school called Blue Mountain WILD School, so he called the founder, Jeff Barrett, and drove up to see the campus, loved it, and enrolled the next day.

The plan was to stay at a family member’s place to ride out the school year and enjoy ski season without needing to commute back to the city with the whole family each week, all while operating the Real Estate business remotely through technology, a well trained and skilled team, and occasionally going into the city for key meetings. Austin was also spending time getting to know the local Blue Mountains real estate market and had friends and family asking him for help with their real estate plans there, so he got to work knocking on doors and networking for opportunities, and began to establish market share in this new area.

“I had visited The Blue Mountains every winter, most weekends, and never got to know the real estate market,” Keitner explains. “It was almost embarrassing that I was there, but not really there for so much time.”

By immersing himself into the community, he learned that the people are amazing, the real estate is dynamic, the food is as good as in the city, and the overall vibe is on a next level. “It’s the ideal home base for me and my family right now,” Keitner says. “I’m so glad we were able to expand our business to this market and maintain growth in the markets we’ve operated in the city for the last 10+ years. We couldn’t have done it without our key partnerships, amazing agents, and dedicated staff.”

After just a few months of Blue Mountain/Georgian Bay living, Austin and his family bought a house and haven’t looked back yet. Of the 1000+ families The Keitner Group has helped buy and sell, everyone has moved for their own unique reason and circumstance, and Keitner and his family are no different. By understanding their buyer’s and seller’s needs, motivations, goals, and dreams, The Keitner Group agents take that understanding and utilize the latest technology through their partnership with PLACE.com, by being members of multiple real estate boards, and by implementing guerrilla tactics including door knocking, events, and networking, to get the results that their clients deserve.

Helping people realize the dream of homeownership almost anywhere in Ontario is the mission of The Keitner Group, and they are standing by to help you, too.