Mortgage Broker

CMB MAGAZINE cmba-achc.ca winter 2019 | 21 everything except urban residential properties. • Landcor Data Corporation is an online residential appraisal service that uses an automatic valuation model envisioned and designed by Nielsen; it went live in 2000. Despite his impressive achievements, Nielsen is a modest man who says his wilderness survival skills have translated into boardroom successes. Raised in Prince George by a trapper father, the 16-year-old Nielsen was tasked each fall with hunting enough meat to get his family through the winter. Fresh out of high school, he cruised tim- ber for the B.C. Forest Service in the 1960s in remote northern British Columbia. e process involves taking a sample tree count that can be used to estimate how much total timber is in the forest. "ey'd take you out and drop you off and come back several weeks later. It was a really good experience for me, and I got to really love nature. You learned to cook, be your own doctor, and jack of all trades," he recalls. In fact, Nielsen says he relates his everyday business to nature more oen than not. "When you have a problem, the key is to sit down, relax and think. at's exactly what you do if you ever get lost in nature," he says. "Until I got a bit too old and my wife made me stay home, I'd do survival trips by myself or with my sons. I'd have a floatplane or helicopter drop me off in northern B.C. and take no food, only brown sugar, salt and Tang. I'd go in the creek to make a trap and catch fish, shoot ptarmigan or grouse, and smoke them. I'd be gone for two weeks and I had to make this last." He says he learned on those trips that all creatures—humans included—are focused on survival. REAL ESTATE ROOTS It's a lesson that has served Nielsen well since he started his career as a Realtor in 1964. From there, he opened NIHO Land & Cattle Company when he purchased a string of islands in the Fraser River near Prince George. He obtained a diploma in Urban Land Economics in Appraising from the University of British Columbia that same year. "I taught my kids how to trap a rabbit and catch a grouse on those islands. en I bought another piece of property and then another. Pretty soon, I began logging the timber from my own properties and created a good cash flow. I was also looking 30 years down the road, so I built roads into most of my properties and subdivided lots, et cetera. Over the years, I sold those properties." In 1989, Nielsen did his biggest deal, which included 251 properties in one pur- chase. e lodges, islands, and timber prop- erties, along with the subsequent purchase of the fourth-biggest recreational land company in B.C., made him the largest single private recreational landowner in the province. "I ran those companies. I'd be logging, subdividing, and spent a lot of time out in the field in my beat-up old Bronco," he remem- bers. "I'd have a can of beans and a sleeping bag, and I'd sleep under the truck. en I got a pickup and a tent, and as I built up my capital, I got a new pickup and finally I built up to larger deals and could stay in a motel!" Because of his forestry experience and his UBC appraiser education, those deals were custom-made for Nielsen, who also learned that it pays to be the best in the world at something nobody else was doing. As a young man in real estate, he became a self-made expert in residential lots. In 1965 he created his own real estate firm. "I went to the registry office and searched titles to create maps by colouring in (with 20 different coloured pencils) every lot in Prince George where there was an empty lot and no house," he recalled. "In one room, I had maps of B.C. with pins on each lot that were colour coded and catalogued—I was known as the guy who knew more about residential lots in Prince George than anyone in the world… that was my motto." In 1998, someone bet Nielsen that he could not build an automated system to appraise houses. at was the beginning of Landcor, which is based on an automatic computer valuation formula. "You can put in any residential address in B.C., and in four seconds it generates a report," he explains. "I get updated with all the sales every Monday. I know what's happening in B.C. on a weekly basis." Landcor can analyze mortgage portfolios, for example, or look for specific properties with detailed parameters. A self-termed "data junkie," Nielsen thrives on the challenge of taking raw information and turning it into something useful. "When I go to see clients, I still love asking what else can I develop for them to make their jobs easier and take more risk out of their jobs?" While NIHO Group is big on research and development, he admits that his ideas don't always work. "You accept it and try something else." LEARNING FROM THE LAND Nielsen has had many close calls in the Teapot Mountain, Prince George ceoprofile Success in any industry requires having a plan and sticking to it. Define what you're going to do and how."

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