The early 1980's were not kind to Alberta. The national recession, coupled with the federal government's newly introduced National Energy Program and the sky high interest rates all hit the province hard. Many Real Estate offices were closing their doors, but one Calgary brokerage chose this time to open for business.

In early 1983, Calgary Independent Realty Ltd. (CIR Realty) grew out of the former operations of another real estate company. Principals Brian Fossard and Jim Demare staffed their new company with a dozen agents from their former office. That was also the same year Karl Stader chose to leave the home building trade and became a real estate agent.

Karl was working for a large real estate company when he read a newspaper article about Calgary Independent Realty. He decided to check them out. Karl liked what he heard when he visited the company's office near downtown. CIR's commission plan at the time charged their agents on a decreasing scale, based on the number of sale transactions they achieved each month. That got Karl's attention since he had always been very entrepreneurial. This gave CIR's agents more choice on where to spend some of their earnings, like print advertising, photocopying, bus bench advertising, etc. CIR had more of a user-pay approach and that really appealed to Karl.

CIR's two other founding owners liked what they saw in Karl too. They soon asked him to join as a silent owner/partner and help finance their expansion plans. Karl decided to invest in this new and growing company and this allowed CIR to open a second office, in South Calgary. Soon after that, CIR opened a third office in Northeast Calgary.

Son Ron joined the company in 1988 and his brother Ray joined the company in 1994. Today, owners Ron and Ray are proud that CIR has become Canada's largest Independent Real Estate Company. CIR currently has over 660 agents associated with their 4 Calgary based offices plus 10 satellite offices in communities surrounding Calgary.

The hard working, energetic and talented management team and support staff group at CIR Realty plan to continue building upon the company's past success. Further expansion plans are seriously being considered and the company's growth prospects look very good.