1946 – 2026 Watching Steinbach Grow: Affordable housing key to Steinbach growth

Affordable housing has always been one of the main reasons Steinbach is attractive to rural and city home buyers alike. With constant residential expansion, the industrial and commercial sectors have found the community a great place to set up shop, and construction along Main Street and in the community’s shopping malls and industrial parks followed the rapid growth of Steinbach’s many residential developments.

From the time C.T. Loewen’s offered a Loewen-Bilt bungalow for $2,825 and developed a subdivision with a lot to put it on, until today’s partnership between a builder, a developer and the Steinbach Credit Union, which gives buyers the ability to move into a home of their own with a much lower down payment, Steinbach has seen innovative ways to boost population.

The habit of saving came early for the third generation of Steinbach families and the work ethic of the community was certainly, in many cases, carried over from earlier generations.

A local realtor/developer who joined forces with a local builder to create a plan to ensure a continuation of affordable housing, as the town grew to a city, is certainly an example of that.

While Waldo Neustaedter, at Century 21 Gold Key Realty, may not have the first dollar he earned, he does have the 1965 silver dollar he received from the credit union when he was 11 years old. The dollar wasn’t actually interest earned on his savings account, but rather a draw prize from the Steinbach Credit Union as a reward for the interest he showed in opening the new account in the SCU, in 1966.

By that time, Neustaedter was already a thriving entrepreneur, having established a grass cutting business in his neighbourhood.

Neustaedter says he got his first grass cutting job when he was eight. He received early training from his father, who made sure he wouldn’t hurt himself cutting the family’s lawn. Knowing how to do the job safely, the young entrepreneur cut their own lawn, as an unpaid chore, and then cut the grass for the widow next door, as an act of kindness, for which he remembers she may have given him 50 cents.

Soon others in the neighbourhood were asking for his services. The enterprising youngster made a deal with his father and launched his lawn cutting business. He would keep any money he earned cutting the neighbours’ grass, but he would buy the gas for the lawn mower supplied by his father.

When he was 11, he talked his father into buying a tiller, as he branched out from lawn care to yard care and snow shovelling in the winter. He couldn’t start working full time at his brother’s garage until he was 16, as he needed a driver’s licence to move cars to the wash bay.

At age 14 and 15, to fill in his spare time, Neustaedter was a chicken-catcher at night. He says that was so long ago that all he remembers about that job was that it paid well.

Once he had his driver’s licence he got a job at Penner Dodge, pumping gas and washing cars, where, tongue-in-cheek, Neustaedter says he was the best gas jockey the garage ever had, besides Ernie Hollender, of course.

When he finished school, the job at Penner Dodge became full-time, working in the used car lot and doing mechanical work for six months before becoming a service writer.

Always the entrepreneur, after a few years, Neustaedter decided to shift career paths and try something new. In 1979, worm farming was just catching on and Waldo and his partners decided to give it a go. That was one of the few errors in judgment he has made over the years.

When they heard about starting a worm raising business, it was a joke, but all of a sudden Jim Neustaedter and his partners, Waldo Neustaedter and Rollin Reimer, started getting serious about the idea.

Vermiculture, or worm farming, had indeed become a serious business for the trio of Steinbach men, who raised worms for the fertilizer castings.

The operation closed up in two years and Neustaedter returned to the automobile dealership as a service manager.

Charles Penner owned Penner Chev at that time, and Neustaedter worked his way from shop to showroom. From 1981 to 1987, he was service manager, then assistant sales manager for four years before taking on the sales manager’s position from 1991 to 1999.

When Neustaedter decided it was time for another change of career, he went to work for Vic Penner at Century 21.

Neustaedter said he had been “dabbling” in real estate for years and thought it would be an interesting career to try on a full-time basis.

“I bought my first rental property, a house at 306 Goossen, in 1983 and sold it in the early 1990s. I had done a dozen transactions with Vic before becoming part of the Century 21 Vic Penner Realty team.”

A year later, he and his wife Bonnie became the third owner of the Century 21 franchise in Steinbach. George Penner brought the franchise to town in 1976. Vic and Carol Penner bought it from him and Waldo and Bonnie bought it from Vic and Carol in 2000.

Neustaedter says he has built up the property management side of the business at Century 21 Gold Key Realty. They had 14 properties early on, but now that number has grown to more than 600 properties in commercial and residential real estate.

When asked about the company name, Neustaedter explained that he does more development than sales now, and if Century 21 Gold Key Realty is sold, the new owner will not have to change the name.