‘Supply is down 30pc this year and there’s no silver bullet that's going to fix the housing crisis’

But a newspaper clipping kept by his mum meant he never used his return ticket Down Under.

“My mother had a cutting from a newspaper advertising from financial controller position in Sherry FitzGerald. That was her opportunity to try and get me back home before I maybe settled in Australia.”

Initially, McKenna, a business studies graduate and qualified accountant, “laughed it off”.

“But coincidentally, I bumped into a friend of mine, who was working in Sherry FitzGerald and he told me it was a fantastic place to work... he just kind of blew me away with what he was saying,” McKenna says.

He applied for the job – and got it.

“That was January 2008, just before the crash happened later that year, and so people would laugh and say ‘your timing was terrible’.

But I did find that the people here were fantastic to work with. I remember when I sat down with Mark FitzGerald [then CEO of the company], in my first week, he said to me ‘We're in the business of property, but we're a people business and it is very much about relationships and if you understand that, you'll do really well here’.”

The property crash in Ireland that followed was a period in which McKenna says “I learned a huge amount… respond quickly, be agile. We managed to come through that crisis without closing any of our [Irish] offices. But we did have a huge amount of work to try and navigate through it.”

In 2017, less than ten years after McKenna joined the business, Mark FitzGerald made the decision to move into the role of company chairman.

McKenna, who had been made finance director in 2011, succeeded FitzGerald.

Taking over the role of CEO from a company founder can be difficult – in many ways the business is the founder’s baby. However, McKenna says the changing of the guard has been “seamless”.

“There was a lot of trust between me and Mark, we still work very closely. I speak to him very often…. And he's still active in the business. Not as active as he might have been in the past, obviously, but he's still 40pc shareholder.”

McKenna is in charge of one of the biggest estate agents in the country at a time when there is currently a lack of supply in the housing market.

This year he expects to see “mid-single-digit price inflation”.

When it comes to the solving the housing crisis, there is “no one silver bullet that's going to fix this issue”, in his opinion.

“There's been a number of initiatives that the Government have introduced that have been welcomed. LDA (Land Development Agency), for example, that Bill has been going through the Dáil, and that's to be welcomed. But that's going to take some time, in terms of delivery of land and more supply,” according to McKenna.

He also welcomes the new first-time buyer initiative, part of the Government’s Affordable Housing scheme. Under the scheme, which some have warned will further increase the price of houses, the Government would take equity of up to 30pc in certain homes that qualify.

“I think it's another positive measure that's been introduced. It addresses the affordability issue for those who can afford to purchase a property and are stuck in this rental trap where they're paying very expensive rents.

This allows them homeownership with the support of the State with the introduction of equity and that's a very positive thing. I think it’s again one measure amongst a number of measures. Not one thing is going to solve it. But I would welcome it, I think it's a positive step,” he says.

Something the Government should do to tackle the housing crisis, McKenna feels, is put in place measures and targets across Ireland.

“Every location in the country should have a target, and also have a tenure of property that's required based on the population demographics and CSO data that is available, because I think what gets measured gets done,” he says.

“It's not just about housing to buy, but it's also about housing to rent. It’s social and affordable, it's mixed-use accommodation, it's working closely with the LDA to deliver on the land. I think that's something that the Government could do more of, and it's really setting targets, [and] looking at exactly what the needs are – not just in terms of location, but the type of tenure property that's needed as well, and making sure that the infrastructure is being put in place to support that,’ McKenna adds.

Last year, sales of homes at Sherry FitzGerald were down to about 16pc, according to McKenna.

The pandemic has had an impact upon sales and the imbalance between demand and supply has continued into this year.

“Supply at the moment, when you look at what's available on the marketplace and what's been advertised for sale, it's down about 30pc in the opening quarter this year,” he says.

“There is a lot of pent-up demand coming and this, combined with a very short supply of stock, is leading to a price inflation,” he adds.

While the pandemic has dramatically affected the housing market – with potential home buyers unable to physically view properties until they had gone sale agreed – McKenna says the mySherryFitz online platform was key in helping the business and its customers navigate the changed environment.

“When Covid happened last March [and we were] hit with lockdown, we seamlessly moved to a virtual environment overnight. There was no change for us. We all had laptops, we're all able to work from home, we're all logged onto mySherryFitz," McKenna says.

"Our customers were able to log into mySherryFitz and register to see virtual viewings and in that first lockdown, back in March, we still sold over 1,000 properties online.

“If you had said that to me before lockdown, that that was possible, I probably wouldn't have believed you, but It’s amazing the innovation and responsiveness when you're forced into something like this, it does force you to think bigger, to be more entrepreneurial, to be agile,” he says.

In the first three months of this year, the company has seen 40pc of offers on homes coming in on the platform compared to about 25pc this time last year.

Just over half of people looking to purchase homes are first-time buyers.

The onset of the pandemic means people are assessing their housing needs differently, according to McKenna.

“Approximately 20pc of our vendors at the moment are saying that they're going to relocate elsewhere in Ireland, that's up from 15pc last year,” he says.

Potential buyers are now looking at their home needs in a changed manner.

“They want that extra space where they can have an office, they believe that the way they're going to work in the future is changed, that idea of Monday to Friday, commuting nine to five is probably a thing of the past,” McKenna says.

The company is also seeing a lot of Irish people looking at possibly returning here.

“This quarter alone, we've seen inquiries in the US up by 20pc, compared to this time last year, and a lot of that, again, is people thinking about coming home, or maybe getting a holiday home in Ireland as well.”

A fitness enthusiast, the former Connacht rugby player spends much of his spare time walking and running.

He is also passionate about Sherry FitzGerald’s role in the communities it operates in. This year the company has got behind a ‘100k in 30 Days’ event in aid of breast cancer.

“While we're a national brand, our people are local, and very much involved in their communities, and deeply ingrained in their communities.”

 

Online Editors