WHEN Daryl Rayner started selling real estate in the early 1980s, brick veneer homes in North Dandenong and Hallam sold for between $35,000 and $45,000.
In Doveton, a solid family home would set buyers back about $18,000.
How times have changed.
Residential homes in Central Dandenong have now broken the magic $1 million mark.
Keith McLennan opened the original McLennan Real Estate office at 244 Lonsdale Street in 1936.
Just after World War II his son Merv took over and helped people buy and sell property until his death in the early 1990s.
Daryl Rayner joined Merv and his daughters in the business in 1980 and has never left.
In 1988, Daryl and fellow director Tony Rachele purchased the business, keeping the McLennan name.
The Lonsdale Street office was soon complemented by a second office when the firm bought Frank Holohan Real Estate in Langhorne Street.
Today McLennan Real Estate employs 32 staff and operates from a light, modern two storey office at 118 Walker Street.
Over more than three decades Daryl has seen the industry he loves change enormously.
“Pre-internet people came to the office, sat and waited to talk to someone.
“We would then go through a manual stock list, pop them in the car and show them different properties. I haven’t done that in 20 years.”
He remembers photocopying and cutting and pasting together adverts for the Journal that would be collected by a sales representative.
“Now everything is done online. We do it all ourselves now and send it to the Journal. It’s not proof
read any more because we do it all ourselves.
“The Journal is 150 years, we’re 80 next year. It’s been an 80-year relationship.”
The other great change has been in the demographics of Dandenong.
“When I was a kid and started working here it was mainly Anglo Saxon with Greeks and Italians thrown in after the war.
“McLennan had a lot of Greek and Italian clients, and still do.
“Now we’ve got the third generation, their grandchildren dealing with us.
“That’s the beauty of a business with this longevity, it’s the relationships you build over the years that make your business strong.”
Daryl said the latest wave of Afghan immigrant was now testing the waters of the property market.
“The Afghans are excellent tenants and they are now going on to buy property.
“They are also taking up a lot of the commercial leases opening hairdressers, restaurants and retail businesses.”
The Dandenong of Daryl’s youth was very different.
“In those days it was really like a large country town. Mum would go to the shops in the main street to grab a few things and we’d be three hours because everyone knew and spoke to each other.”
The Rayners and the McLennans were friends through church.
Daryl agrees that real estate has been good to him. His wife Delwyn now runs the company’s wealth management offshoot, Yellow Brick Road.
“I’m a people person, not one to be sitting about. I like to be out talking to people about their real estate requirements, having a cup of tea.”
