Housing crisis: ‘We need less stick and more carrot’

Pat Davitt began his auctioneering business in Castlepollard in 1981 and developed it over the years into the leading firm, Sherry Fitzgerald Davitt and Davitt. He has just retired as CEO of the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers after 12 years at the helm.

By Frank Mulrennan

Listeners to RTÉ’s Drivetime and other current affairs programmes will have heard the gently delivered tones of Pat Davitt on multiple occasions over the years as he was ‘sent out to bat’ for the auctioneers and valuers of this country.

For most people that would (to continue with the cricketing metaphor) be a ‘sticky wicket’ because – by default, given their role as agents in the letting business – representing the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers (IPAV) as their CEO meant being seen to defend the much-maligned landlords of this country.

The usual programme line-up would have someone like Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin lambasting ‘greedy landlords’ and calling for the heads of developers, before Pat Davitt would be invited to present the alternate case.

“The IPAV do not represent landlords, but we represent the agents who know what the situation is on the ground and who know the challenges that landlords face. That includes agents seeing the problems that bad tenants can create,” says Mr Davitt, speaking to Westmeath Examiner on his retirement from the CEO role at the end of July after a dozen years at the helm.

“Landlords have been demonised. And developers and builders have been demonised, but, whether we like it or not, those people are integral to the market and, if we are to build more houses and get more accommodation, we need as many of them as possible investing and going about their business.”

Having started his own auctioneering firm in Castlepollard in 1981, without the luxury of an office but with the advertising (primarily in these pages) of ‘land for sale’, Pat saw Davitt and Davitt become Sherry Fitzgerald Davitt and Davitt in 1999 and now has offices in Castlepollard, Kinnegad and Mullingar. His nephew, Aidan Davitt is managing director and also a Fianna Fáil senator.

That longevity gives perspective. He recalls having his first sale, a cottage near Castlepollard for £7,000 in the early 1980s. “It is still there, having had a number of owners and is probably, at a guess, worth €300,000 now.”

He built his own house in 1978 for £10,500, including the site, and says it was worth “about £20,000 when built and that went to about £30,000 within three or four years. But then house prices barely moved in the years up to 1999 or 2,000 and then they went right up”, raising his eyes up to reflect the manic years of the Celtic Tiger.

Pat says “we had 300,000 houses too many in 2012 and we were talking about knocking down ghost estates. Inside a little more than 10 years, we need 300,000 properties and have a huge accommodation crisis, not just a building crisis.

“We would be a lot better off if bedsits had not been done away with in 2013,” he says, before commenting that “it really is all mixed up when you consider that accommodation has to be found for over 100,000 Ukrainians and international asylum seekers and we have to be respectful of those people.

“But it will take many small parts of the jigsaw to be part of a solution, which is the job of government, finding solutions and that means encouraging landlords to stay in the business and encouraging a new form of small builder, as well as larger builders and developers to invest.

“That requirement to build 300,000 houses by 2030 is a major challenge, but we did build 93,000 houses in 2006 and 2007.”

Pat says so many small builders have gone out of the market, whereas he sees how much can be achieved through say, 1,000 small builders completing five houses each year.

He also has lobbied government for changes to the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant, saying more can be achieved through a “drip feed” of the funding, rather than expecting people to wait until the work is finished and “signed off” before getting the grant. “And more needs to be done to encourage people to sell the properties, in the first place.”

“We need less of the stick and more of the carrot,” says the retiring IPAV boss, who clearly is an experienced practitioner in terms of engaging with governments and their civil servants, but who has also seen multiple reports – including the most recent Housing Commission report – consigned to the dust-laden shelf.

“The minister (former Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien) got that report, but it didn’t suit him to do anything with it because there was the election coming up, and the problems just keep getting bigger and bigger.”

Lessons learned from property crash

It is difficult to speak to anyone in the auctioneering and valuations business without delving back into the disastrous economic collapse of 2007 and thereafter. That led to the banking crisis which was still there when Pat Davitt took on the CEO role at the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers in May of 2013.

Pat recalls how the Central Bank wanted a complete restructuring of how valuations were being conducted because inflated and utterly unreliable valuations were a root cause of the property asset contagion.

“A group of us got involved in a major project to adopt European Valuation Standards, using a Blue Book framework and key to that was putting a structure in place to upskill valuers.”

Gaining from the experience of the European umbrella body, TEGOVA, was important as was securing the confidence at home of the Central Bank and government departments.

Proof of that confidence was Pat Davitt being asked to provide expert evidence to the Banking Tribunal on the subject of property valuations.

A dark time in Irish life and hopefully lessons learned!

Family feel to Davitt auctioneering business

There is a lovely inter-generational dynamic within the Davitt family. Pat Davitt’s relation, Michael Davitt, was a son of Dan Davitt, who set up an auctioneering practice in 1904, and Michael operated as an auctioneer in the Castlepollard area up to 1956.

Then, after a space of 26 years, Pat set up his own business selling and leasing land, opening his office in Castlepollard, then Mullingar and more recently Kinnegad, in 2022, with the acquisition of Tom Fox’s business.

As he got more involved with the IPAV at national level (eventually taking on the CEO role in 2013), Pat stepped away gradually from Sherry Fitzgerald Davitt and Davitt where the managing director role has been that of his nephew, Aidan Davitt.

Their website proudly claims that “with roots stretching back to 1904, Sherry Fitzgerald Davitt and Davitt is a cornerstone of property services in County Westmeath”.

Pat says there is a “great team there working with Aidan. Gary Corroon has been with us since 2000 and is a director and partner, as is Alan Bracken, who joined us in 2004.”

And this year, Pat’s son, another Michael Davitt, has completed his apprenticeship in the business and will graduate in September, making his mother and father, Pat and Paula, very proud parents. Equally proud they are of their older son, Patrick, who is doing tax accounting with a Dublin-based firm.

It is fitting that Pat, apart from running the IPAV level 6 Higher Certificate Course for members’ successors and employees and others, has also been so involved in developing the profession of auctioneering and valuation, including the provision of that two-year apprenticeship with more than 100 students each year, available in three centres.

“It is a profession now,” says Pat, “not just one of going down to the local court and getting your licence as it was back in the day. The big thing is confidentiality, not secrecy, but confidentiality in terms of who is selling and buying.

“It used to be that we had a black book with the names of sellers in the front and buyers at the back and we would seek to match them up. That concept still applies but with a much greater sense of professionalism now and access to IT, including AI.

“We keep saying to our young people that you will deal with people again and again. That this is a person-to-person business and you need to be able to build trust and that usually begins by being able to talk to people in a friendly manner and being able to discuss all matters of the day.”

He cites two major membership profile progressions during his time as CEO of the IPAV. One is that the age profile in 2012 was skewed towards the 60–65-year grouping. Today it is closer to 35-45. Meanwhile, the number of female members has grown from about 8% in 2012 to closer to 25% today.

Of course, the big number growth has been in membership. In 2012, the number was 700 and that has become 1,600 today, which means that Pat Davitt is handing over the organisation to his successor, Genevieve McGuirk, in the best of health. She has been chief operations manager at the institute, which she joined 10 years ago. Pat says she “will do a great job as she is a very impressive person”.

In terms of his future, Pat has other own business interests including property and is looking forward to the next phase of what life brings.

Speaking on behalf of the IPAV, president Fintan McGill paid a warm tribute to Pat, saying “he has made an enormous and unparalleled contribution to the institute”.

“We owe Pat a debt of gratitude for not only growing the organisation, but also contributing to national policy, speaking truth to power in terms of property dynamics and fostering an important international dimension.”