South Australian Real Estate Icon Celebrates 40 Years as It Continues Evolution

McGees Property Adelaide turns 40

South Australian real estate icon McGees Property has celebrated its 40th anniversary, as it continues to evolve its premier full-service offering.

McGees – South Australia’s largest locally-owned full-service commercial property firm – held a celebration featuring more than 200 guests including staff and their families, clients, property industry participants and alumni on Friday, November 29 to acknowledge, reflect on and celebrate the remarkable achievement.

“The fact that we’ve not just survived but thrived over 40 years is incredible in itself,” said McGees Partner James Juers.

“We’ve been through the recession of the early 1990s, the GFC and through a pandemic, as well as some pretty strong periods too. Our calibre of people and our ethics have been central to our longevity,” he said.

“We’ve really stuck to our core values of integrity, loyalty, and relationships, which has helped us to retain longstanding clients who have been with us for many of those years – and some who are the sons and daughters of early McGees clients.

“Our people have an intimate knowledge of Adelaide and South Australia and its real estate sector, something we value extremely highly at McGees.

“We are all about South Australia. We employ people in South Australia, we are locally owned and the Partners work in the business and on the business, all based here. We’re proudly South Australian.”

McGees deals in a full range of property types within its agency, valuations, asset management and facilities management service offerings, including retail, large format retail and larger shopping centres, industrial, hotels, motels and licensed premises, medical and pharmacies, offices and mixed-use buildings, display yards, fuel stations and development sites.

The firm started as Matters Harrington in 1984 and over the 40 years has gone through significant growth including a number of acquisitions, mergers and other changes. This included a major growth strategy that was implemented in 2013 and which has since seen McGees grow to almost 60 staff.

“We remain grounded and work hard on our company culture,” said McGees Managing Partner Simon Lambert.

We continue to look after our wonderful long term staff of nearly 60 people – six of whom have been with McGees between 20 to 30 years, and a further eight who have been with the firm between 10 and 20 years.

“In my view that says something about our culture.”

Juers said that even moving through its 40th year, McGees is continuing to evolve.

“Over the past five years in particular we’ve seen a repositioning of McGees as a serious player in South Australia’s commercial real estate scene.

“For instance, we identified that we didn’t really have a focused presence in industrial. We’ve since focused on that, and now we’ve got a big, solid industrial team.”

The McGees industrial team is led by Partner, Andrew Wilson, who in recent weeks was awarded one of the highest accolades in property – the Real Estate Institute of South Australia’s Commercial and Industrial Salesperson of the Year.

“Building out our industrial team has been a strategic priority as we continue to grow our capabilities across all market segments. Our aim is to offer a full spectrum of services that cater to our clients’ diverse needs,” Juers said.

McGees has recently recruited arguably South Australia’s most prolific large format retail sector star in Dallas Sears from a multinational company. She has been made Director as the firm makes a serious move into the high-performing large format retail space.

Marco Onorato was also recruited from a multinational company to help boost the industrial team’s capabilities,

“As we celebrate our 40th anniversary, it’s really important we keep evolving and enhance our capabilities through the recruitment of some of Adelaide’s most respected real estate operators,” said McGees Managing Partner Simon Lambert.

“We’ve built a strong culture which has helped us to retain many key staff throughout the years. In the past we were a fantastic training ground for young valuers and agents, who were more often than not then grabbed by the globals. People are now looking to come to McGees. People are knocking on our door, wanting to work here.”