A lot has changed in the four decades since Eleanor and the late Pat McKenna founded Pat McKenna Realtors. But one thing that’s remained the same is the agency’s drive to make sure every client finds their next home as easily and with as much support as possible.  

And between those clients’ rave reviews and the agency’s reputation—like their proven track record as Burlington County’s top-producing real estate group for 17 years and running—the results speak for themselves.

But rather than settling into the complacency of a “don’t fix what’s not broken” mindset, Eleanor and her son Mark are constantly, proactively looking for new ways to be the best.

 “Our expectations are a lot higher than most others’,” Eleanor confirms. “We eat, sleep and drink real estate—you can drive by at 10-o-clock at night and see our team’s still there through the windows.”  

Lofty expectations certainly nudged the team toward an incredible 2021. They not only saw some record-setting sales numbers—Mark reports that his own team of eight agents did 347 sales amounting to about $126 million in volume, “which was the highest” in Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties—but also found a new kind of success with last summer’s switch to the virtual brokerage firm eXp Realty, and with it, a name change: Pat McKenna Realtors Brokered by eXp Realty.

 “It filled a gap in education training for our agents, and brought a lot more technology into our operation,” says Mark. “Once we were on this platform with eXp, Zillow then selected us for a flex account, which was a great award for us and increased the amount of leads that come in on a daily basis. It’s really streamlined everything in the office.”

The virtual brokerage platform fostered an evolution in the realty without sacrificing either its “family-business feeling” or long-cultivated regional recognition.  

 “Our No. 1 priority was to keep the Pat McKenna Realtors name out there because it’s a well-known brand in the South Jersey area and real estate for 44 years,” Eleanor explains.  

Utilizing eXp has also allowed the team to enjoy some exponential growth internally: After starting last year with 15 licensed real estate agents, the team has skyrocketed to 51 much faster than expected, thanks to a deluge of interest.

 “The quality of candidates has increased drastically because a lot of people are getting out of professions that  they’re tired of, so I see a really, really strong talent pool out there,” says Mark. Some of the team’s new faces are experienced realtors from other brokerages, as well as a retired police officer, three educators and two former health-care workers. “We have people coming in with good résumés and college degrees who were finance majors and management majors. Their level of professionalism is extremely high.”  

Anyone who knows what it’s like to handpick a talented, passionate team knows that there’s  always the risk of losing those high performers to greener pastures, and Mark says the move to eXp has been an additional safeguard in retaining the top talent, especially as the realty promotes its agents’ individual name-recognition brands.  

 “When they get really good, they leave,” he says. “With this, they won’t want to go anywhere else because they have everything at their fingertips and three different revenue streams: It’s an agent- driven model where our agents get health benefits through the company, they have stock options, there’s different things like ‘revenue share,’ which is like a pension. So this is a really great model that fills that void.”

Befitting an expanding team and these everchanging times, Eleanor has undertaken a different kind  of building with the brand-new Lenore Manor, a three-story, mixed-use residential/commercial  structure taking shape on the agency’s redeveloped former site.  

 “We knocked down our old facility and are just about to move into Eleanor’s new building that she built,” Mark says. “It has 23 apartments we’ll be leasing and 4,600 square feet for our office. The apartments will start to be occupied the first week of May and we should be moving into our new space by the first week of July.”  

With a “whirlwind of good things” going on, the McKennas are thrilled to have a growing team that not only are they proud to meet the future with but also will help continue their mission of giving back to the community.

 “It’s really exciting,” he says. “This town has always supported us and so has our client base, so we try and go above and beyond to be a part of the community, whether it’s fundraisers, or donating to the local baseball and basketball teams, the PTAs, the police, the church, we support Operation Yellow Ribbon every year— over the years, it’s been literally hundreds of thousands  of dollars that we’ve donated to people in Evesham Township, and we’ve been able to do that because of the support we receive from them.”

Pat McKenna Realtors
Brokered by eXp Realty
42 E. Main St., Marlton | (856) 983-0704
PatMcKennaRealtors.com

Published (and copyrighted) in House & Home, Volume 22, Issue 7 (April 2022). 
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