Selling in the US: Gary Kenny took a holiday to Orlando nine years ago. Now he's a real estate agent and property developer there. He tells Frances O'Rourke about selling in the sunshine state

With the devastation caused by hurricane Katrina likely to dominate headlines for some time, many investors might think twice about buying in America's southern states. But Gary Kenny, a genial Dubliner from Fairview who plunged into the Florida property market after buying a holiday home near Orlando in 1996, is philosophical.

The biggest effect that Katrina will have in Florida, he reckons, is that insurance premiums - currently about €640 ($800) a year in Orlando compared to €2,400 ($3,000) a year on the Gulf Coast - will definitely go up. And construction activity has already been affected.

But Kenny, now a real estate agent and property developer in Haines City, 15 miles and 15 minutes from Disney World and Orlando, is confident that the Florida property boom - fuelled by low interest rates, tourism and that fact that 1,100 people a day move to the state to live - will go on.

That's good news for Irish people who've already invested in villas and condominiums there, and who have enjoyed appreciation of up to 11 per cent a year in the past five years, according to Kenny.

And of course it's good news for him too. Kenny, whose career started with a transport, then warehouse business in Swords, Co Dublin, is confident that Irish and British buyers, who make up about 60 per cent of his clients, will go on wanting what his agency, Coldwell Banker Team Realty, has to offer.

In the past three years since he bought the franchise for the agency - and built a strip mall in Haines City to provide his own office - has done over half a billion dollars worth of business, selling properties with an average value of €200,256 ($250,000).

His agency has a wide selection of homes on its books, from four-bed villas with pool for over €241,000 ($300,000) to condominium developments.

And fully furnished ready-to-rent condominiums rather than villas are now proving popular he says because they cost less and provide steady returns.

His agency offer buyers a one-stop-shop, which can arrange everything from mortgage finance to renting and managing a property. (Mortgages in Florida are easy to get - and even 70-year-olds can get 30-year mortgages.)

As a developer, he has sold 210 of 288 units from plans in a development called Tuscana "one exit from Disney" which he launched in February this year.

The one, two and three-bedroom apartments in 12 buildings cost from €157,000 ($195,000), and building will start in mid-September. A clubhouse with a 35-seat cinema, fitness area, large pool area, convenience store and a bar are planned for the scheme.

In July, he launched Villas at Secret Lake, another condo development of fully furnished two and three-bedroom homes costing from €208,000 ($259,900) from plans - 60 of the 80 units planned have been sold.

In the future, he hopes to attract private Irish investors to put money into another development called The Reserve at Lake Annie just outside Haines City, 15 miles from Disney. The development planned will have 450 residential units on 162 acres.

His company, Feltrim Development, still has Irish business interests - amongst them, Roseville Business Park at Blake's Cross and his business has come the full circle in the US.

Amongst about 22 projects he has on the go are office and warehouse developments in Haines, a city whose population has grown from 10,000 to 55,000 in recent years.

Kenny still commutes between Dublin and Florida, but has finally moved to the US with his family, spending six/seven weeks there to one at home.

The boy who started work in a warehouse in Swords in 1979 and started a transport business with one truck has never looked back since he got hooked on property.

"I realized that warehouses didn't go on holidays or give me cheek," he says of his conversion from the haulage business to property. And as far as he's concerned, the boom in Florida - as in Dublin - won't burst anytime soon.

* Sunrise Homes International, another agency selling properties in Florida, is holding an exhibition in the RDS, Dublin, on Saturday and Sunday, September 23rd and 24th