Latitude Commercial is home to brokers with very diverse backgrounds, some started their careers as educators, while others worked for the government. Their newest broker, John O’Malley, is another new case. For him, the career is in his blood as both his father and grandfather are real estate developers.
“It’s something that I’ve always been around from a young age,” he said. “I remember when I was 5 or 6 years old, they were building a 600-unit apartment complex at Purdue University. I remember going there and helping clean, getting paid 100 bucks for a week and thinking that was outstanding money. As the years progressed, being around that work all the time, I knew that there was something there that I wanted to do.”
While attending Marian University, playing baseball, and completing a degree in business management, O’Malley also worked toward earning his real estate license, which he successfully claimed during his senior year.
“I’d basically study for my real estate exams on bus rides,” he said. “You’re juggling a lot doing that while also being a student athlete, but I had my vision set on what I wanted to do. I think the work ethic I built up during that time really translated into my career.”
After graduating, O’Malley spent a few years selling residential real estate but knew that what he really wanted to do was work with investment properties. When he moved to Munster with his girlfriend, he got the opportunity to do just that after a chance connection resulted in him joining the team at Latitude Commercial.
“When I met the whole team, it just seemed like a perfect fit,” he said. “There’s such strong camaraderie, both in business and outside of the office.”
As an investment broker, O’Malley identifies properties that his clients can turn into sources of revenue. Sometimes that means buying multi-family homes and renting out living space, other times it means acquiring retail properties for business tenants.
“It’s all about working with investors to fill their portfolios, maximize their businesses, and fulfill their needs,” he said. “That means a lot of prospecting, getting to know a lot of people in the area, and learning the ins and outs of deals.”
Luckily for O’Malley, it also means working with numbers - and a lot of them.
“I love crunching the numbers, especially on multi-family assets,” he said. “My favorite part of the job is really analyzing these properties to see what they’re worth and how you can maximize revenue.”
At the age of 27, O’Malley knows that he is younger than many other professionals in real estate. That can sometimes be a challenge, but it is one that he is eager to embrace.
“There are a lot of seasoned agents out there who have been doing this for 15 or 20 years,” he said. “But to make up for that experience differential, I’m going to work twice as hard for my clients.”
To learn more about Latitude Commercial, visit them at https://latitudeco.com/.
