Patrick O'Neal

I got my start in real estate after college in 2015 as a real estate appraiser. I purchased my first property in 2018. After living in my home for about a year, I realized I wasn't using any of the other bedrooms so I got into house hacking for the next few years. I live in close proximity to the local ski resort and I had some friends that went to the college off the mountain so I rented out the extra rooms to them since they worked at the resort. The rents I was receiving was much higher than my mortgage and other expenses. I had an epiphany realizing that rentals were the ultimate way to achieve financial freedom. In 2020, while I was renting out the rooms in my house, I purchased a condo that was at the entrance of the ski resort with the same intentions. At first it was meant to be a short term rental, but I found a long term tenant who has been in there since. The following year I purchased a duplex in Johnson City, TN. I refinanced my house and used the equity out of my home to purchase this property at a 2.875% interest rate. I adopted 1 tenant who is still in one of the units and 1 'trouble child.' Any way, those units have been cash flowing well since I have bought them. My personal criteria for purchasing any real estate can be summarized in three things: 1. Do I instantly have equity in this property? 2. How will this property cashflow? 3. What can I sell this property for? With my experience with the long term tenants, I figured lets try a short term! This purchase was certainly more selfish as it is a beautiful lake house in a rural location. It certainly met my personal requirements for items 1 & 3. However it was lacking some in item 2. We wanted to use it some for ourselves and not just strictly as an investment vehicle. Turns out this was more of a money pit for a few years and we are just now seeing some profits. Still a beautiful house. In the meantime, I was killing it with appraisals in 2020-2021. Unfortunately, in 2022 they raised interest rates so the appraisal job slowed down. Like I went from doing 10-15 appraisals a week to like 1 report every two weeks, so I ended up getting my broker license. I will use my appraisal expertise to assist my future clients (you included). This includes contributory value for weird things, overall value, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac guidelines, FHA/USDA guidelines, short term and long term rents, etc. So far, all of my clients thought I provided them a lot of -value- in assisting them with their transactions ;) sorry that was my only dad joke. Lets buy some real estate!