PHOENIX-Patrick O'Meara has joined Marcus & Millichap Capital Corp. as a director in the Phoenix office. O'Meara, who was recently with the Inland Real Estate Group of Companies Inc., is taking responsibility for structuring debt and equity financing for Marcus & Millichap across all commercial real estate sectors, as well as debt origination and placement and joint venture equity.

Though MMMC vice president Geoffrey Harris has been handling capital markets activity for single tenant retail, the company "wanted more of a multi-faceted person who could handle office, retail, industrial, student housing, multifamily and other sectors; as well as bringing in equity and institutional clients," O'Meara says. As such, O'Meara's goals are to entice equity sources to Phoenix, while assisting the CRE brokers by bringing capital markets know-how to their transactions.

O'Meara also plans to expand internally. As soon as he has a couple of transactions under his belt – he tells GlobeSt.com that there is already in excess of $100 million in the pipeline – he'll get a team together, complete with an analyst and coordinator.

O'Meara was born and raised in Kansas, relocated to Arizona at a very young age, attended University of Arizona and met and married his wife, who was from Peoria, AZ. He spent close to a quarter of a century in Chicago, first working with Heller Financial in its capital markets division and in the Heller Real Estate Finance Group, then moving on to Inland, where he served as vice president for Inland Mortgage Capital Corp. and vice president of Inland Mortgage Advisory Services.

Yet he never forgot his roots. In 2008, while structuring a transaction during Lehman Bros.' meltdown, O'Meara was in contact with Bill Rose who was, at the time, managing director with Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP. "We were trying to structure a deal in California and were talking to each other every day," O'Meara commented. Rose rejoined Marcus & Millichap a year later (he's national director of the national retail group today). When O'Meara decided to relocate to Arizona because he felt the time was right, he shared that information with his friend.

"He said he wanted to talk," O'Meara said. "Within two days, he got me in front of CEO John Kerin as well as Bill Hughes (MMMC senior vice president and managing director); they were all in Chicago at the same time."

O'Meara acknowledges he likes where Marcus & Millichap is going in its efforts to attract institutional quality clients and deals. He also likes the fact that the Phoenix office is where Marcus & Millichap's researchers are based – "all I have to do to get information is to go down the hall," he says.

But the main appeal of the job, and what excites O'Meara the most, is the potential of metro Phoenix. The region was hit particularly hard during the economic downturn and has bounced along the bottom for many years. But things are finally turning around. To that end, O'Meara wants to aggressively market Phoenix as a great place investment place to potential Canadian equity investors and developers.

"I knew Arizona was coming back," he says. "Now I want to bring outside equity sources into Phoenix and show its growth and what can happen; from job growth, to the stabilizing housing market, to the resurgence of the retail, office and multifamily sectors. It's a great time for business here, and I'm trying to catch the upswing."