by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
While most 28-year-olds are busy chasing the American dream, one local real estate agent decided to join the Peace Corps.
John O’Malley, the broker at O’Malley Real Estate in Mayport, returned in July from a 26-month Peace Corps tour in far-off Armenia.
“The Peace Corps is something I have always wanted to do,” said O’Malley. “It was just a great opportunity to live in another culture and learn another language.”
Most Peace Corps tours last only two years, though O’Malley said you can extend a tour for one to two years if needed, but there is a five year maximum consecutively in any one country.
While in the Peace Corps, you receive a stipend which O’Malley said is enough for food and a little bit of spending money. The Peace Corps pays for your rent and travel expenses.
“We didn’t have the best of housing, but each home is inspected by the Peace Corps to make sure it is safe,” said O’Malley. “It was your basic standard house.”
He said the main thing he learned on his tour was patience.
“I don’t mind waiting anymore,” he said. “Over there, it’s a very slow process and usually it doesn’t get finished so you have to exercise a lot of patience. When you are working in that environment, you are working with the Soviet mentality and so it’s very hard to convince people to think your way. So it takes a long time to reach your goals.”
Where’s Armenia? Western Europe and it was once part of Russia. While it may not be a familiar name, you’ll recognize three nations on its borders: Iran, Turkey and Azerbaijan.
O’Malley’s main task there was to help facilitate shelter recovery for victims of the 1988 earthquake.
“We spent the first two months training in a small village,” said O’Malley. “It was very intense training to learn the Armenian language. We lived with our host families who were only allowed to speak Eastern Armenian so we could learn from them. From there we went to the northern part, better known as the Earthquake Zone, where I stayed for two years.”
Goals of the Peace Corps that O’Malley shared are to provide assistance to those countries that request it and to have a cultural exchange with foreign countries. This exchange consists of exposing foreign countries to American cultures and exposing Americans to other cultures and then bringing them back to American and sharing what the culture is overseas.
“Right now the Peace Corps has three fields that they focus on: teaching English as a foreign language, health and business. That’s where I fit in,” said O’Malley.
His primary project was a housing project.
The World Bank sponsored the research and the United States government funded the program. The local government did a make a couple of contributions, but it is basically a United States-backed program.
“The earthquake in 1988 killed about 25,000 people and left several thousand homeless,” said O’Malley. “What they did in the interim was to have the people live in a domic, which is Russian for small house. They weren’t really houses; they were more like freight cars and they were brought in temporarily. What happened was that a lot of the buildings just collapsed and there was no where to move them so these domic parks were formed all over.”
According to an article written in an Armenian magazine, AIM, “Fundamental decisions made about the temporary emergency shelter after the earthquake would influence long-term housing recovery, and explain some of the conditions we see today. Tents, shipped in primarily from Russia, were placed around the damaged and collapsed buildings as opposed to the standard practice of establishing staging areas outside the damaged city centers. The result today is that most of the remaining temporarily housed displaced families mostly living in modified shipping containers and other prefabricated units called domics are located in their original neighborhoods of the older city quarters.”
A few years later after the earthquake, the Russian government fell apart so they still have these people living in domics, but with the promise that they would be given a new home.
“Eleven or 12 years later, nothing has happened,” said O’Malley. “This particular program gives people who were displaced and who qualify for the program a certificate essentially to go out and buy a home. If a family is due a two-room apartment [condo] because that is what they lost so that is what they are due, they are given a certificate for what the average price of what a two-room apartment [condo] would cost so they can go out and buy one.”
O’Malley was involved in the program development of the project and helping to determine institutional roles including how they were going to involve the banks, real estate companies, local organizations and the cities.
“When the Soviet Union collapsed, all the money in the banks was worth nothing, so there was the distrust of banks and no one used real estate companies, so in the process of the program we tried to get people to trust these organizations again and it worked,” said O’Malley.
He said many people have left the country to find work and they are not coming back, leaving a lot of apartments and houses empty.
“There all these empty apartments [condos] and homes and then you have the domic parks where people are in the tin boxes — in the summer, it’s like a oven and in the winter, it’s like a refrigerator,” he said. “What we did was work with the local non-government organizations who organized the parks. We interviewed the families to find out who qualified and we worked with real estate agents and taught them the ins and outs of the program so they would be able to help the families find a home.”
O’Malley put his real estate skills and business education to use by teaching real estate agents how to market themselves to potential clients.
He also taught them how to get a better hold on their inventory and how to keep customers. While America has the Multiple Listing Service, agents in Armenia doesn’t. Agents there keep lists of available properties on a wall.
“Historically, less than seven percent of real estate transactions involved real estate agents which is common throughout the former Soviet Union,” said O’Malley. “After our program was done, I’m happy to say that over 50 percent of real estate transactions in the Earthquake Zone did.”
O’Malley Real Estate has been a part of the Mayport area since the 1960s when it was started by his mother, Maureen O’Malley, who still works in the office today.
O’Malley was licensed in 1992 and jumped right into the family business.
“It’s in the blood, and I enjoy it,” said O’Malley.
In 1996, the company was acquired by Watson Realty and he went to work there for four years.
Last September O’Malley Real Estate, Inc. was opened again by his family while he was away.
“I return to the United States during my vacation time,” said O’Malley, “and started the paperwork then. I was the licensed broker and my mother, Maureen, and my brother, Brian, ran the office while I was gone.”
O’Malley said he has a new appreciation for different perspectives and different points of views which he will use in running his business first hand.
As many might suspect, Armenia is many worlds away from American culture.
“It is a mountainous area and very dry,” said O’Malley. “You certainly become more patriotic after living in another country. You learn to appreciate long lines because you know something is getting done. You also appreciate the red tape a little more because it makes it a little transparent. You appreciate the little things that you really hated before and that used to get under your skin.
“Of course, things that didn’t bother you before now bother you. I’ve become extremely apathetic to people who have little complaints about things whether it be time or inconveniences. That’s the other thing that becomes quite irritating. It’s very fast paced when you get back because you go from kind of a laid back atmosphere to people saying, ‘I need this in 15 minutes; I need this yesterday.’ I see people stressing over what you think is really nothing. That takes awhile to get used to.”
O’Malley Real Estate located in Mayport does some property management, commercial and residential.
“Hopefully we will see more development in the Mayport area,” said O’Malley. “The renewal is here. You can keep a tattoo parlor, but it can be a nice tattoo parlor if it is attractive and cosmetically appealing. There is no reason why there can’t be some cohesiveness here. If they do stay on track, it will make a real difference. The area will look a lot better and will attract more businesses which will add to the development. “
Since he returned, he has been playing catch-up and visiting friends. He was so saturated with Armenian law that he has had to spend some time refreshing his memory on local real estate laws and financing.
He said the food in Armenia is seasonal. In the summers there are a lot of fruits and vegetables, and in the winter it’s a lot of meat and potatoes. He said he always requested seasoning packets, Parmesan cheese and peanut butter in his care packages because even though he had the basics, there wasn’t anything to really spice things up.
So, did he hit a McDonald’s when he returned?
Yes, he did.