Starting In 2009, Tom saw an opportunity to take advantage of distressed assets in the single-family space. Over approximately 48 months, Tom built a team and acquired a sizable portfolio of properties in the states of Indiana, Alabama, and Ohio creating equity and income in the properties through renovation, tenant placement and stabilization yielding on average 16% cash on cash returns. In these years, Tom could be found at events and conferences speaking on the topic of single-family housing and the trends in the respective investment space. In doing so he organically formed a network of 45-50 investors who were intrigued by his vision and wanted to be a part of it by investing their own capital. Tom took this as an opportunity to build an asset management arm of the business focused on private money loans, real estate flipping, and the multifamily syndication space. This would be the jumping point to the next decade of growth, success and lessons learned.
In 2015, after an exit of the majority of his property portfolio, Tom began to see the market shift towards a saturated market in the rental space due to the growing attention towards the single family rental space resulting in compressed profit margins. This was an opportunity to pivot and focus on larger projects which offered larger margins. In Tom’s words, “bigger margins equals lower risk.” Starting in Ohio, specifically Cleveland, Tom alongside his father completed their first syndication project with a successful exit.
Tom went on to do it again in Huntsville, Alabama exiting a project within 15 months utilizing the trade pool he had built over the preceding four years while in Huntsville. Once again, as the market shifted towards the syndication model and margins began to compress in 2017, Tom pivoted towards land development starting in Arizona.
In 2017, Tom and the team from Ohio moved to Flagstaff, Arizona where they acquired their first 80 acres of land near Williams, AZ to develop a ground up single family home community. This was a critical point in the real estate journey as the team knew they had a lot to learn given the complexities of land development. They acquired the land at a fire sale price and the forecasted margins were substantial. The team invested their own capital to limit the exposure of investors given the risk and their lack of knowledge in the land development space. This was a learning project and the intention was to fail and learn as much as they could through the mistakes. While many mistakes were made and lessons learned, the team exited the project in 18 months, once again nearly 3X’ing equity invested. They went on to acquire machinery, established teams on ground, build partnerships locally for all materials and supplies, and acquired an additional 80 acres to repeat the process. Upon stabilization of the second project and nearing the exit of the last phase, they expanded operations in Austin, Texas while also expanding in Arizona acquiring their first tract of Texas land in 2019.
Tom acquired two tracts of land in Texas for single family lot development and exited those deals approx. 24 months later yielding investors attractive returns. In 2022, Tom founded what he saw as a strategic part of the business and a key differentiator in the risk model, a civil engineering firm and land acquisition firm, ViewPoint Land Solutions. Fast forward to 2024, the Red Oak team now has operations in both Arizona and Texas, has more than 4,000 single-family lots under development & planning, two master communities underway, two master communities in the pipeline, and are targeting to be in development of 10 masters by 2030. Additionally, under the Red Oak umbrella, they have built ViewPoint Engineering, an engineering firm focused in Arizona and Texas with Red Oak making up only 20% of total revenue. The Red Oak team continues to grow, hiring legal counsel, economists, controllers, and a variety of other positions to ensure scale and efficiency is at the forefront of all operations. Tom continues to push his vision across all teams and works diligently to stay ahead of the trends resulting in a practice that allows him as a developer to be ahead of the competition and provide investors with consistent returns in all projects.