By Kristena Hansen | Phoenix Business Journal
Michael Orr chuckles at the notion that anyone considers him “some kind of housing guru” for metro Phoenix.
He did, after all, only enter the real estate business seven years ago — in many ways, by happenstance — and merely is translating large swaths of public records and numbers into layman’s terms and charts. That, for Orr, is like second nature.
“I’ve got that sort of brain that likes assimilating large amounts of numeric data, and I spot changes quickly … We all have different talents, and mine is spotting numbers that don’t fit a pattern,” Orr said in his thick British accent.
Orr’s zeal for mathematics and data mining is what brought him to the U.S. in 1992. He worked for a large mainframe computer company, Amdahl Corp., in his native England before accepting an offer to work at the company’s headquarters in San Jose, Calif.
The mainframe computer industry quickly crumbled after his arrival, and in early 2001 Orr ended up at a tech startup called Mobilaria as CEO. That venture also was short-lived, as financing disappeared after the 9/11 terrorist attacks several months later.
“We ran out of cash, no one wanted to invest in a second round,” he said. “Basically, the company was going nowhere fast, and we ended up having to lose three-quarters of the people, and by that time I was wondering whether I wanted to do something different.”
