ABOUT
The son of educators, James is possessed of a life-long passion for teaching and learning. Increasingly committed to the community he serves and the vitality of giving back, James volunteers as a basketball coach for the Boys and Girls Club and as a football coach for the Greater Eastside Junior Football Association. He serves as President of Lake Washington Junior Football. He performs volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity, Hopelink, Washington Trails Association, Ladybug House, Kirkland Teen Union Building, Seattle Children's Hospital, Kirkland Downtown Association, and Seattle Area Farmers' Markets. A dedicated father to six and husband to one, James' family values include maintaining an active outdoor lifestyle, engaging in intellectual conversation, and exploring the wealth of human cultures and expressions of human creativity.
After completing graduate studies in linguistics and hermeneutics, James moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2001. He quickly earned a reputation as a problem solver and innovator in a surging mortgage banking field. Between 2002 and 2007 he rose through the ranks at Merit Financial, later Yarrow Bay Mortgage, from loan officer to Director of Production. He coached loan officers on the balancing risks and yields and established criteria for portfolios of low-risk loans to be serviced in-house. In the wake of the 2008 financial downturn, he got his Real Estate license and shifted from conventional to hard money lending. With Fairplay Funding, he grew an REO team where he pioneered game-changing systems for debt and collateral underwriting and assignments of interests in contracts. From 2011 to 2014 James led teams spearheading acquisitions initiatives for national real estate investment funds which accounted for the acquisitions of more than 1,800 properties.
An original member of the Caliber Real Estate team and a Co-Founder of Capture Realty, James served as Chief Revenue Officer at real estate tech startup Pellego Inc during its Series-A round of fundraising. His present enterprise Prime Realty offers boutique real estate solutions for fastidious investors, buyers and sellers. As Designated Broker James builds teams, coaches investors and mentors agents with an interest in understanding the technical aspects of real estate as a performing asset class.
An active investor himself, in the past decade James participated in more than one hundred fix-and-flips, dozens of buy-and-holds, and scores of land-use, infill, and development projects. In that same time, he assigned interests in over 200 contracts and represented investor clients in more than 360 real estate transactions; while the funds he oversaw raised and deployed tens of millions of dollars of private capital in real estate projects.
An engaging speaker and regular participant in panel discussions, James has addressed audiences of all sizes on such topics as determining highest and best use, investing ahead of zoning, aligning plans with comprehensive plans, off-marketing, interpreting market trends, and weighing risks. A passionate coach and mentor, James offers unique sets of insights into topics such as fundamentals of the deal, syndication best practices, leading questions and negotiating terms, and starting, growing and tending real estate portfolios.