Spotlight: Jeff Montgomery and Core Pacific

Wally Smith:
Welcome, Jeff Montgomery. How are you?

Jeff Montgomery:
Thank you. Great. Pleasure to be here.

Wally Smith:
And you’re vice president of acquisitions with CORE Pacific. How long have you been with them?

Jeff Montgomery:
Going on six weeks.

Wally Smith:
All right.

Jeff Montgomery:
Yeah.

Wally Smith:
All right. So-

Jeff Montgomery:
It’s been a fast-paced start with CORE and-

Wally Smith:
Yeah.

Jeff Montgomery:
Yeah. Came in from institutional investing side and brought that side of the experience onto them, and we were able to lock something up real quick right before the storm hit, so-

Wally Smith:
That is really good.

Jeff Montgomery:
… we’re excited about that.

Wally Smith:
Yeah. So six weeks. So you came from institutional. What was your previous life?

Jeff Montgomery:
Yeah, my experience has been institutional investing for a family office. They have family office funds and-

Wally Smith:
Single? Multifamily?

Jeff Montgomery:
All multifamily.

Wally Smith:
Okay.

Jeff Montgomery:
Well, actually, I take it back. I started in the GFC, coming out of the GFC, 2012, with single-family investing, buying foreclosure deals out the recession and-

Wally Smith:
Oh, that’s fun.

Jeff Montgomery:
… amassing portfolios on that side. So that was kind of the Wild West, before the latest build-for-rent round really took off, and that was a lot of fun.

Wally Smith:
Very good. And they hired you to be the head of acquisitions.

Jeff Montgomery:
That’s what they’re telling me, yeah. [inaudible 00:01:30].

Wally Smith:
So a lot of time on the road or what?

Jeff Montgomery:
Yeah, a lot of time on the road. We came into this understanding that the fundamentals of the industry are very strong. We like the multifamily space. The company’s in multifamily and industrial, has history in industrial, and then bringing me on to help grow the multifamily portfolio. At one point, the company had as much as 10,000 units.

Wally Smith:
Wow.

Jeff Montgomery:
We are down to around 3,600.

Wally Smith:
Oh, good doors?

Jeff Montgomery:
Yeah. So, going full-cycle on some of those deals, some of the legacy assets as well. So they brought me on to help grow the portfolio and work with the team and go find new markets and new opportunities.

Wally Smith:
Talk about you little bit. You said you’re from Orange County?

Jeff Montgomery:
I am, yeah. Born and raised, California. This white stuff out here in Denver is a little scary, but-

Wally Smith:
They’ve been known to ski in California little bit. Do you ever-

Jeff Montgomery:
No. We-

Wally Smith:
… get up to the mountains?

Jeff Montgomery:
We do. I snowboard in the winter, get up to.

Wally Smith:
You’re supposed to snowboard in the morning and surf at night, something like that?

Jeff Montgomery:
That’s the deal. Surf in the morning, snowboard in the afternoon. Yeah.

Wally Smith:
Where’d you go to school?

Jeff Montgomery:
UC Santa Barbara.

Wally Smith:
Gee, that’s rough.

Jeff Montgomery:
Yeah, it was hard. My dorm room was fourth story on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the ocean. And I go, “Well, yeah, you better not get used to this because it could be a while until you can replicate it.”

Wally Smith:
Some of my family members went to Pepperdine and they were-

Jeff Montgomery:
Oh, that’s great.

Wally Smith:
… fond of that as well. So, yeah. Were you in sports at all? Or what’d you like to do in school?

Jeff Montgomery:
In school, it was more getting in, getting out, and getting to work. Sports, growing up, did the typical football. Football, baseball, things like that.

Wally Smith:
Yeah. You look like a middle infielder.

Jeff Montgomery:
Picking the days he’s in the back yard, right?

Wally Smith:
Absolutely. Something like that. Well, this has been good. And I know we really like working with CORE. I love the direction. You’ve got two or three real, solid, I think, leverageable points of difference with your approach to multifamily and being responsive to the market.