Most lenders do not consider commercial real estate bridge loans under $1M. That’s where Kirkland Capital Group \enters the picture. They’ve leveraged this opportunity by building the Kirkland Income Fund, delivering a “micro-balance” commercial mortgage option. Chris Carsley and Brock Freeman of Kirkland join Lance to talk about the ins and outs: how the Fund offers investors lower risk and consistent annual fixed income returns, how they approach the underwriting process, commercial mortgage brokers, and assessing borrower risk.
This Week’s guests
Chris Carsley brings over 25 years of investment industry expertise specializing in corporate and venture finance, business valuation, business operations efficiency, regulatory compliance practices, securities research, portfolio management, arbitrage trading and hedging.
Previously, Chris was Managing Director of Bluewater Global Ltd., an international holding company where he performed corporate analysis and invested in a variety of direct and indirect venture capital projects.
Prior to entering venture capital investments, Chris was responsible for the creation of the business risk and operational due diligence program as a senior member of the investment research and analysis team at Benchmark Plus Management. He was also the head execution trader of futures, options and OTC based trades for the Benchmark Funds. Chris was a trader for Paloma Securities where he negotiated and structured ISDAs, securities lending, and financing agreements that targeted global arbitrage opportunities primarily for Canadian and European markets. Chris was also a senior member of the hedge fund security finance team performing due diligence for the Paloma hedge funds to assist in enhanced finance/margin treatment and short coverage costs.
Chris started his professional investment career as a portfolio manager for Key Asset Management managing institutional and private client discretionary accounts and was responsible for sales, asset research/valuation and portfolio management.
Chris is currently a member of the Charles Wright Academy Endowment Committee, serving on the Committee since March 2017. He co-founded the Seattle Alternative Investment Association in 2004 and is Co-Head of the executive board of the Seattle CAIA chapter launched in 2017. He earned his Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation in 1998, Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst in 2011, and holds a BBA from the University of Portland..
Brock Freeman is a Real Estate Investor and Advisor involved with startups and funds. He has developed leadership in diverse groups of people, building them into highly effective and innovative teams in both Asia and America across technology, finance, sales, and marketing. With a deep history of leveraging technology to improve business results, he believes technology should be used to enable and improve the performance of teams and relationships.
Brock worked in Taiwan as a stock market analyst. In Hong Kong he joined a software startup and built the sales and marketing department where he and his team won early implementations with C-level executives from multiple large Asia based companies. In the U.S. Brock built loan broker origination networks for residential mortgage lenders, most recently as a sales manager. In both instances he led the effort to create repeatable, scalable sales processes, and implement CRM systems.
Brock underwrote and audited loans for several lenders, as well as managed and built the underwriting team for an outsourced loan underwriting firm that serviced lenders such as Glendale Federal Bank. For a fast-growing mortgage lender, he created the technology department, and as IT Director he led a team to build the industry’s first web-based end-to-end loan underwriting, processing, and secondary marketing platform. He also led technology teams at Microsoft and TrueBlue, as well as his own construction software startup, Kosah.
Brock started the monthly PropTech Seattle Open House events, and the Seattle chapter of the Foundation for International Blockchain and Real Estate Expertise (FIBREE) where he is the Regional Chair. He is a member of the Cascadia Blockchain Council and testified to Washington State House and Senate Committees on behalf of blockchain bills.
Brock is an avid skier and hiker, is keenly interested in U.S. Taiwan relations, and conversational in Mandarin Chinese.
Brock is certified in Six Sigma, PMP, and Scrum Agile. He holds a BA in Business Administration and Finance from the University of Washington..
