James S. Sauls | Executive Vice President, Carter Funds
James S. Sauls serves as Executive Vice President and as a member of the Investment Committee of Carter Multifamily Growth & Income Advisors, LLC.
Mr. Sauls is a 27-year veteran of the real estate industry, having built and managed several successful real estate firms all within the multifamily space.
He is the founder and has served as Chief Executive Officer of Benchmark Asset Management, LLC, or Benchmark, since November 1998. Benchmark is a multi-platform company, specializing in conventional, student and scattered site housing since 1998. Benchmark and its affiliates have participated in the acquisition, disposition and management of over 12,000 units representing over $750.0 million in value stretching from the Carolinas to Texas.
Mr. Sauls was a founding member of a student housing focused niche company, SHS Management, LLC (“SHS”), actively branded Student Housing Solutions, in which he was the active Chief Operating Officer from September 2003 to March 2012. SHS was ranked among the top 25 National Multifamily Housing firms by Student Housing Business from 2010 to 2011. In his position as Chief Operating Officer with SHS and its family of companies, he was responsible for overseeing all corporate operations while sourcing debt and equity for the companies’ new product development, product repositioning, acquisition and development. SHS actively managed in excess of 8,000 beds within its management platform. SHS and its predecessors and principals actively developed and principled over $400 million in real estate transactions throughout the southeastern United States, including over 11,000 student housing beds, of which approximately half were repositioned and 500,000 square feet of retail. During the period of March 2012 to October 2016, he transitioned the COO responsibilities to a colleague, remained involved as a passive investor in SHS, and returned his focus to Benchmark.
Mr. Sauls participated in the startup of a community bank, Probank, where he was a board member from 2007 to 2011, and has been a licensed real estate broker in Florida since 1998. Mr. Sauls holds a bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Florida State University.