Phillips brings more than thirty years of real estate experience in disciplines including commercial real estate in California and Oregon, energy exploration and development, real estate finance, and as a pioneer of real estate and financially related online information services.
Phillips spent his early years in real estate in Oregon, during and after studying business and law in college, as a member of the commercial and investment division of a major real estate firm headquartered in Salem, Oregon’s capitol. During these years Phillips, licensed in both Oregon and California spent a good deal of his time with 1031 exchanges, and interstate 1031 exchanges of commercial and investment properties.
He returned to his native California when he was offered and accepted the position of Executive Vice President of a San Francisco based oil and gas exploration company. This involved lease acquisition, tracking and maintenance of large blocks of land, principally throughout the southern states, where his interstate real estate transactional and regulatory experience was an asset. He was also one of the principal decision makers with virtually every aspect of the drilling and production operations of the company, as he rose to the position of COO of the company.
Following his tenure in energy exploration, Phillips was the President of a mortgage banking and brokerage company based in Marin County, California and subsequently and concurrently President of the online information company that spun off from that business, upon the realization in the mid-eighties, that the systems developed to enhance in-house productivity could have widespread demand if provided online to the real estate industry.
After the sale of these companies in the mid and late nineties, Phillips devoted an early retirement to the management of personal investments. After a few years of retirement, Phillips found this relatively sedentary lifestyle becoming increasingly boring, and desired to get back to work in the real estate business community.