Triangle Business Journal

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Executive Voice: He's on the rise in Raleigh real estate

By Caleb Harshberger  –  Staff Writer, Triangle Business Journal

Aug 12, 2021, 11:00am EDT

For 24 years, Raleigh real estate developer James Montague has built his company, F7 International Development, which started with a single retail plaza in southeast Raleigh and now has projects around the world.

Over the years, Montague has expanded his portfolio in his hometown of Raleigh with an eye for affordable housing and commercial investment in underserved areas. With Raleigh booming, Montague has doubled down on his Raleigh projects, including a recent development bringing STEM and business education to local residents and a contract with the developers behind the Downtown South project.

Born and raised in southeast Raleigh, Montague started in entrepreneurship at the age of 14, cutting hair in his mother’s house.

“All the kids would come to my house and get haircuts,” he said. “And at first I sucked, I’ll be honest. A lot of times now, people are afraid to get into something because they suck at it, but to me that’s a sense of fear. To me, I don’t care about that now; I have faith.”

Montague invested his profits into an Atari video game system that customers could play – and soon the house was packed with customers.

“On an average day I had 20, 25 people in my mother’s house playing video games,” he said. “And that worked for maybe two or three years and then one day she said, ‘Son, I don’t know these people coming to my house. You’ve got to get out of here, you’ve got to do something.’”

Montague enrolled in barber school and opened his own shop at the age of 19. But a business mistake cost him the shop.

“The landlord came in one day and told me, ‘You have 30 days to be out of here. New owners had bought the building and you have to be out,’” he said. “So I’m like, ‘Man, get out of here with that. No. Get out here.’ Thirty days later this guy comes in with a sledgehammer and starts knocking my walls down. I had people in my salon.”

Montague started looking for his own space, which would lead him to real estate.

“That’s when I decided to buy my own property,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m going to make it so I can never get kicked out of this place again.’”

Montague was soon working 16-hour days eating poorly and neglecting relationships, when that caught up with him in 1997.

“When I was 26 I had a stroke, and I almost died,” he said. “The doctor told my mother I couldn’t go back to what I was doing, it was stressing me out. But I just loved it then. I was good. I traveled and did shows. So it really hurt me when I couldn’t do that. So I had to find another thing to do.”

That year, he bought the land for the Statue Side Business Plaza on Rock Quarry Road in southeast Raleigh. The first building opened in 1999.

Montague was rejected by 20 banks before landing funding. With each rejection, he solicited feedback to better hone his pitch.

“I’m the kind of person that if you say no, no is fine, but why not? I’m not trying to prove you wrong. But what can I do to incorporate what you’re saying to maybe get the next person to say yes?” he said. “So by the time I got to the 21st person, I was a pro. He looked like, ‘Wow this is good.’”

Montague has been growing ever since.

Across the Triangle, his company has built residential and commercial projects, including affordable and senior living communities and commercial plazas in underserved areas of the city. The company also has projects around the country, such as a project in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina, and around the world, including a hospital in Nigeria.

But now, Montague said, “I’m focusing here because Raleigh is so hot right now. If you know this market, it could be the next Atlanta. People say Raleigh could be the next Charlotte – Raleigh’s almost Charlotte now. If you give it another five, 10 years it could be the next Atlanta.”

He recently broke ground on Montague Plaza in southeast Raleigh. Plans call for a $4 million building with 16,000 square feet of space for businesses and educational programs focused on entrepreneurship. Additionally, F7 has joined the Downtown South development and is working on existing industrial buildings that will be converted to retail and dining spots.

Montague also has a number of affordable housing projects in the area.

“People don’t want affordable housing — they need affordable housing,” he said. “But it makes it really tough because land costs are so high for developers like myself to do what we want to do.”

Meanwhile, developers continue to pour into Raleigh neighborhoods surrounding downtown. A recent trip with his wife gave Montague some perspective.

“We went to D.C. last year and we went to a part of town that was gentrified, and we thought it was just nice,” he said. “But she said, ‘I bet there are people who drive by this and don’t get that warm fuzzy feeling. You probably have people driving by that grit their teeth and say, ‘I used to live there, but got kicked out and now I’m trying to find a place.’ We have to be cognizant of that.”

Today, F7 is a two-person operation run by Montague and his wife. In the years to come, he said he hopes to bring new staff on board as well as additional partnerships with firms around the area.

“We’re scaling up. There’s only so much you can grow [as] a mom and pop,” he said.