International Real Estate Investing: Surf Properties, Resorts, and Overseas Deal Flow

Jim Habig (00:00)
And he came on to hit with his listing at 4.2 million.

And I thought, okay, that seems like a good price on how much money you can make. We did the numbers and it had about a a threefold return, you know, after you sold the lots, built the houses, that that kind of thing. and once we the the seller was like really motivated. So 4.2, he goes, Jim, you know, we really want to sell this 3.6. And you know, a couple weeks later, hey, I just sold my other business, 2.8.

Issa Hanna (02:02)
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna, and today I have somebody who’s turned his love for oceanography, marketing, and water sports into a fledgling real estate career. Possibly the most interesting man in the world. Ladies and gentlemen, Jim Habig. Jim, welcome.

Jim Habig (02:21)
Thank you, Issa. excited to be here.

Issa Hanna (02:25)
Sounds good. Sounds good. So, Jim, give our viewers a brief rundown of what you’re doing nowadays. What do you do for your business? you do a you got a lot of a lot of things going on, so kinda narrow it down for and give us give us a little brief rundown.

Jim Habig (02:41)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’ve been in real estate for well over twenty years. come from a you know, real estate family. My dad did it, my granddad did it. And so I was practicing here in Orange County, California, and I grew up surfing here. And so I started thinking, well, I want I want to bring passion into my into my job. Yeah, I started getting burned out, you know, you know, hi, I’m Jim Habig, Realtor, you know, that was my my my pitch. And then you had my you know, the 32nd

you know, elevator pitch. So I started thinking how I could differentiate myself. And I thought of, well, let’s focus on something I love, which is surfing. And didn’t know if it have any any legs to it at all. But since we’re here in San Clemente, we have a lot of surf families, a lot of surf companies. And so I put out the call and within my first three calls, I had two listings from major surf families. You know, the Hoffman’s were one, the Hoffman Fabrics

And the Colapintos was another one who’s a top 10 surfer in the world. You know, his family had some property in Costa Rica. And then the Hoffman’s had some property on the East Cape of Mexico. So I immediately had a Mexico listing and a Costa Rica listing. So, you know, the business was born right there. And we did sell both of those properties. Then we went on to start listing a lot of surf resorts and

But down to the lots, you know, so we saw a lot of lots. and you know, it’s it’s been really a great ride. through our our brokerage, we got a listing in Nicaragua. It was 80 acres with a beautiful hotel, 20 rooms, two pools, two bars, restaurant, a yoga pavilion, and welcome center. And then it had another 45 lots to sell. It had sold 80 lots, but we bought in, you know, 40, 40 lots.

to sell on top of that. And once we put it under contract, my partner said, well, who’s gonna run it? So I said, well, I have some background in that. I’ve owned a couple of restaurants. And so I ended up moving to Nicaragua and running the running the hotel for a year. And then we sold it. And I had my wife was by my side and so we sold it a year later and it was a six

a six-figure return on our investment. And it was good timing because we sold it at the end of 2019. It was like two months before COVID hit. And we had 15 employees in a socialist country, and you cannot fire them. So you know, as you can imagine, I got a call from the the new owners about six months later asked me to sell it for them. You know, quick, get us out from under this, right? So

That was just one of the stories. And then it took us down to after that. We went to Costa Rica, you know, in the midst of COVID and we had an active business down there while we were down there for four years. And we were still selling, you know, property around the world. So we now to date we’re up to twenty countries we have listings in, and we’ve actually had our hands on deals in ten countries.

Issa Hanna (06:42)
Wow, so yeah, you’re an international brand at this point, it seems

Jim Habig (06:46)
We really are. We really are. And as we discussed earlier, I’m a we are a lone wolf. We’re a small company, but we’ve been able to you know, navigate through the different you know processes of personal Yeah, exactly. And it’s been it’s been really exciting.

Issa Hanna (07:05)
Sounds good. Well what caught my attention also is your degree in oceanography, the way you were a a surfer growing up, what you you brushed up a little bit about that, and also how you worked for some big TV shows in the past. Give us a little bit of rundown on the TV shows before.

Jim Habig (07:23)
Sure. Well, you know, I went off to college at UCSB to be an oceanographer lifelong since I was little kid to do that, you know, and then you get into college and and a lot of math gets thrown at you when you’re gonna be a scientist. And I’m like, well, I just want to be a jockey still. I want to go, you know, I’m gonna I’m gonna go swim with the fish type thing. And so after leaving UCSB, I moved into marketing.

And so I was a television producer, I was a run-and-gun, so I shot the shot the camera and did a lot of post-production. And this is back when it was tape to tape, three-quarter-inch or Beta. And you know, we did shows like Real Stories of the Highway Patrol, we did a lot of Discovery Channel shows and you know a lot of different sports type of programming. One of our clients came in.

Our post-production facility here in San Clemente, and he said, I want you to edit our first video. And he put in the tape, and I saw a motorized surfboard, the PowerSki Jetboard. And I was just immediately floored, you know, growing up as a surfer, the idea to have power behind you, not have to wait for the wave, it just immediately drew me in. So I ended up working with the inventor Bob for about 15 years on that, and we were in

We were in Life Magazine. We’re the top 100 inventions in 2001. we got over 250 patents and we were on every Discovery Channel show known to man. So Ryan Seacrest rode our our craft and a variety of different hosts and people came down. So one of our things was we guaranteed anybody could come ride it. So so Issa, you could come down and and have ridden it when we were busy there. So you can imagine how much draw that was for media.

So we did live news shows, you know, while the hosts got ready to ride and they kept cut cutting back to us. KTLA 5, we did a lot of Fox News stuff. And so that was a good run. And moved back into real estate about 2005. That’s when I got my license, you know, into the family business, so to speak.

Issa Hanna (09:40)
Yeah, you can you can never get out of the family business, but at least you get paid in in your family business, right?

Jim Habig (09:46)
Yeah, well I didn’t I never expected to be in the family business, you know. Like I said, I went off to be an oceanographer and I’ve always been a very attracted to the ocean living next to it. And so then to to go through, you know, my career as a Realtor and then to mesh it with my passion, you know.

Issa Hanna (10:40)
I was actually gonna say how smart of you and how how of a you know how much of a maverick are you to be able to like carve your own area of a real in the real estate industry. I’ve never I’ve never talked to anybody who has surf properties and has turned like has meshed everything he loves into into one huge real estate company. So that’s that’s crazy. But with that, I do wanna get from your experience, every real estate investor, including myself.

as a real estate nightmare. give me like a nightmare you’ve you’ve had and then had to overcome.

Jim Habig (11:16)
nightmare. Well, this really isn’t it, you know. Obviously, when we work overseas and we’ve done deals in over 10 countries, you have to go chase your commission or chase your return on investment. So we have had some really interesting events with that. And I thank God I’ve never lost any investors’ money or my own investment money, but I’ve definitely been been.

kick to the curb on my commission, you know. So you’re waiting for your return on on all this work you did. And people without ethics, they just basically turn the other way and say, come get me. You know, come get me in Portugal. Come get me in Mexico. Come get me in this, that. So, you know, we’ve had a few of those, but it never deterred me from the excitement of being able to close a deal in an exotic country for typically Americans, Canadians, some Europeans.

And a an occasional local in that country. But it’s just fun learning the different structures and laws and processes, and and they’re all really similar. You know, some in some countries we use we go attorney direct, others do have some escrow similar to the US. so there’s a variety of different methodology to the way they process it. And so learning that as we we did deals in different countries has been very exciting now.

So that’s just some of the downs of you know working overseas and not having a huge legal network to go chase everybody, you know, for a commission. Obviously, our our bigger, our bigger deals were very much tied up with attorneys, you know, in b in both countries, you know, depending on where we’re working. and we’ve got a lot of wins. one I had mentioned, we had a listing come across our brokerage in Nicaragua. Beautiful property.

80 acres, Casablanca type of style, big arches open to the jungle and the ocean. And 80 acres, 20 rooms, two bars, two pools, restaurant, yoga pavilion, welcome center, and about 40 lots still to sell. And they had 80 already sold. So you’re gonna have all that activity in there. So I saw a lot of value.

And he came on to the you know, hit with his listing at 4.2 million.

And I thought, okay, that seems like a good price on how much money you can make. We did the numbers and it had about a a threefold return, you know, after you sold the lots, built the houses, that that kind of thing. and once we the the seller was like really motivated. So 4.2, he goes, Jim, you know, we really want to sell this 3.6. And you know, a couple weeks later, hey, I just sold my other business, 2.8.

He ends up going down in a short period of time and probably about six months. We dropped all the way to 1.2 million from 3. So and for 4.2. And so, anyways, I looked at that and I had a few investors say, Well, will he carry paper? You know, will he offer any owner financing? And I said, Well, let’s ask him. He said, Yes. And then I started working him on the number he needed cash in his hand, and it was a very reasonable number. And so literally I called back two guys and they said, Absolutely.

So we get together, we put it under contract, and then we’re like, Well, who’s gonna run it? And they all look at me and I have background in hospitality, and they said, Jim, can you do it? And I said, Well, I’ve my business is busy here, you know, my local Southern California real estate is going off. But it sounded exciting, you know. So the passion got me.

I went down and ran it, and then as we built the business, you know, we brought in professional surfers from

Typically from my area of San Clemente, brought in some bands, brought in some Christian groups, and we started filling the rooms, you know, and we started looking at you know, developing at the lots, selling the lots. So things were moving in the right direction. And so one of my partners got real smart and he said, Okay, well, I’m gonna buy him out before you know he creates so much value that you know, I won’t be able to, you know, either bring in another partner or get a bigger chunk of the the the share. And so, anyways, made us an offer.

And it was a great offer. It was a six-figure return on our investment in a short period of time. And we said, yes, they took it over. And unfortunately for them, that was about two months before COVID hit. And so as we moved on down to southern Costa Rica with our our cash, they had to go through basically no business, 15 employees.

they’re their their monthly burn rate was about $8,500. So I I got a call six months later. So we’re talking about, you know, February two 2020. And they said, can you sell it for us? You know, can you do it? And I said, Well, I’ll put it out there, but nobody’s buying right now. We’re in the middle of, you know, we’re middle of a you know a major crisis. So you know, so we were able to get a re a quick return on that investment. That was great. Unfortunately for them, they made the wrong choice.

And but we get a lot of deals like that where there’s distressed property or that’s dropping, and we start looking at you know some of the comps in the area and we look at, you know, whether it’s whether it’s a one year, two year, three year hold type of investment. Is it something we want to go and build some some houses on or subdivide, sell lots, that kind of thing. So we get all different varieties of types of deals come across our desk and we pick and choose ourselves.

For a select group of investors, which ones we’re gonna go after. But we run it as a a general brokerage. So we we list lots, homes, resorts, you know, villas, the whole thing. And you know, we’re working right now with about 400 listings. And our is growing. we were redoing our website, and we’re gonna actually create an investor portal, you know. So investors go in there, you know, a lot of people can’t afford the $400,000 hotel or or the eight hundred, you know, thousand dollar, you know, big parcel that they subdivide, but they have a hundred thousand. They have 150,000. So we get a lot of calls like that, you know, and they say they give us an amount and we look for for a property that would fit their needs all alone. But a lot of them say, well, I don’t want to go this alone. I’ve never, you know, worked out of Mexico. I’ve never done a, you know, a development deal out of Costa Rica or Indonesia or something like that. So then we’ll pair them up with

somebody that has that’s looking for capital. And so we’re gonna create an actual, you know, an actual portal. And so people come in, you know, put in a deal. Here’s my deal. I got this great property, a new hot market for us is Panama. And so we’re getting these big, you know, 20 hectare, you know, pieces of property with a simple subdivision into five hect, you know, pieces, you know, you’re gonna triple quad your money very quickly.

because they’re putting in roads there. So we can find out, you know, where the development’s going, where the government’s putting in the money, and we can be ahead of that. And so we can get a pretty good return in a short period of time. So that’s that’s a big portion of our business and we’re expanding that.

Issa Hanna (19:22)
Well, that’s actually a perfect segue into my next question for you. fostering business relationships, because it’s you seem to be able to to do a lot with with your business relationships and growing your network. Give our viewers some advice on how you’ve been able to foster such a unique network.

Jim Habig (19:42)
Sure. Well, as as most people know, you start with your sphere. You know, you start with your family, you start with your associates, your cousins, you know, whoever, and you let them know, you know, your business. And, you know, they all they all don’t have money to invest or purchase or whatever, but it gets in their mind. So I’ve got introductions through through through my sphere, my direct sphere of influence. And then that expands. And we have a really big footprint on

the internet on social media and that. And so we started with our sphere, our close family, friends, and associates, and then just went out from there. And so we now are growing exponentially just through the the social media, you know, and that’s the whole nother issue in itself is keeping up with all the leads and trying to figure out, you know, what’s a real lead, you know, because we we put some very cool, sexy, you know, properties up there. So people are drawn to it, you know.

I want to be next to the beach and I want that. So we do do a lot of sifting through that. And that’s why I

Issa Hanna (20:47)
I’ve probably clicked on a few of your your properties myself. Seeing them on Facebook. Beautiful properties you list. Yeah. so Jim, I would like to give you the floor now. If people want to get a hold to International Surf Properties, or maybe Jim, the Coldwell Banker Realtor out in OC, how could they get a hold of you?

Jim Habig (20:52)
Yeah, it’s beautiful.

Sure. you know, our footprint’s very big. So my name is Jim Habig, Coldwell Banker, International Surf Properties. Direct line is 949-444-1281. We work off WhatsApp a lot because of international, you know, and so yeah, so that’s my direct number, internationalsurfproperties.com or HabigHomes.com are two of our websites. We have a variety of others. We went out and started, you know.

gardening, you know, all these different, you know, websites. So we do have a few up there. but that’ll get get straight to me, you know. I do a lot of the sifting through through leads. And you if you call me direct and say, hey, you saw you on the show, I’m gonna get back to you right away. You know, because it’s really great to be on your show. Appreciate it.

Issa Hanna (22:03)
No, I appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us and I loved hearing your story. And if you guys loved hearing Jim’s story and want to hear more like that, make sure to subscribe and like this video. Once again, this is Issa Hanna, the Real Estate Pros.