Unlock Financial Freedom: 5 Smart Strategies for Resort Residences

John Harcar (00:01.885)
All right. Hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Jessica Elgin. And what we’re going to talk about besides her extensive and great knowledge in business and real estate, we’re going to talk about resort residences and investing in that asset. Something I’m not that familiar with. I’m super excited to learn about it. Remember guys at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five extra business.We do it by providing the tools to grow the business that you want to have, which help in turn live the life that you’ve always dreamed of. Jessica, welcome to our show.

Jessica Elgin (00:39.79)
Thank you. I’m really excited to be here today.

John Harcar (00:42.623)
Yeah, and I’m super excited to learn about this. honestly, is not an asset class that I’ve had much experience or exposure to. But.

Jessica Elgin (00:45.902)
Thanks, guys.

Jessica Elgin (00:50.68)
You know, it’s interesting, John, not many people have. It’s new.

John Harcar (00:54.445)
Yeah, I really haven’t. I when I heard resort residences, think timeshare. That’s what I think of. Before we get in the weeds of all that, why don’t you give our audience a little background on you, kind of your journey in real estate business and what brought you to today?

Jessica Elgin (00:59.426)
Yeah, not not that.

Jessica Elgin (01:10.26)
Absolutely. So I’m a Midwest girl, grew up in the Midwest and went to the West Coast early, early, right out of college. I have a physics degree and I love research. So that’s what lights me up. That’s what gets me to tick. You can’t see it right now, but behind me I have 27 graphs and that’s just my happy place. So I love that. I’m a total geek. But the other thing that I like is this. I love bringing it to

and showing them how they can utilize that information to better increase their portfolio. So I get calls from people all over the country asking, what do I do? Here I need to talk to you before I make a move. Tell me about the different asset classes. And my biggest thing is that I do a lot of research on the markets. So figuring out what cycles are happening right now and what’s gonna be most advantageous. And no two investors are the same.

So that’s really been my journey. I’ve been a real estate agent for 25 years, an investor for going on 30 years. And I love both of them. I would say I’m an investor first though, and real estate second.

John Harcar (02:20.66)
Sweet. Awesome. If you’ve ever watched any of my podcasts, you know, I like to go backwards because I think there’s always good knowledge in the journey. So let’s go way back. Did you have anybody in your family, friends, sphere of influence, anybody that was in real estate that was a realtor that that flipped homes? Like, so when you’re growing up, who planted that seed or where did that come from?

Jessica Elgin (02:29.346)
Bye.

Jessica Elgin (02:38.842)
No.

Yeah, it’s interesting. So I actually come from a very blue collar family, grew up very, very poor. So I wouldn’t even say, know, middle class, would say poor. So I had a different view of the world, right? When I went to school, I was very, very fortunate to be able to go to college. I have a mother who’s amazing and she said, Jessica,

She goes, when you go to college, just study what you like. Don’t worry about what it is. All people care about is that you get a degree. Just finish your first two years, go play, go live life and do what you want. And then the next two years, figure out what you’re gonna do. So my junior year, I went into my counselor and I said, well, I don’t know what I’m gonna do for my major. And he goes, okay. He goes, do you have any ideas? And I said, huh.

He goes, well, what do you think? I said, what’s the closest thing I have to a degree? And he said, physics. And I said, I’m getting a physics degree. So that was that. I did my internship with NASA. I was a very hard studier. I think most people that grow up with nothing embrace every opportunity fully. So I worked my tail off. I did get to do an internship with NASA.

John Harcar (03:48.414)
Jeez.

Jessica Elgin (04:06.965)
I came back and hated it. And it was weeks before graduation. And I said to my family, said, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I am not working for NASA. And they’re like, no, keep in mind where I come from. First off, got to go home. It’s been four years studying. And they’re like, what are you going to do? This is crazy. I said, I don’t know, but I’m not doing sales. Everyone I knew was in sales. Well,

John Harcar (04:21.82)
Right, yeah, sure. NASA is like, you know what mean, yeah.

Jessica Elgin (04:35.693)
30 years later, here I am, all I’ve ever done is sales. I started with the Fortune 500 company, did very, very well there. And about three years in, I sold my house. I bought a home when I was pretty young. I sold that first home, I made $30,000. This is right around 2000. And I thought, this is ridiculous. I did this on accident. If I could do this on accident, if I just studied a little bit, I have a physics degree.

John Harcar (04:38.728)
sales.

Jessica Elgin (05:04.493)
I’m just going to do some research. I’m going figure this out, right? Oh my gosh. So I quit my six-figure income job. This is in 2020. I was making over six figures in my early 20s. So everyone thought I was insane. And I started investing. Robert Kiyosaki was a big, big influencer on me. And I just, loved it. The E-Myth Revisited was another huge book.

John Harcar (05:04.724)
Right, you can figure that out.

John Harcar (05:18.824)
Yeah.

John Harcar (05:31.668)
Incredible book.

Jessica Elgin (05:33.29)
my gosh. And so I just was like, you know what? And my grandfather and my mother both had told me, people are just people. You want to do something. They’re just people that do it. So you want to be an astronaut? That’s just a person. You just choose to do it. So what do you want to do? And so as I was reading that, I really saw the opportunity and I just, I jumped in both feet. The first year I made over $300,000. People didn’t think I was so crazy. Started teaching.

John Harcar (05:59.029)
Awesome. Yeah, right?

Jessica Elgin (06:01.425)
courses. they were like, maybe that’s not so crazy. they were, yeah, so I started teaching investing courses, and it was people asking me if I would help them do what I was doing. And I said, absolutely. And I just got to the point where, and I don’t do anything halfway. So I had an eight hour course with a book that I created. And I just decided it was more than I wanted to do. So I put a ridiculous price on it.

John Harcar (06:03.86)
When they see that cash coming in, they’re like, maybe she wasn’t crazy. No.

Jessica Elgin (06:31.469)
sold enough classes, had enough people referring in that I ended up having to do it on a first American title company. So it was crazy. It was crazy. But from that, I learned so much. And I think that’s where my passion for the markets really and the trends, because everything has its day in the sun, right? So it’s figuring out when is their day in the sun and how can I take advantage of that? And when do I get in and when do I get out? And it’s

John Harcar (06:41.844)
That’s awesome.

John Harcar (06:51.422)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica Elgin (07:01.145)
all when you start tracking it, it’s so black and white that it mitigates all risk. So I call myself a low risk, high risk investor. I like high risk investments, but I mitigate the risk with research and with figuring out different things. So I have key indicators that I look for, right? And those happen. If I’m looking for a boom town, I’m really good at hitting boom towns.

John Harcar (07:22.196)
Okay, what are those?

Jessica Elgin (07:28.269)
If I’m looking for that, I look for five years of the MLS because remember there’s different markets. You have your financial market and your housing market. So I only want MLS data. I want to know that home sales increased by 10 to 12 % for five years. Over that, I’m probably going to bust. Under that, and it’s not going to quite hit, but I need five good steady years. So if I can get somewhere between that 10 and 12%.

The next thing we need to know is collaboration. I’m not the only geek out there, right? So I look for developers that are doing the same thing. They have their own KPI, which have nothing to do with mine, which I love, right? So I need to make sure that they’re collaborating, that they’re also seeing the same thing that I’m seeing. So I watch for, are they getting permits? Are they getting their, you know, things approved? And more importantly than that, is the city and state going to comply?

because you can have all the right factors, but if the city, if the government.

John Harcar (08:27.892)
They can poopoo it.

Jessica Elgin (08:30.635)
You’re done. So I need to see that as well. So those are my three things. I need city and state in there. I need the 10 to 12 % and I need collaboration from other people that do the same things that I do. So we watch for that. The others are intangible, Since I was young and I think it’s because of how much research I’ve done, I literally, it’s like a water stick, you know, back in the days. I can stand on a property and tell you if it’s gonna hit.

John Harcar (08:55.828)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica Elgin (09:01.259)
I don’t always know why, I just know. And I’ll be like, this one’s gonna do it. And the one across the street, no, doesn’t have it. And I don’t know, it’s an intangible. The only thing I can figure out is that when I see things, I don’t see pretty pictures like other people. I see numbers going, right? Like even investment homes. So if I’m looking at a fix and flip, the same thing, I’m gonna go in and I’m like, there’s 10,000 there, there’s 2,000 there, there’s 4,000 there, I can rent it for this. And all these numbers are going super fast.

John Harcar (09:19.016)
Yeah.

Jessica Elgin (09:31.221)
I don’t see the mold and all that kind of stuff, right? Like, are the numbers? That’s it. So it’s the same type of thing with developments in different areas. I just kind of know. But I have to have a first look before I’ll even look.

John Harcar (09:34.066)
Right.

John Harcar (09:43.552)
It’s your experience. You feel it in your bones. You know. Now, let me ask you this. As you got into the real estate piece, and I know that from other analytical folks that I’ve talked to or known, they’re fantastic at the analytics, but they’re not so great on the relationship rapport, building, seller talking. Did you have any issues with that? And if you did, how did you overcome that?

Jessica Elgin (10:10.445)
I’m so grateful that you asked that. Very few people do. My father was a programmer. Very, very high, very white personality, if you know the color codes, right? Very white, extremely. Like your quintessential computer programmer, right? No personal interaction. My mom was your yellow.

John Harcar (10:26.952)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica Elgin (10:38.059)
So partier out there all the time. I got mixed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, busy bee. So if you profile me with the disc profile, I am high DI and zero SNC. So I have no detail orientation, which is super funny because that’s my happy place, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And.

John Harcar (10:38.14)
Okay. Little busy bee. Yeah, okay.

John Harcar (10:57.524)
Well bad to say aren’t you like this analytical geek as you called yourself Wow

Jessica Elgin (11:03.929)
And when you look at like the definition of are you an introvert or extrovert? Because people are like, it’s just natural for you. No, it’s not. No, not at all. I am very much an introvert. It wears me out to be at events. But if you watch me, you think that I am the biggest extrovert ever because I butterfly. I actually attribute that to the Fortune 500 company that I worked for right out of college.

John Harcar (11:12.072)
No. Yeah.

John Harcar (11:28.18)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica Elgin (11:29.525)
So I started with them in corporate sales and they sent us to training six weeks every year. And during that time, it was intense, like 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. You’re leaning in too much, you’re smiling too much, you need to change the conversation to this. This is too happy, this is too sad, you know? It was intense, but it really, having had my mom as my background, right, who raised me.

and being trained in it, I was able to connect the two dots. So I’m able to do it very well. I think the other thing, I am a true physicist. I identify a problem, find a solution, right? So for me, I am not motivated by money, which has been hard for every manager I’ve ever had. I’m motivated by the puzzle. Give me a puzzle, let me figure it out. That’s why I love it. Yeah.

John Harcar (12:12.393)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (12:18.686)
Yeah.

John Harcar (12:23.806)
You’re motivated by solving the problems. Yeah. That’s awesome.

Jessica Elgin (12:27.039)
If you give me someone’s portfolio, I’ll look at it and I’ll go, hmm, and I’ll go through everything and then I’m like, hmm, you could also know which one’s better. And it’s it’s funny. One of the things that the Fortune 500 company taught me was you’ve got a tool chest and inside of that tool chest, you have a lot of tools that the company provides that we provide. Right. And you can make financial gain on. But you have a lot more tools.

John Harcar (12:37.316)
Right, right, right, yeah, no.

Jessica Elgin (12:56.129)
that you never make any financial gain from. And you have to be willing to use both tools because all of that comes back around. So for me, it’s really about the person. What is it that they need? And I think also my childhood has helped me when they talk about what’s important to me is leaving a legacy for my children or what’s important to me is building the next whatever. I actually get that, right?

I get that because my parents built an amazing legacy for me. Blue collar, the skills they gave me, I could never be where I am without them, you know? Yeah.

John Harcar (13:35.988)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So let’s talk a little bit about the resort residences. once again, like I said earlier, first thing that came to my mind was time shares and why the heck would anybody want to do time shares? describe, let’s tell us a little bit about the difference.

Jessica Elgin (13:42.881)
Yes. I can’t remember. It’s yummy.

Okay, so I’m going to go back a little bit. So I mentioned earlier that everything has its day in the sun. And what happened is we’ve we’ve been through the foreclosures, right? That was back in the early 2000s. Then we went through fix and flips. Then we went through vacation rentals. Do remember when those were big? So and a lot of people still believe they are. However, if you look at the data, revenues started declining with vacation rentals about five to six years ago.

And most things, by the way, when they have their day in the sun, it lasts about 10 years. So somewhere between five and 10, 10 most people don’t even realize that you’re starting to fizzle out. And then there’s another five that hold on, not realizing, right? But as the revenue started going, obviously when you, and this is where the commercial side comes in, right? Your value of the home goes down. It doesn’t increase in value because you’re not making the same revenues. So it’s gonna start tanking.

Well, that started happening. Now there’s an important thing to know about data. Data starts with your analysts. The analysts then send it to geeks like myself, who we get to know all the analysts because we want to hear all this information, right? And we do all that. We do. We then start disseminating that to realtors. Realtors then disseminate it to the end user. By the time that it finally gets to the end user, it now is getting to the media.

John Harcar (15:09.396)
Right? You wanna geek out.

Jessica Elgin (15:23.051)
So if you’re waiting on the media for your information, you’re five generations old, right? Like you’re already passed, it’s done. So about two years ago, the hospitality industry has a magazine and they put out and they said, revenues are declining in the vacation rentals. No joke. They have been, but they finally got the information, right? So as that was happening, I of course, investor first, I’m looking at my own portfolio and going crap, now what do I invest in?

John Harcar (15:28.264)
Yeah.

John Harcar (15:41.886)
Right?

Jessica Elgin (15:52.148)
and I’m in Southern Utah, we don’t have much else. I’m like, where am I gonna, what am I gonna do? Well, I was very lucky. There was a resort coming in that had residences and that was in desert color. It’s called a Tara. And I got to know what it was and I went down and I felt it and I go, this is it. So I called all of my people and I said, we gotta jump.

This is the next product that’s out there. So I got five contracts in more than any other realtor in town had sold there. I then did a dinner with a bunch of my high-end investors. And when I was doing it, the marketing gal from Attara called me and said, hey, the developer is going to be in town. Would you like him to speak? And I said, absolutely. I love it. So, you know, like, are you kidding me? More information from the source.

John Harcar (16:42.757)
Yeah.

John Harcar (16:46.504)
Right, right.

Jessica Elgin (16:47.405)
So he came down, did the presentation, it was great. And I started learning and I built a relationship with him. And I said, you know, I wanna learn more about these. This is the next product line. Let me hear what’s going on. And I started learning about it from him, from the developer side. Well, as I was out with him on a lot of these appointments and stuff, he would ask me questions. And there’s this major frustration between developers and realtors.

Realtors think that developers are all idiots and don’t understand and don’t know what they’re doing. And developers think realtors are all idiots and don’t understand. But as I’m sitting in these meetings, it hit me and I said, and many, many times they would ask me and I’d say, well, actually what he’s trying to say is da, da, da, da, da, da. And I’d be able to translate what the realtor was saying. Well, after time I picked up what the developer was saying and repeated it back.

John Harcar (17:19.942)
Or idiots that don’t understand. Right?

Jessica Elgin (17:42.622)
And through that, I realized it’s a miscommunication. It’s an entirely different language. So what a resort residence is, is if you’re looking at a resort, so the resort overlay, right, on your plans and everything, it has residences that people like you and I can purchase, but they’re run by the hotel. However, we own them. So with your

time shares, you only own a portion of it. You own a fraction of the time, right? With your vacation rentals, you own all of it, but you also own all the responsibility of getting it filled and maintaining it. So these, we own it, we get all the tax benefits, we get all those things that we like from vacation rentals and have for many, for a long time. We get to come and go as we please, we get to be in the area that we wanna be, and we get income off of it when we’re not there, right?

John Harcar (18:16.212)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (18:23.732)
Okay.

John Harcar (18:40.756)
Yeah.

Jessica Elgin (18:41.301)
However, the downside to vacation rentals is that once I’m there, if or once someone is there, if they take and they take their pickleball paddle and throw it through the big screen TV, guess who pays for it? The owner, right? And guess who has to take off time and go get it fixed? The owner. Well, in a resort residence, it’s actually done handled by the operator of the hotel. So I cost

John Harcar (18:56.168)
The owner. Yeah.

John Harcar (19:08.69)
Hmm, okay.

Jessica Elgin (19:11.015)
and time. I don’t have to do any of that. So they do when they do their revenues, they break it out a little bit different. But John, when you start putting them side by side, you make more money because another downside to those to the vacation rentals, remember the decline was that if you and I own vacation rentals in the same area and we’re not getting it filled,

John Harcar (19:12.19)
Yeah.

Jessica Elgin (19:37.25)
The only thing that you and I know to do marketing-wise is to lower the price, right? So it became a race to the bottom for all those owners. And they started just cutting their wages, cutting it, cutting it, cutting it. Well, with the operator, they have, me and you, we’re going out and we’re using BRBO or whatever we can, right? They’re going out, if you look at like a Marriott, they have over 230 million subscribers.

John Harcar (19:41.15)
the price, yeah.

John Harcar (19:58.996)
Right.

Jessica Elgin (20:06.381)
to their Bonvoy system. That’s who they’re marketing to. We can’t compete with that. There is no way, right? So now we get to take advantage of that. They’re filling them at a higher rate and a higher occupancy than we ever could. So we end up with more money. So that I hope that made it a little easier to see what it is.

John Harcar (20:09.63)
Yeah.

John Harcar (20:13.395)
Right?

John Harcar (20:21.46)
Hmm, true. That’s brilliant.

John Harcar (20:27.972)
Yeah, no, that’s, mean, that’s, that’s, that’s makes a lot of sense. I mean, it really does, especially with the, you know, having the operator be the one that is in charge of the repair or whatever thing might happen or something like that. That’s, that’s really cool. What, why did you make the switch into this?

Jessica Elgin (20:32.077)
You’re up.

Jessica Elgin (20:39.915)
Yeah.

Jessica Elgin (20:45.853)
Because I needed it for my own portfolio, quite honestly. Yeah, let’s be totally true. I’d love to say that it’s altruistic, know, something I wanted better, better stuff for my clients. I want better stuff for my portfolio. Let’s be real. And I wanted access to it, right? So I started by, I got to know the developers. So I was listing developments and that was great. But one of the things I did discover is this, part of the altruism does come out because

John Harcar (20:48.166)
Okay, yeah, hey, why not? mean…

John Harcar (20:56.852)
Yeah.

That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

John Harcar (21:09.319)
Okay.

Jessica Elgin (21:15.839)
As great as that is and knowing the product and having it, you kind of get your hands tied. Like if I’m talking to you as a customer, I feel obligated to tell you about the ones that I’m representing versus everything that’s out there. So as a team, we just kind of felt through it and said, yeah, we may be leaving some money on the table, but we’d rather go straight to John and make sure John’s getting what he needs versus making sure the developer gets what they need.

John Harcar (21:29.588)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica Elgin (21:44.043)
which we’re always, we love developers and we still do listings, but we focus more on the needs of the buyer instead of the other side. And it really has freed up a lot. For me, it’s more authentic because of the research, right? It allows me, I don’t have to limit my research or skew it any different or, you know, it…

It is what it is, so I can give a little bit more out there.

John Harcar (22:15.348)
I love it. We could keep going for hours probably. We were running out of time, but I appreciate you sharing this. No, I mean, I really can. I think we could talk for another two hours. If there’s folks on here that have interest in something like that, maybe want to talk to you more. Maybe they’re in that area of Utah where they are looking for a realtor, whatever it might be. How do they get in touch with you?

Jessica Elgin (22:17.257)
I’m… you know… I’m stupid!

Jessica Elgin (22:37.293)
Okay, my phone number is 918-924-0055. Call and text, absolutely. If it’s not me, one of my team members will pick up. The other way is Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. So I am on all those, also LinkedIn under Jessica J. Elgin. So middle initial day, yeah. And I do.

John Harcar (22:54.644)
Perfect.

John Harcar (22:59.068)
Okay. Yeah. And I got, got the stuff you sent me. So I’ll put that in the show notes too. Yeah.

Jessica Elgin (23:03.999)
perfect. On the Instagram, I actually have one page. It’s the Jessica J Elgin one that is strictly for data geeks. So if you love the data and you want that, can go on there and it’s literally video after video of just data. So because that’s what I love.

John Harcar (23:15.54)
Only a data geek will make a link for other data geeks. I love it. I love it.

John Harcar (23:28.831)
That’s incredible. That’s so cool. Jessica, I really enjoyed this, man. This was really, really fun. Thank you for dropping a lot of good information. Guys, if you enjoyed it as much as I did, reach out, man. Talk to her about this asset class. It’s something that, take it from her. She did the research. It’s going to get big. So I hope you guys enjoyed it. I know I sure did. And I’ll see you on the next one. Cheers.

Jessica Elgin (23:34.509)
Thank you.

Jessica Elgin (23:51.48)
Thank you.