In 1985, Jim Hart was a commercial photographer and graphic artist. He was commissioned by PSA, a California Airline to visit Los Cabos and take pictures for a feature for their inflight magazine. This trip was to change his life. Jim is an avid surfer and so while fulfilling his project, he enjoyed the waves of Los Cabos. On this trip, he also met Don Harris, one of the three owners of Costa Azul Realty, who were just in the process of laying out the lines in the sand for the La Jolla Resort in Costa Azul. Over the next several months, Jim joined Don flying back and forth to Los Cabos from Southern California in his twin-engine Cessna. He surfed, learned the land, and was offered a job to put together a sales brochure for La Jolla.
In 1986, Jim was offered a job by Costa Azul Realty to bring live leads to see where the La Jolla Resort was and hear a presentation by one of the realtors. Jim recalls that there was very little training involved, he was just told to go where people were hanging out, strike up a conversation and see if he could get them to visit the project. Not having a car, he and the prospect would jump in a cab (paid for by Costa Azul Realty) and drive to the site. Jim said that he spent a lot of time in the pool at the El Presidente Hotel (now the recently closed Holiday Inn at the end of hotel row in San Jose del Cabo) and would talk to all the people he saw and when they asked what he did, he would go into his pitch about La Jolla.
With a scale model of La Jolla set up on a table in the street in downtown San Jose del Cabo, Jim would excite people about the future of owning part of a resort on the beach in Costa Azul that had well-developed plans for renting the units when the owners weren’t in residence.
While most of the salespeople (many Canadians) spent their time in bars and restaurants around town, Jim would go out to the East Cape early almost every day to surf. In 1990, the company got the opportunity to sell lots in Zacatitos and a six-month-long contest was held, with the person selling the most lots being given the position of project manager. Hart would surf every day, talk to the other surfers on the waves, ultimately talking about the unique opportunity to have a piece of paradise in Zacatitos and would take them to see the community (then largely just open land with the roads and markers in place) on the way back to San Jose del Cabo. He sold more than anyone else and became the person responsible for managing the growth of Zacatitos on the East Cape. Later, in 1999 of his projects on the East Cape was to sign up people to buy lots in Bahia Terranova, located between Shipwrecks and 9 Palms on the East Cape.
Costa Azul Realty became the first franchisee in Los Cabos for Century 21. Ultimately, Jim and his wife, Mara made the leap to form their own real estate company, I.C.S Vantage Realty (the ICS stands for Integrity, Communication, and Service). Anyone interested in the East Cape would see Jim signs along the road, in the communities and he stopped to hand out maps of the properties available on the East Cape. Business boomed in the 90s and early 2000s, but with the major recession of 2008, everything came to a standstill in Los Cabos. Jim and his family spent more of the next few years in their “vacation home” in San Juan Capistrano in Southern California than in Los Cabos.
As the economy started to recover following Hurricane Odile in 2014, the Harts started to once again spend more time focused on Real Estate in Los Cabos. Today, Vantage Realty has nine new agents and Jim spends his time training them about the laws of real estate in Mexico, their communities on the East Cape, the importance of protecting the environment (and the need for self-contained septic systems to do so) and how to show a property and close a sale. His latest addition to Vantage Realty is his daughter Susan, a recent graduate of business school in Mexico City who wanted to enter the company business. With the growth of commercial Real Estate in Los Cabos, Hart is also launching Baja Roots with key members of his certified agent team focusing on this market. With a primary focus on the East Cape, when Vantage gets a client interested in other areas in the corridor or Cabo San Lucas, Hart is quick to partner with agents from other companies who are specialists in the communities of interest.
While Jim is spending a lot of his time educating and training his new agents, you will still see him parked on the side of the road at entrances to the beaches on the East Cape to provide maps and information to people driving by. He indicates that there are two new developments that they are about to launch on the East Cape.
Located at the roundabout on the edge of Puerto Los Cabos, for more information on I.C.S. Vantage Realty visit http://www.vantage-realty.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/EastCapeProperties
