His $50K Flip Budget Doubled—and He Barely Broke Even | Carlos Garcia

Carlos Garcia (00:00)
One of my biggest buyers in our first meeting said, “Carlos, I only do business with people of good character. I’m the kind of person that’ll do what he says he’s gonna do. So if I say I’m gonna close on a property, I’m gonna close on it. And I wanna work with people that I can trust.” So

Man, that stuck with me for the rest of my career. This was probably in 2012 when we had this meeting. And it never left my mind because real estate investing and building these relationships, and whether you’re in sales no matter what, it’s like it’s not about just the deal. It’s about, can, are you trustworthy? Are you the kind of person that’s going to fold under pressure or are you gonna find solutions when things get bumpy?

Issa Hanna (02:09)
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna, and today I have Carlos Garcia with Level Up Realty here to share his knowledge. Carlos, welcome to the show.

Carlos Garcia (02:18)
Issa, thanks for having me. Appreciate you.

Issa Hanna (02:20)
I appreciate having you, man. You’ve been in the game 16 years, seen it all, worked in many different levels, so like you said, you leveled up, right? Yeah, so I want you to tell the viewers what your main focus is nowadays, and then what’s your day-to-days kind of look like.

Carlos Garcia (02:38)
Right on. Yeah. So as as of right now, my main focus is running my real estate wholesale brokerage. So Level Up Realty is a source for investment real estate deals. We cater to investors who are looking to buy houses, hold them as rentals, fix and flip, or purchase then purchase properties and create mortgages, all on the residential side. Day to day, it it’s since my company is small and it’s it’s new and we’re about four years old

since I started it, my I’m out in the field, I’m looking for houses, I’m meeting with investors, I’m making offers on properties, I’m selling properties. I mean, I’m wearing all the hats right now, I’m creating content, anything and everything that I can possibly do to just keep the engine going and just build a system and operation that produces great results in and in an environment where most people are not really

thriving. So we’re finding the opportunities that allow us to keep moving deals monthly and serving the investor community.

Issa Hanna (03:34)
I love that. And this thing was built in your image, right? It with your own knowledge. So it’s not just like, hey, I’m gonna open a real estate brokerage. You put the work in at, like I said, different levels. And what? We didn’t even talk about it, but I put that together while we were talking. That’s probably why you called it Level Up. That’s right. And you and you quickly, right out of UTSA, became like

one of their number one guys, and then I’m gonna let you take the story from there, man.

Carlos Garcia (03:57)
Yeah, right on. So, it’s like anything else, man. You got to pay your dues, right? So a lot of times we can graduate from college or want to get into the work fate workforce. And, we think our value is way up here. And like, man, I know, I’m worth I know my worth, right? Well, a time comes where you have to prove your worth, right? And typically you have to start at the bottom.

So and that’s what I did. I started at a company called New Western as a sales agent, bottom floor, learning about real estate investing, learning how to run numbers, learning what makes sense, what strategies investors are using, how it all works and the speed and the velocity of deal transactions, and also the competitiveness, in the real estate investment space. And that it was it was fast paced and it really motivated me daily. So

Know I showed up, I had things to do, I had people to call, I had meetings to have, and properties to show, and it just became a snowball. The more that I showed up, the more effort that I put in, the more calls that I made. Even when I failed, I would I would just learn from them and I get back up and let’s go back at it, let’s do it better and better and better. And sometimes you’ll see other people succeed around you, and there’s two thoughts that can come up, right? One is like, man,

why them and not me, or the other ones, like, man, I’m glad they’re showing me what’s possible. I’m gonna go do what they’re doing, I’m gonna go do it better. And I took I took the ladder and I wanted to be the best. So, I showed up and my goal is to be the best salesman in the office and I and I hit those milestones and then got into acquisitions where it required me, going out and sourcing properties. And pretty much the company just gave me a blank check to buy as many discounted properties as I possibly could.

So we would compete against other people within our organization, across the company. And it was fun, like every win turned into a check. And the more that we did that, the checks got bigger. And, eventually you’re like, wow, I can’t believe this is even real. But it changed my whole just perception of what success could look like for somebody like myself, who didn’t come from a background of,

family that had all the answers or a silver spoon or anything like that. Like, man, we had to we had to figure things out, we had to learn and I got to a point where I was like, man, there’s gotta be a better way. And when I found that better way, like, man, this is it, stick with it, keep going. And I paid my dues, I wrote I rose through the rankings and it wasn’t because of any handouts, it was all earned and it was really focused on like

improvement and just resting on my faith, that things are gonna get better every step of the way as long as I put in the work daily.

Issa Hanna (06:22)
100%, man. And what you just said, if you guys, viewers at home, rewind this and listen to that answer and what he just said, that is one hundred percent the makings of a great salesman and a great professional. And not even just that. I read something recently where 100 hours, if you do something for just one hundred hours, you’re better than ninety-nine percent of the world. So imagine thousands of hours doing it

at different levels, acquisitions, this kind, this kind of stuff. So you learned it from a ground up level. And then now the American dream, right? As an immigrant son, you start with nothing. Real estate can give you generational wealth. You went from working for somebody else to taking that knowledge that you learned over the 16 years. And in 2022 you started your own brokerage serving investors who inside and out, man.

I mean, truly, inspiring journey, all the way to the top. You also shared that, you guys are a smaller brokerage. So smaller guys that know the game in an inside and out, and they have their investors that they deal with, they care about them so much. You’re the owner operator. So you’re out there sourcing your own deals, you’re out there putting the work. So the experts out there, he doesn’t have one of his guys

under him, he’s actually out there. He cares about you. I just wanted to highlight that about your answers. But now I want to shift focus just a little bit for you, right?

Carlos Garcia (07:45)
Yes, sir.

Issa Hanna (07:46)
You you’ve invested in real estate rentals, you’ve invested in different things. You’ve been in the real estate game so for so long. We all got We’ve been in it. We all got these real estate nightmares. Give me one of your real estate nightmares that sticks out in your mind.

Carlos Garcia (08:48)
Well, I I’ve gone through a lot of different transactions and man, I have a number that I can count. But when he come when he came to the investing side, and this was this was this was some not too long ago, maybe a few years ago, my brother and I were we’re gonna do a flip together, and he was new to the investing space, and he wants to do a flip, and it’s like, man.

Like he finds the deal, he’s gung-ho about it. He’s like, “I like the property, we’re let’s do it, we can flip it, we’ll make X amount dollars.” I’m like, “Man, I don’t know.” I was like, “This is gonna be a big rehab.” Like this, he’s like, “No way, it’s gonna be, 50k renovation costs.” I was like, “I don’t I don’t know, man, but like if you want to do it, let’s do it.” So and this is it’s important to understand that for me, it wasn’t about the profit, the profitability, it’s more about the experience. So

I knew that my brother was coming in with me and we’re gonna do something that was gonna be out of his experience and kind of inlignment with my experience and what I’ve seen, but also knew like, okay, look, if we can get if we can get if we can both learn something together out of this, then that’s gonna be the value, right? So I’ll just go ahead and put that out there. So we went and we bought this house. I mean, it was trash. We had to do a clean out. We had, I mean, we did everything.

That rehab budget from 50,000 ended up turning into a hundred thousand dollar rehab. So I had to do all the siding, had to do all the the roof, had to do the foundation, the plumbing, the electrical. I mean, you name it. We pretty much rebuilt this house. But for me, it wasn’t like, it wasn’t I wasn’t worried about how much money we’re spending. I was more concerned about will this property sell? And then on top of that,

we have to make sure that we’re pulling permits, right? Because if you’re doing renovations, especially here in Texas and San Antonio, they have this thing called the Strike Force. So if you don’t pull permits and they and they find out, they stop you dead in your track. So we put all the point permits that usually increases costs. So at the end of the day, we got it, we got it done. We bumped heads a few times, if you ever worked with family and y’all you don’t see how to eye, it can get a little

messy. I think he probably quit on me maybe three times. I was like, “Brother, we’re gonna finish this.” But he’s my brother, so he’s he stuck it, he stuck it out. And at the end of the day, we ended up breaking even. So that was I’ll take that as a win. We sold the house within a week when put it on a market. And this was like, in ’22 or like in ’23, it was 2023.

And so even in a down market, it was still able to sell relatively quickly. And that gave me the peace of mind, like, all right, let me just at least pull my money back out of this and let’s get back to work. But it was a good lesson to show him, like, man, you’re not always gonna make a whole bunch of money in real estate just because you’re investing, it’s speculative. You have to you have to run your numbers, you have to manage people. Sometimes when you’re managing contractors, they don’t show up or they don’t finish the job quality. So

there’s a lot of things that you have to keep a pulse on. And thankfully in this situation, my brother was actually working with the contractor. So he was able to see it and actually go through it, which now we’re still working together, thankfully. So that was one of the one of the hardest transactions that I’ve that I’ve done, at least projects that I’ve done. But it ended up working out at the end of the day.

Issa Hanna (11:47)
Definitely, man. And these nightmares when it’s stressful at the time, it seems like everything’s closing in around you and all this stuff. But when you get through to the other side, not really that big of a deal. You didn’t lose any money, but I always say even if you did lose a little, y- you never lose, you always learn, right? You get a little bit hard. Exactly,

Carlos Garcia (12:04)
Education is the education.

Issa Hanna (12:07)
man. And I wouldn’t trade that first hand knowledge for a hundred years and reading about

textbook. You can’t learn that kind of stuff firsthand. Absolutely. I wanna I wanna focus now on the future a little bit, right? You started in ’22. So I look you guys up. You got your five-year anniversary coming up next year. How about your 10-year anniversary? By the 10 year of Level Up, where am I going to see you guys at?

Carlos Garcia (12:34)
Well, hopefully we’ll be able to expand beyond the San Antonio market. Dallas, Fort Worth is are are great markets for this type of operation, Houston as well. So if I can get a few more offices going in those other areas would be ideal. For me personally, my goal is to just create a company that’s vertically integrated with, lending, with

know just creating our own demand for real estate. So buying and holding rentals, buying and creating mortgages, doing some flips here and there, just because we’re in the we’re in the middle of deal central. Like we get access to all the deals coming through. And we get to we get to pick, but for me right now, I don’t cherry pick any deals, everything’s for the investors, because that’s who we’re servicing. So, if it ever gets to a point where we have a deal and everybody passes on it and it’s like, man, it’s still a good number, then I might just have to jump.

You

Issa Hanna (13:20)
Hundred percent. We we’re always out there with the eye looking for it. I started as a realtor and ended up an investor. So we we’re always we’re we get bit by the bug and you can’t hold back, especially when you have the knowledge we have and you can

Carlos Garcia (13:32)
Progression, man, right? Eventually you’re like, all right, this works, but now what I gotta do with the money, right?

Issa Hanna (13:38)
One hundred percent, man. So how about some advice now for our younger guys? So I mentioned earlier I was gonna ask your advice about something. And it seems like you have a good network, how to build relationships. The most important thing in our game is building relationships, growing your network. So if you had to tell that new guy one piece of advice about where to start, what would you tell him?

Carlos Garcia (14:01)
Man, that’s a great question. And I’m gonna share something that an investor shared with me, one of my biggest buyers in our first meeting. And he sat down with me, he said, “Carlos, I only do business with people of good character. I’m the kind of person that’ll do what he says he’s gonna do. So if I say I’m gonna close on a property, I’m gonna close on it. And I wanna work with people that I can trust.” So

Man, that stuck with me for the rest of my career. This was probably in 2012 when we had this meeting. And it never left my mind because real estate investing and building these relationships, and whether you’re in sales no matter what, it’s like it’s not about just the deal. It’s about, can, are you trustworthy? Are you the kind of person that’s going to fold under pressure or are you gonna find solutions when things get bumpy? And you have to keep your cool because a lot of times people don’t keep their cool, they get upset,

the world is falling, the deal’s not gonna close, and they go south, right? So it’s like, man, you don’t you gotta keep a level head, you gotta do everything with integrity, you have to be trustworthy. Don’t do it for the money. Like let the money be a prior byproduct of your great service and your character that because you’re able to build trust with people that can count on you and to get things done.

Issa Hanna (15:49)
Amazing advice. And what? And people that watch this show or listen to the show all the time, you guys know that’s a common theme with people who have a deep knowledge of our industry. That’s exactly the advice that everybody echoes, right? And why would Carlos be any different? Because he he’s got that deep knowledge of the game that all the major operators have. He is a major operator in our game right now,

one of the main guys in San Antonio, I a vital, part of the investor community you are. So now, Carlos, if my investor community wanted to get in contact with you. We got a lot of Texas investors. We like San Antonio, right? Where could we reach you at?

Carlos Garcia (16:28)
Well, I’m easy to find. So you can find you can you find me on my website, leveluprealty.biz. It has my contact information there. I’m on Instagram @CarlosG210. You can find me on Facebook, Carlos Garcia. Very easy to find. My email address, [email protected] B-I-Z.

So yeah, I mean find one of those channels, shoot me a DM, message me, we can connect. And just like I found Investor Fuel out there on Instagram, man, y’all are everywhere. So I’m easy to find as well.

Issa Hanna (16:55)
Definitely. Make sure you guys slide into Carlos’ DMs because he can really help you. He can find you the best deals in San Antonio and in the next few years, possibly nationwide, but definitely throughout Texas. So Carlos, mate, thank you so much for coming on, man. It was a true honor to host you on the show.

Carlos Garcia (17:12)
Issa, I appreciate your time, man, and thank you for the opportunity.

Issa Hanna (17:15)
I’d like to extend an invitation already. So we’re gonna do it live on there. Usually I’ll text you about it, but next year I want you back on the show. I wanna check the progress. I know you’re gonna be telling me you’re in five different cities. So

Carlos Garcia (17:27)
Hey, absolutely. Well, I don’t know about five, but give me a year, we’re gonna make some progress for sure.

Issa Hanna (17:32)
Hundred percent, man. Thank you so much. And to our viewers at home, if you enjoyed my conversation and want to see more like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that can bring us different knowledge on every aspect of the real estate industry. Until next time. The Real Estate Pros are out.