Las Vegas Wholesaling & Dispo Secrets With Carlos Aguilar of Secret Source Properties

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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, host Kristen interviews Carlos Aguilar, a seasoned sales advisor at Secret Source Properties. Carlos shares his journey into real estate, starting from his background in the car business to his current role in helping investors navigate the market. He discusses the unique approach of Secret Source Properties, their focus on distressed properties, and the importance of customer service. Carlos also provides insights into the Las Vegas real estate market, emphasizing the need for strategic pricing and the opportunities available for investors. He encourages listeners to take action and not get stuck in analysis paralysis, highlighting the support and resources available through his company.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Carlos Aguilar’s Website
    • Carlos Aguilar on Tiktok
    • Carlos Aguilar’s Phone Number: (702) 500-0242
    • Carlos Aguilar’s Email: [email protected]

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Carlos Aguilar (00:00)
  You learn the game, now you gotta go out there and play it. And if you don’t play it, you’re not gonna make money. And you’re just wasting and spinning your wheels because you overanalyze things and you create this barrier before you that holds you back. And a lot of times you gotta take a chance. You learn everything you can. You got the books, you got the training, you did everything. You go here, you go there, all these masterminds.

  and you still haven’t pulled the trigger after how many years? I’ve met so many people like that.

  Kristen (00:30)
  it.

  Welcome back to the real estate pros podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Carlos Aguilar. He is a sales advisor at secret source properties out of Las Vegas, Nevada. He’s been in the game for over 20 years. So we got a lot to talk about here. Thanks for being here.

  Carlos Aguilar (02:18)
  Thank you, Kristen and I appreciate that. And it’s an honor to be here with you. Thank you so much.

  Kristen (02:22)
  So

  yeah, thank you so much for being here. you got into the industry as a realtor. Tell us about how you got involved with real estate.

  Carlos Aguilar (02:30)
  Great question. So my journey really started back when I was in the car business. I was a Internet director for a large automobile dealership and at that point in time, I’ve been married for for almost 26 years now and at that time I made a conscious decision because my wife was like, you know, you should get into real estate.

  I hear so many good things about real estate. You should get into it. You’d be great at it. And I was like, you know what? You’re right. I don’t I I also didn’t want to be an absentee dad, right? Because when my daughter was being born at that time, I know that as a manager, director, you spend your whole life at the dealership. And I didn’t want to do that to my own child. So I made a conscious decision to get into real estate. Now, the company that I started with was a small boutique.

  primary focus at the time was finding foreclosures, doing short sales. And that type of business at that point in time, not many agents were doing that because everyone was making money hand over fist back in 2005. So I kind of went into the trenches and I learned everything I could because for me that that whole industry was fascinating. Now, what they were doing is that they were actually rehabbing properties and putting them on the market. They didn’t call it wholesale at that point in time.

  ⁓ But I did learn a lot and I think that is the foundation of my experience in real estate because once you learn how distress properties and the whole industry, the mindset of the sellers, how they think, because it’s a very frightening situation and so you have to approach it with a lot of compassion and understanding. Again, just go in there and say, hey, we want to get rid of you and buy your property for cheap. But when you understand that whole market,

  Everything else kind of falls into place and I, you know, in real estate, I’ve worked for corporate, corporate companies like KB Home and so forth. But my forte was distressed properties. I was even an REO agent for Chase and Bank of America. And that was a great experience too. But overall, my experience that lead me into working with my wife, which I did for almost 10 years until recently.

  Kristen (04:32)
  Mm.

  Carlos Aguilar (05:33)
  Until I found a secret source properties. went through a very lengthy hiring process, which I appreciated very much because that really demonstrated to me the kind of company that they are. They put a lot of focus on every detail and what they do, and they’re very selective. And I’m very proud to have been hired by them because their mindset and their whole culture is one of the best things that ever happened to me in the real estate industry. So I’m very proud to be working with them.

  Kristen (05:45)
  Mm-hmm.

  That’s amazing. I mean, you have such great experience and you have such a rounded background with everything. Tell us a little bit about Secret Source.

  Carlos Aguilar (06:08)
  So Secret Source, they are a disparate, disparate primary company where they’re disposition on properties. We get properties from various different sources, from other wholesalers, real estate agents, you name it. we gather a lot of these deals are presented to us and we are a one-stop shop. And Secret Source is probably one of the best companies out there when it

  comes to this positioning properties, which is not always an easy task to do, but we sell everything that we touch for the most part. There are a few cases that doesn’t pan out, maybe because the seller changes their mind or whatever the case may be, a number of other issues sometimes, fake sellers too, people are trying to sell properties that don’t belong to them and they have no rights. That happens from time to time too. But for the most part, everything that we touch, we are able to sell.

  Kristen (06:54)
  Yeah.

  Carlos Aguilar (07:03)
  And our primary focus is to be able to, as my role as a sales advisor, is to be able to help everyone from the mom and pop investor all the way to the seasoned investor, finding solutions, finding the best deals possible, providing outstanding services. A lot of times we do more than what the average wholesale company does. For example, when we have, create these flyers with

  a lot of information that’s viable to the property to help the end user make a better decision on that particular property. You know the location, what are the benefits? We even put details on every photo. So when you look at our photos, the photos are methodically designed to kind of give you an inside view as you walk in through the front door view and pan taking photos of everywhere. We even do video.

  we itemize and label every photo. Okay, this is the living room area. So everything is labeled so that way you get a good feel of what you’re looking at. And that’s vital because those little details make a huge difference. And when somebody’s kind of making a decision and keep in mind these properties, you know, they’re not buying a TV. They’re buying a product that’s hundreds of thousands of dollars.

  Kristen (08:25)
  Yeah.

  Carlos Aguilar (08:25)
  So

  that deserves that kind of attention that most wholesaling companies, they just post it or whatever, but we always want to make a certain effort to be able to show that we do provide an outstanding service. And that’s why we have a lot of investor clients that do come back to us. And more importantly, as a one-stop, we even offer you know in-house financing, which our investors just love because one of the most

  Kristen (08:47)
  and

  Carlos Aguilar (09:27)
  Challenging aspects is funding, right? Hard money, people that come in with cash. Our in-house financing is probably one of the best deals you could ever come across, honestly. I don’t know of any other companies. So if you have a winning bid, well, I won’t get into too much, but you have a winning bid, in-house financing is available. No application, no credit check, no appraisal. The property is the collateral.

  Kristen (09:30)
  Riot.

  Yeah.

  Carlos Aguilar (09:51)
  And what this does for the end user for the for the investor client is that your money, your liquidity is not tied up into the purchase itself. It allows you to use your liquidity more focused on the rehab of things. Right? Rates, you know, it is hard money, so it’s the rates, not the cheapest, but it could be something that’s viable for somebody that just wants to be able to flip it. Even if you want to hold it.

  Kristen (10:03)
  Hmm.

  Right.

  Carlos Aguilar (10:17)
  You could still be able to refinance it into a better financing down the road after you rehab it. but having that option for a lot of our investors, just, that’s just, they love it, right? Because who else offers that? There’s a lot of hard money lenders out there, but then they have criteria. So you got to do an application. They want to do either a soft pull or a hard pull. Want to know what your LTV is, what maybe even do an appraisal. So those are parameters that are very typical on a regular loan.

  Kristen (10:32)
  Mm-hmm.

  Carlos Aguilar (10:46)
  But to do that in a hard money situation, an investment property, kind of prolongs that whole process, right? Because hard money is supposed to be like cash, fast and easy, but sometimes that gets lost sometimes. But I think we’re very proud of the fact that we’re able to help a lot of people with their business to make money. That way you can focus more on that. And at the end of the day, that’s what this is all about, to make as much money as you can. And so we’re very proud of that service that we do provide.

  Kristen (11:05)
  Absolutely.

  Carlos Aguilar (11:16)
  We always want to excel our customer service level to be able to help people, you know, should they have questions or anything that we can do, you know, about the property, the location, whatever insight they may need to help them make a better decision in the long run. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about making this deal happen. We’re focused on the long-term relationship because at the end of the day, once people experience what we offer and what we do for them,

  We look for that repeat business down the road. And at the end of the day, that is where we differentiate from most other companies.

  Kristen (11:47)
  Thanks.

  That’s amazing. You guys are really end to end for these ⁓ investors and you guys probably help their businesses so much. Which markets are you guys sourcing deals from?

  Carlos Aguilar (12:04)
  So our premier focus is here in Las Vegas. We do some deals in Arizona, the Phoenix area, but I would say 90 % of our businesses here locally in Las Vegas. So again, our sources all come from whoever wants to have a property sold. They bring it to us and we get it sold right away for them. So we’re very proud of the fact that we’re able to do that. And we’re looking for next year to really catapult this

  to the next level for 2026.

  Kristen (12:34)
  Amazing. Tell me a little bit about the Las Vegas market.

  Carlos Aguilar (12:39)
  Las Vegas market is sometimes it could be an anomaly right because our industry here the economy is predicated to tourism now. If you look a lot of social media you know a lot of social influencers want to say well look at this look at Vegas tourism is down and all this and that but at the end of the day yeah.

  It goes through cycles. And if you can read those cycles beforehand and understand how the economy works and this and that, you know, in spite of the fact that we have, because the tourism has been down, unemployment is fairly up. We still sell properties. We’re still selling properties. Now, on the retail side of things, that has been affected quite a bit. I mean, somebody that started selling their home, say, back in May.

  It might’ve got canceled out by August because they got frustrated with no offers and things like that. But a lot of that really comes down to pricing. So if you’re a real estate investor, obviously you’re going to try to go as low as you can. Sellers trying to get to the highest money that they can get for their property and all that. But at the end of the day, you have to be one or two steps ahead of the market and

  Be able to read the warnings on the wall, right? I mean, the market is going down, then pricing becomes even more crucial than ever before. If you’re thinking that your property’s worth 500 and it’s stagnating, well, then you really need to look at your numbers because if you look on the wholesale side of things, there are still people with cash and they’ll buy the property if it’s priced out correctly. So pricing is crucial in every market, whether if it goes up or goes down.

  You just have to pay attention and sometimes you have to be an advocate and be able to educate the public. Say, Hey, look, market’s down. You can still sell it, but you know, you either fix it and put money into it, which most people don’t want to do. Right. And then sell it at a discount. So, you know, you can’t really just go by saying, well, the market’s bad. Nobody’s buying. You know, you have to have the, the lens of

  optimism to be able to view things because at the end of the day, know, people still have to move. People still need to buy a home. People, you know, are still making deals and sales regardless. And so if you don’t understand the wholesale side of things, you’re missing out, right? Because that industry every month, I mean, even in the last, well, since I’ve been with Secret Source, we’ve been averaging about five to 10 deals a month.

  on average. Now, on the retail side of things, it’s not like that at all. You know, a lot of agents, you know, have been able to sell anything for many, many months. But, you know, if they don’t have wholesaling as part of their tools or part of their repertoire in their business model, then you’re losing out. But investors still see the opportunity. I mean, the day investors stop buying

  Kristen (16:10)
  Mm.

  Carlos Aguilar (16:37)
  That’s where I would say we need to panic. But the deals are always there. No matter what, the deals are always there. There’s people with cash, people still blind, and we don’t have any issues. I can’t sit here and say, oh, well, we haven’t sold anything in a while. Then we’re doing something wrong. But the fact that you know we have a tremendous amount of experience in our team and we know how to market, we know how to price it out, we spent a lot of time

  Kristen (16:40)
  Yeah, absolutely.

  Carlos Aguilar (17:06)
  looking at comparables and looking what the trends are, knowing what the right pricing point is. Because at the end of the day, if we can show you that, on this particular property, you have a spread of 100, 150, 200, you can make money on it, even in the worst of market, right? And so I think that the experience that we bring to the table, even in the worst of markets, truly kind of speaks for itself. Overall.

  Kristen (17:34)
  I love that. I love the optimism about the market as well, because I do think there’s not one market. There’s pockets, there’s flips and holds and short term. There’s so many ways to go about the investing game. But yeah, no, mean, you have such good insights on everything. To kind of wrap this up, what would be something that you wish more investors knew about working with a company like yours, people who maybe want to just do it themselves?

  Carlos Aguilar (18:04)
  That is a great, great question. And based on my experience, I’ve developed a network of investors and I’ve seen people that want to get into investing. So they’ll spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on programs and coaching and this and that. But at the end of the day, that’s all they do is just constantly learning, learning. But at some point it’s like,

  You learn the game, now you gotta go out there and play it. And if you don’t play it, you’re not gonna make money. And you’re just wasting and spinning your wheels because you overanalyze things and you create this barrier before you that holds you back. And a lot of times you gotta take a chance. You learn everything you can. You got the books, you got the training, you did everything. You go here, you go there, all these masterminds.

  and you still haven’t pulled the trigger after how many years? I’ve met so many people like that.

  Kristen (19:04)
  it.

  Carlos Aguilar (19:06)
  The fact that what we offer as a this boat company is the fact that we are truly a one stop. And as a sales advisor, you know, somebody would reach out to me and say, hey, I want to get started. How do I do it? Great question. How much experience, how much knowledge?

  then I can guide you right the fact that one of the biggest challenges for any investor season or amateur or just even thinking about it. How do I get financing right and if the financing is you know the criteria is challenging and it’s becoming more and more challenging with a lot of these hard money lenders there they’re very you know they have a lot of they have to calculate a lot of risk and if you don’t have the experience but yet you want to get started how do you qualify right so.

  What we offer is that, hey, if you see this property that we’re offering for sale, put your best foot forward because if you read our flyers, remember I mentioned, we put a chock full of information. We have a starting price and then we make it easy for a lot of these beginner investors with the buy now price. The buy now price allows you to lock in that price on that particular property and beat out the rest of the competition. And when you do that,

  Or even let’s just say you don’t get the buy now prize. Maybe you offer maybe something that’s close to it and you win the property. Then the option for in-house financing comes into play and it becomes available. We’re not, we don’t require you to have any experience, no credit check, no application. The property is a collateral and you’re in. Right? We do emphasize to build a team beforehand, like, you know, contractors, you know, if you, if you’re thinking about flipping it later on, maybe

  get a hold of a real estate agent, you know, to put on the market somebody that that is easy to work with and just put your best foot forward. Because a lot of times they’re fear of losing my. Oh, what if I’m going to lose all my money? Look, at the end of the day, it’s the experience now with our guidance. We might be. I mean, there’s never any guarantees, right? But with enough guidance and with enough knowledge that you may already have, if you have the right team in place, you can.

  Kristen (21:11)
  Mm-hmm.

  Carlos Aguilar (21:18)
  Maybe make twenty thousand thirty thousand on a deal. Even if five thousand, I would even say you’re golden because as long as you’re not losing money. But even if you make a small margin, hey, you just got in the game, you made five thousand or ten thousand dollars. Bravo. Now you’ve got some experience under your belt. Now duplicate it and learn from your mistakes. And now that ten, fifteen thousand

  Kristen (21:23)
  Mm-hmm.

  Carlos Aguilar (21:48)
  can be 30,000, 50,000. The sky’s the limit at that point, but as long as you get started with something, the fact that if you spent all your life learning and not taking that risk and jumping in there and just do it, then you’re missing out. You’re just wasting your time. But we make it possible for anyone. Season or an amateur just wanting to get started with their first deal, we make it possible. It can’t be any easier than what we offer.

  That’s what differentiates us from everyone else.

  Kristen (22:19)
  That’s amazing. I mean, you make me so excited about it. I can tell that you’re really passionate about what you do. ⁓ Tell people where to find you and how to work with you.

  Carlos Aguilar (22:25)
  I love it. Yeah, I do. I enjoy it.

  Yeah, so I could be contacted. Visit secret source properties.com. My direct cell number. To my office is 702-500-0242. Or I could be reached on my email at [email protected]. And I’m always happy to answer questions. I’m always I make myself available so.

  you know, it’s never a bother. I love helping people out. And at the end of the day, it’s a win-win, right? Because if we’re all in this together, we can definitely all make money. And that’s what I love about this business. And the fact that I’m with an amazing company to be able to provide these services to our investor clients.

  Kristen (23:15)
  Amazing. Well, everyone, please take advantage of that. seems like Carlos has a lot of knowledge to share. Thank you so much for being here.

  Carlos Aguilar (23:22)
  Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure. Thank you so much, Kristen.

  Kristen (23:25)
  And thank you everyone for listening. Hope you got some really good tips and maybe some inspiration for your own business and we will see you back next time. Bye.

  Carlos Aguilar (23:32)
  Thank

  you. Bye.