Unlocking Real Estate Secrets: A Journey from 2003 to Now

Dylan Silver (01:32)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host Dylan Silver and today on the show I have Charles Hernandez aka Uncle Charles. Charles, welcome to the show.

Charles (01:45)
Thank you, thank you for having me, it’s pleasure.

Dylan Silver (01:49)
Before we hopped on here, we realized we have some mutual connections. I had lived in San Antonio for a while. You know, my mentor up here in Denton, Texas, but let’s go all the way to the top. How did you get into the real estate space?

Charles (02:04)
like it. I like we’re going to cut right to the chase. I’ll just tell you, man, I entered real estate space back in 2003, ⁓ 2002. And before that, I was actually ⁓ indirectly involved in real estate, helping people with filing motions and stuff. know, there were people losing their properties and stuff. So I got it. I got I was introduced to it indirectly. And then I got into mortgages in 2003.

And after the crash 2008, what I was helping people do with with financing, I started doing it myself. So I’ve been in the business for a long, time.

Dylan Silver (02:47)
So going from pre 2008 to post 2008 it was basically two different worlds right so I’ve talked into a lot of mortgage advisors lenders pre 2008 mortgage brokers and it was like a kid in a candy store they were handing out these mortgages in effect then of course you have ⁓ Dodd-Frank you have all these regulations that get passed and then you just have

it seems like you need a blood test to get a ⁓ mortgage nowadays in large part. But how did your business change pre versus post 2008?

Charles (03:23)
Well, you know, when I first got in the business, was again, I was introduced to both realty and financing. And I had just got my degree in financing. So I leaned that way. And there was a lot to learn, man. A lot, lot of different programs, a lot of different systems. And I didn’t, I didn’t know how I was going learn that stuff, but you take it one day at a time. And I will tell you right up until 2000, mid 2007,

It was the Wawa West, man. And we started to hear some grumblings about the market and we started to hear some stuff like in 2007. And then of course, you know, it hit and it went from being the Wawa West, like what most people see in some of the movies that came out to making no money. was everything was on lock and a lot of people migrated over to the Roti site.

That’s what I did. mean, I was already involved in doing some investment deals, but I was more involved on the financing side. And then when the market crashed, I mean, the Gubbi stepped in, made it really, really hard. So a lot of folks who stayed in the business, I gotta say, they morphed into the royalty side of it, know, whether traditional or investing.

Dylan Silver (04:48)
So going through that and I’ve spoken to a number of people and it seems like about 50 % of people took some time off and licked their wounds and thought about regrouping and then they had another 50 % of people who embraced it and it sounds like you fall into that category and said, you know what, I’m not gonna abandon this for the next three to five years. I’m gonna switch to a different strategy. So instead of being on the lending side, let me get into the investing side. Let me get into the or even for people.

from the mortgage broker side, let me get into the selling agent side. How did you make that transition and was it natural for you or was there a lot of growing pains when you did that?

Charles (05:29)
Well, you know, I think people do stuff. I think it’s easy for people to quit stuff when they have options. Um, or I want to say sometimes people give up really quick. You know, I’ll just throw this out there, man. I don’t, I used to not talk about it, but I’ll just say, look, and in the nineties, you know, I, I unfortunately made some bad decisions and I did some time, you know, eight and a half years, but

I changed my life and I got a few degrees. I graduated from the University of Texas with a business and finance degree. And even though I had those credentials, there wasn’t that many choices, that many options. So it was like sink or swim, man. mean, what was I going to do? Apply at some company who was going to hire me with a tail. So I had no choice. I had to buckle down, regroup.

Dylan Silver (06:10)
Hmm.

Charles (06:23)
⁓ assess what was going on. The financing game was pretty much torched and so I just decided to do in realty what I was what I had been helping investors do from the financing perspective. So back then, I mean we were doing subject twos and and burs and all that type of shit but it wasn’t called that then. There was no names for it and and so the names that everybody’s familiar with today that’s only been

Dylan Silver (06:31)
Yeah.

Charles (06:53)
in the last maybe eight, 10 years that those names, these strategies have become vogue. But before that, all that stuff was being done before the crash.

Dylan Silver (07:03)
And so when you started to see Charles, these strategies, you said, you know, get in vogue, you see it on social media, Instagram, Tik Tok. Right now I’ve been seeing so much Airbnb arbitrage. I don’t know if my phone is listening to me or if it’s just divine intervention, but I keep seeing Airbnb arbitrage everywhere. So that that seems to be the hot new strategy, at least for some people I’ve seen land a lot of that. When you started to see this become super, super mainstream.

Did you see a major industry shift? Did you start to see a lot of new people coming in? What was that like when you were seeing that it become mainstream?

Charles (07:43)
So when I made the transition permanently from getting away from financing and stuff, I opened up a real estate company. So I opened up traditional. But right away, I started morphing into doing creative deals. I was already used to doing creative deals for investors, so I was just doing it for myself. And I started flipping properties, doing a lot of flips. But

The stuff that didn’t have names back in 2011, 2012, 13 and 14 were like subject to innovations, birds, like there wasn’t really names for that stuff. And as these strategies came into vogue or people started talking about them, you know, the national progression for someone who’s doing a lot of deals is to learn the new.

the new thing, know, incorporate, incorporate new things. So you learn a lot. But what I’ve also learned over the years is that not everything that you learn can be done in a certain, in a certain, like, like right now, you know, 2025, you know, I think subject choose are not the thing anymore, you know, because, because it’s only a matter of time for the lineage figure out that they got a bunch of properties that have been sub two.

Dylan Silver (09:00)
Yeah.

Charles (09:08)
at a low rate and I make any money. I think there’s a lot. I think there’s some risk there. So, so you, you, know, being in business so long, you know, you kind of see the patterns and looking back, kind of see the patterns for one, when something was really, really hot. Like, I’ll give you an example. When we first started doing wholesaling, it wasn’t on YouTube. Nobody wanted to tell you what wholesaling was. And we had to reverse engineer it.

Dylan Silver (09:34)
Mm-hmm.

Charles (09:36)
Today everybody knows what it is. And I think the reason people are having problems with wholesaling, and I really do believe this, is because now in today’s market, the entire US knows what’s wholesaling is. Every single homeowner knows that you’re a wholesaler, which they already know you’re trying to discount their property. So that’s why I think it’s a big reason why wholesalers are having problems today, because everybody knows.

Dylan Silver (09:49)
Right.

the secrets out of the bag to your point Charles, you know, if you would have taken the the burst strategy and you were doing it five years before David Green wrote that book, right? And then you doing it before it became mainstream. You’ve seen now today like with rates the way that they are, burring is harder, right? You can still do it in some areas of the country, but burring is harder and then fix and flipping too because of the cost of materials and because of rates, it’s harder, right? So I’ll

a lot of people might think, well, subject to would be kind of a win-win because you have these rates from 2019, 2020, 2021 that are lower. But now the powers that be and the people that enforce real estate in these different jurisdictions are cracking down on it and then, you know, making it so that it’s harder to do or that you need a license to do any type of real estate transaction in some areas. And so who knows how long

subject to ⁓ what we’ll stick around for. But what areas are you passionate about in your business today? What’s the new area that may be expanding that a lot of people haven’t tapped into?

Charles (11:12)
So, you know, my company split in 2024, ⁓ early 2024 after 12 years. And I won’t go into that, but you know, it was our time to split. We did some really big things, some big events. We did some really great things. ⁓ I think that, like for me on the real estate side, you know, one of the things that we’re concentrating a lot right now is on overages and excessive funds. So for example,

We still wholesale when we get a deal. We’ll still, we’ll hotel. You know, I haven’t really done any flips lately. I haven’t done any subject twos lately. I’ve done some creative deal. do a lot of reverse wholesaling. So I love to create deals, but one of the things that I actively ⁓ pursue right now is over just post, post foreclosure ⁓ overages and, excessive funds. So in other words, ⁓

property that have gotten foreclosed for taxes. So I concentrate on those two things because I can find the people pretty easily and the funds are there. And so they get a piece, we get a piece and everybody’s happy. And while everybody’s PPCing and code calling and SMSing for wholesale deals, we’re just talking to the folks who already got foreclosed and they thought it was game over, but it’s not game over.

Dylan Silver (12:38)
Hmm. So let’s dive into that a bit here, Charles. So I, this is totally new to me. If they’ve been foreclosed on how has their property already been sold at auction?

Charles (12:49)
Yeah, in most cases, the property will have been sold at auction unless it can’t sell them because an REO and the the lenders won’t really they already have their asset managers they deal with. But if you got a property on the mortgage side, let’s say they had it for at least seven years and they get foreclosed and you want to be first, especially it’s real easy if you if you were talking to these folks before they even got foreclosed. So there’s usually funds there. And so you got to know how to

how to get the attorneys in Texas, the trustee, which is an attorney to prove up what their fees are. For example, we just did a deal here not too long ago, where there was about $80,000 of overages that the lender collected at auction. Well, we work with the homeowner to capture those funds and we take a percentage of that.

Dylan Silver (13:33)
Thank

Okay, I got you. So basically that that money was in many of these cases set aside for the homeowner, but they’re not collecting on it, the dots aren’t being connected. And so you’re able to connect those dots, get the homeowner their money, and then you’re able to benefit from that as well. That’s, that’s tremendous. How did you come up with this strategy?

Charles (14:02)
Yeah, another thing

that strategy has been around for a long time is people just don’t talk about those things because it’s ⁓ a little more involved. You gotta know what doing. ⁓ Most of the folks that will get over just sent to them are dealing with attorneys. The attorneys charge them a lot of money. So you don’t need to be an attorney to help somebody.

you know, those points, those funds are not actually set aside. If you do nothing, then the lender keeps those funds. They allocate those funds. Yeah. So, so, and, they’re not, they’re not, they’re not obligated to seek you out. the person who got foreclosed at all, and they’ll send some notices, but they’re not obligated. So you don’t claim those funds, you know, you lose them. ⁓ the other thing is on the tax side, people don’t know this, but every single county has a district

Dylan Silver (14:38)
No kidding.

Charles (15:02)
⁓ court in where and where the the foreclosure for that property has been approved at least that’s true in texas you can call that district clerk excuse me that district court and say hey i want a list of all the properties that have excessive funds they’ll give you the list you’ll get it in one day and then it’s a matter of contacting all those folks who got foreclosed that there’s excessive funds that the state is holding

And it’s a beautiful thing because there is a process to it. I won’t go into it right now, but the state cannot deny those funds. Once those funds are claimed, they have to give them up. I’ll give you a little juice here. It’s almost the same as wholesaling, post-wholesaling. In other words, you still got to prove up who the people are and you got to make sure who’s vested on title.

Dylan Silver (15:41)
Yeah.

Charles (16:00)
And after you do that, it’s only some legal maneuvering. But once you get in front of them, they can’t deny the funds. Some of the excessive funds with the tax office are as high as a million dollars. mean, you got 50 pops, 100 pops, 200 pops, it’s crazy.

Dylan Silver (16:22)
Now I do have a general question selfishly and don’t give away all the game here Charles but ⁓ selfishly I am curious for people who are wholesalers ⁓ and for myself specifically like I’m calling through ⁓ some of these foreclosure reports to ⁓ see if I can help anybody I’m also a licensed realtor so where applicable if people are in a positive equity situation I could potentially assist them to sell their home before the foreclosure auction.

Do you think that the Roddy report and similar reports are the best way to get in touch with these people? Or is there a better type of way to get it directly from the clerk or the county court?

Charles (17:03)
Well, I don’t want to endorse anybody. I will say there’s some pretty good software out there that can get you that type of information. There’s a lot of platforms, but to get on time foreclosure, whether it’s tax or mortgage, you really have to be dealing directly with the county. And there’s ways to get that information.

directly from the county because look, once you go to an app or any type of system that’s collecting that information, you have to understand that by the time they got it, somebody else already got it. So you have to figure out how can you get that information first? How can you get information on a tax foreclosure that has been approved for sale ⁓ the day of?

Dylan Silver (17:46)
Yeah.

Charles (18:03)
the court deciding that, we’re going to foreclose on these people. How do you get that information? And that’s the trick. mean, I’m not saying that I’m 100 % on every county, but on a few counties, we’re able to get that information very, very quick. And so we want to be first. by time it hits a software or a system or a platform, just understand that they may have the best

Dylan Silver (18:21)
Yeah.

Charles (18:33)
Sourcing, know source that are they you’re gonna get a really good picture man But by time they get it some there’s there’s other people who already got that information

Dylan Silver (18:43)
Yeah, so you’re already, you know, second to the to the meal. Pivoting a bit here, Charles, no one has a crystal ball here. So we can’t for certain say what the future looks like. But based off the the progressions that you’ve seen the fads that have come and gone, where do you see the next six months to a year, maybe a year and a half in the real estate space? Are you seeing any new trends that are coming up? You mentioned ⁓ reverse wholesale, you mentioned overage on the foreclosures. Are you seeing any other trends that are

percolating in the real estate space.

Charles (19:17)
I mean, I think that folks, if they’re not willing to understand how to be creative in creating deals like a reverse wholesale, ⁓ I think that you’re gonna have a hard time. Look, all the strategies work. All the strategies from wholesale, wholesale innovation, net sale, sub two, all the strategies work, It just really comes down to the type of leads.

that you’re that you’re getting, you know, and and for a lot of folks, they want to do absentee absentee sellers. They want to do high equity, all that stuff. And that’s good. I only do high high jeopardy or high jeopardy

Charles (20:06)
So I’m trying to get them before they get foreclosed and then after they get foreclosed. I don’t really concentrate on anything else right now because you know, lot of the, a lot of the, a lot of the, a lot of the other different strategies, it’s a little harder now. I mean, everybody, everybody and their grandmother is wholesaling.

Dylan Silver (20:26)
Yep. Yep.

Charles (20:27)
And it’s not to say you

can, you can wholesale pre-tax deals, but it’s just the type of lead that you’re going after. You know, a lot of folks do PPC and they have success with it. But, you know, you, you you know, there’s a lot of competition with PPC because there’s a lot of people doing it. So these folks. Well, not only that, if you’re buying, for example, let’s say you’re buying PPL and I’m not saying everybody does this.

Dylan Silver (20:36)
No question.

$300 a lead, know what I mean? Yeah.

Charles (20:56)
But let’s say you’re buying PPL, you know, in most cases, a lot of those companies are selling those leads to three, four, five, six, seven, eight, 10 people. And by the time you call them, they’ve already been called, you know, several times. So I’d rather just source my data directly from the county, you know.

Dylan Silver (21:17)
To your point Charles, you know, I was talking with a real estate investor out of Seattle who is also an engineer for Microsoft and he was explaining that he had his ideal area of the country picked out. wanted to do remote ⁓ real estate investing out of San Antonio. So he was targeting San Antonio properties and he said that all of his offers that were at 70 % of ARV were pretty much getting rejected. He wasn’t having any luck.

He was finding out to be at 80 85 % of ARV in order to compete and his strategy was just to make as many offers really as he could. I shouldn’t say just but that was his strategy. And then he found actually great success in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. And so he said, yeah, there really wasn’t that many people comparatively to San Antonio doing the same strategy just in a different area. So I was able to apply the same basic formulas, you 70 % of ARV or less.

in a different area. to a lot of these areas in Texas, San Antonio, I’m in DFW Metroplex, it’s just highly, highly competitive. And like you said, everyone and their mother is a wholesaler. the market is just more competitive.

Charles (22:25)
Well…

Not only that, you have to understand that like a city like San Antonio, you know, has grown up not only in the people doing the business, but the public, they understand. You know, you got some of the biggest companies that came out of San Antonio that do wholesaling, you know, nationwide. And I won’t say their names, but they’re pretty big, you The public knows, and it’s not to say that…

that the public shouldn’t know. What I’m getting at is that if everybody knows a shark is coming, you’re going to get out of the water. And so nobody wants to get bit by the shark. And I’m not saying the wholesalers are sharks. I’m just saying that the people perceive wholesalers as being sharks. So they’ve already cautioned. They already have all the red flags are going off once they get a call. But if you go to a town like Detroit, where

Dylan Silver (23:17)
Yeah.

Charles (23:27)
You know, they took such a massive hit. got so many people who have left the city and there’s a bunch of real estate there. There’s a necessity there. I mean, I think people could do well there and I know a few people there in Detroit that do very, well.

Dylan Silver (23:43)
Yeah, I mean, I was blown away because I had not had anybody talk about Detroit. And we were almost waxing poetic Charles about Detroit. And I said, you know, I’d always thought about Arizona, Texas. I love personally just the weather and the climate, ⁓ the South Florida area, but never thought about Detroit. And I’m thinking, you know, for real estate investing purposes, I really should look into it. But Charles, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to get ahold of you?

Charles (24:11)
So all my platforms, all my social media is gonna be real at, excuse me, real Uncle Charles. So at real Uncle Charles, there’s a couple of fake ones. But so you can find me on any of those. you know, I mean, I’m pretty, like, man, I help out anybody who wants to help themselves. You know, I’m pretty straightforward. If you got a question, I’m gonna ask you. If you want.

If you want me, if you want a whole dialogue on a deal, like I’m probably going to be like, hey, man, I’ll do the deal with you, but let’s JV on it because I don’t, I don’t have a lot of time to tell you how to go do your deal. I’ll do it with you. can learn. so ⁓ I always, I always answer my own stuff. So I don’t, I don’t use a VA to answer my, my social media.

Dylan Silver (25:06)
Well, Charles, thank you so much for hopping on here for providing us some value and for talking to us about your growth in the real estate space. All the strategies introducing us to the reverse wholesale, the overage post foreclosures. Thank you for your time, man.

Charles (25:21)
Thank you, Matt.