Thiago Lucas: (00:00)
You have to work investors, investors are hard to work with it because they always want a deal, me and my wife. And we’ll be able to work for ourselves and then you’ll see how much money you can make. It means a game changer. Pay you agents, you know, because there’s the livelihood. There’s a lot of people, if you don’t make a sale deal survive, they have to pay the bills. We all have bills, have kids, have family take care. So don’t try to cut no matter what. If the house is like 40,000 or 4 million, it is always somebody to buy it. You know, you just have find to find the right person in the right time and never like gave up. Always like find a way to learn without losing clients. You have all this experience and then you can help your client to navigate it. All this information and go through to buy or sell.

Noah Kesslin: (00:45)
Welcome back to the REM podcast. Today we have

Thiago Lucas: (00:49)
Tiago Lucas

Noah Kesslin: (00:50)
Tiago, thank you for coming on. We are here today to talk about investing you mind, giving some backstory of who you are, how you got into the space and, and really just what drew you to this niche.

Thiago Lucas: (01:02)
I’m from actually from Brazil. I’m a retired uh, basketball player. I was born and raised in Brazil. I came to United States in 2007. I went to New Mexico first for junior college and then I came to Oklahoma graduate in 2011. Done different other jobs, sales, tech support and do many things until I got married. Uh, in 2018 my wife, she have a real estate background so she’s been a realtor and a broker now she’s a mortgage broker. And then since I’m from Brazil, I knew a lot of like Brazilian Hispanic people. I have like my, and she’s like Tiago, you shouldn’t do real estate because you know a lot of people, other people know you. You go to the tender games, uh, you the tender players and she’s like Man, you should get it because you do so good. And I tried for maybe six time and then I couldn’t pass the test.

Thiago Lucas: (01:57)
It was hard for me so I just gave up and a year later she’s like man, you have to do, you can be a quitter. So I started doing again, I took three times and I finally passed. So I have my license since 2021 and it’s like changed my life. It’s like I got my license right when COVID happened they will go to the house and then people were buying like they will waive appraiser, they were WA inspection. They just buying like crazy and then give you like 50, a hundred thousand more with the house work. So compare the job I was making 60,000 a year to make like almost 2 51 year and it was amazing. It was a big change for me. So that was easy and fast money. So I was like man, that’s what I wanted to do. So I’ve been doing for the past four years and I love it. Awesome.

Noah Kesslin: (02:46)
What does your business look like today?

Thiago Lucas: (02:49)
Today like I just have two clothes this week and then I have two more next week. It start picking up now more. It’s funny because people like they love the rates and then they see the feds say the rates drop so people they don’t care if you drop half points they go crazy. So I was working a lot of buy uh, sellers and I’ve done many, many deals to sellers and now I started working buyers. People like going back to the market ’cause the market, they think the rates drop it and drop a little bit. So, and a lot of investors come from California, in Florida even I have a group of investor from Brazil that since the risk got a little better they started like buying. So I’m started become very busy now.

Noah Kesslin: (03:29)
That’s awesome. What was the problem that you were trying to solve that resulted in you starting your business?

Thiago Lucas: (03:36)
Maybe like just work for somebody else. It was hard. I was working at a casino. I used to work at a grand casino and I see they’ll make a lot of money and working as a W2 and you think you, oh you making like 60,000 a year, you might take 30 and then it’s hard to do W2 and you look at your paycheck and then you think you’re making a lot and then you get home and then man the government take half, you know? So and then when you start doing the, we have our own business, my wife is a the broker, she’s like, yeah I got wife, she’s have a brokerage in California. Say I don’t wanna you go before meeting I have with Kelly Williams and then I have to give you 48,000 a year to met the goal Until I started getting paid.

Thiago Lucas: (04:18)
I was like no, I’m not gonna this say okay, I’m gonna go get you my license to be a borough here in Oklahoma and we gonna do this in Oklahoma. You’re gonna work under me as a team and then all the money I’ll make it. I’ll keep yourself in the end, the end of the year we go to the tax write off and do all this stuff and then you keep most of the money that we make it. It is different. They work with somebody else and then making other people money and then you only give tax out and then you are making the money. So I think that when we start doing this, me and my wife and we will be able to work for ourselves and then you see how much money you can make it and it is a game changer.

Noah Kesslin: (04:52)
That’s awesome. What’s the most common misconception do you think that people have about what you do?

Thiago Lucas: (04:58)
People think it’s that easy. It is not easy. It’s not easy job. Like you, you ask, you have to be a realtor, you have to work investors, investors are hard to work with it because they always want a deal. And then sometimes you have to cut your commission to help with the deal and it is not just go over there and sell a house and make a lot of money and that’s how you do it. You have to do a lot of stuff, have a problems, especially working with investors. I love to work with investors but also most of the time they form different states so different country. So you have to deal with if something happen, you are the one that have to deal with it. So it’s hard, you make good money but there you have to spend a lot of hours. Many nights I have to tell my wife, Hey watch the kids.

Thiago Lucas: (05:39)
I have to go do this, take care of this. So people think it’s easy. It is not easy, it’s a lot of work. Have to put a lot of hours in effort if you wanna be successful because 90% of the people that get their license, they lose their license in the first years because they have pay all the fees, only a little percentage, keep it, make it and then you make six figures. It’s hard and I’m glad that I’m very successful. The the, the four years I’ve been in real estate, I’ve been making six figures ever since I started. And it’s not easy to do it and you just gotta have to do a lot of work, a lot of marketing and it’s not easy, you know, but people think it’s easy but it’s not.

Noah Kesslin: (06:15)
Can you share maybe one or two strategies or lessons that have made a big impact for you in making that six figures?

Thiago Lucas: (06:22)
Me, I love a lot of Facebook. Facebook is free. You know I have a lot of friends and they got Brazilians in Oklahoma, Hispanic in Oklahoma, investment, Oklahoma. A lot of people find me through Facebook. A lot of people, I have friends that spend 10, 20, $30,000 a year in leads. I never done leads in a lot of, I have some friends that cold calling, they call probably close to 500 people a day. It’s a hard, I don’t have the, I don’t have the time, I don’t have the passion to do it but most of my friends is are referrals. I’m at deals and referrals or some people put on Facebook and then people just reach out to me and then like I say, I have to answer the phone. People calling you. I have deals that just drop my life and people like Jago, I have a realtor, he is not answer the phone.

Thiago Lucas: (07:08)
I wanna see this house for $800,000 in Ed in Oklahoma. Can you show me? I’ll be like, yes, I’ll show you right now. I’ll drop everything. You do it and you gotta do it and then you get offer. So you have to answer your phone and you gotta be true to the people. You gotta be humble and then you gotta do it and then be like give you a special opinion. Now you have to be always trustful and talk to them because they gonna ask for your opinion. You have to be true to yourself and be like, man, don’t try to be shady. Just gotta give you true opinion. And people like the most of my, my clients is about referral and come back somebody that did it and they wanna buy another one. So they always use me because they have, I try to give ’em like a hundred percent of my experience. I wanna be honest with them. So that’s most of my people that they come back or they tell their friends or people that see me on Facebook and they wanna work with me.

Noah Kesslin: (07:57)
Awesome. What mistakes do you think or do you see often agents make that could be easily avoided?

Thiago Lucas: (08:04)
A lot of agents, they don’t care. They just wanna get paid. They don’t wanna do their job for the the clients you know, and then you have to go fight for your clients, you know, like no matter what a lot of people they just, well I’m not getting paid enough so I don’t wanna give you a hundred percent. And then it’s not about two, it’s about your client, you know, sometimes the people they buying the most important, the most expensive thing they will ever buy in their life or if you’re representing somebody that’s selling the house, you know, no matter what they sell, if they’re gonna change, they’re gonna move or they wanna upgrade or they gonna downgrade. It is the livelihood, you know, they work so hard to put so much money on those things. They sometimes we try, I try to talk with so agents and they don’t give a hundred percent, they don’t care.

Thiago Lucas: (08:44)
You know, they like and many times you have to catch commission so the deal, get it done so you can move to the next one. But a lot of people, sometimes you talk to them and they don’t even care. Like you know the, your seller is out pocket already and they like man let’s go cut half percent. So we both 12 sides so we can make that deal work. We’ve been working for almost a month, you know, we bought close next week and if we don’t try to help each other, the deal is gonna fall off and we cannot move on. So, but I see a lot of people, they greeted, they don’t wanna do it, you know, they just like, oh I don’t care, they just gonna miss a deal because half percent and they, it’s hard ’cause you have to go put them house back in the market, you know, and they sometimes there’s been painting for a month so instead the house sitting there for a month be already seen for two months because it was already two months and sometimes the house is been sitting for that long doesn’t look good for your seller, you know, so, so that’s one thing I think that a lot of those Asian, they should work together to try to help whatever they, the seller or the buyer so they can move forward.

Thiago Lucas: (09:42)
But a lot of people are greedy if they don’t wanna do it. Want

Tony Javier: (09:45)
To get motivated sellers that nobody knows about introducing 10 x tv. If you want to create credibility in your market, find deals that nobody else knows about and crush your competition, you need to check into TV commercials. It is the new buzz in the real estate investing industry since we introduced it several years ago. I’ve been using TV commercials myself for the last 12 years and it’s absolutely crushed it. So if you want to learn how to get on TV and to do something that little to no people are doing right now, go to claim my market.com. Again, that’s claim my market.com, we usually only work with two investors per market. So if you’re interested, reach out to us and book a call to see if you can claim your market before anybody else does. Now back to the show

Noah Kesslin: (10:26)
Coming from, you know, let’s say a a buyer or a seller is listening to this, what would you tell them to look out for for finding a real estate agent that really cares.

Thiago Lucas: (10:37)
Sometimes I see people, I see like people telling me that people be like, hey I can, I can list your house for a thousand dollars. It is not like people, oh a state real estate agent make a lot of money. It’s not ’cause they put a lot of work, you know, we have to do find a profession to take pictures and you have, sometimes in my case I’ll have videos. I got a guy that come with the drone, then he make a picture, they take videos and we spend money, spend time, we have to see the comps and they wanna be like, oh you don’t wanna somebody be like, okay, you wanna sell the house for a million dollar And some people, okay, I’ll sell it. But it is not true. You gotta make comps to see, make sure the house is gonna sell it and gonna see the comps, everything.

Thiago Lucas: (11:18)
And then you have to put effort. ’cause a lot of people, they go over there and take a picture with the phone and they put online and they would have like seven pictures and then people be like, oh my gosh, why am my house not selling? Because the guy, they try to pay less. They gonna, they gonna do a good job. And so that’s the, that’s why later your house will be sitting in the market for 90 days. You have any offer, nobody having show up because you didn’t put the money effort. So pay you agents, you know enough so they can, because there’s their livelihood. There’s a lot of people, if you don’t make a sale, they don’t survive. They have to pay their bills. We all have bills, have kids, have family to take care. So don’t try to cut, hey I’m gonna buy this guy, get this guy high, this guy because this guy charge you a thousand dollars. But he’s not gonna give you a hundred percent. He not gonna give a hundred. He not gonna do open houses, he not gonna market you. Like usually for 80 house I spend more than $1,500 because I do set emails, I do, I do videos, I do drone, I do a lot of marketing like pay marketing because there’s, there’s the way you gotta do it to make sure that you sell it.

Noah Kesslin: (12:18)
Gotcha. What do you think separates you from, you know, everyone else in your experience?

Thiago Lucas: (12:23)
I think that like I have my unique way, everybody’s different. It is, it’s some agent they probably like in me alive that’s have the experience, you know. But for me I think the, I have the, I’m Portuguese first language, English, second language, uh, sorry, Spanish, second language, English language. So a lot of my people, my clients, especially Portuguese and Spanish, sometimes they gonna talk to somebody that is English first language. They know the language but they not, uh, comfortable to do the deal. So they come to me because I’ll tell the real language, Portuguese or Spanish and they feel more comfortable because a lot of like, you know, the contract, all the stuff, all the paperwork is a lot of paperwork. They get overwhelmed if they have somebody like me in the case they speak Portuguese, speak Spanish, they help them with it. And also my wife, she have 25 years of brokerage.

Thiago Lucas: (13:12)
She’s a long officer. So she done so many things. If I don’t know the answer, my wife will do it. So sometimes a lot of agents, they have to go give somebody else opinion. Like I know since like I only been in the market, I only been in my business for four, almost five years. But I, I learned a lot ’cause I done, I deal with it. A lot of my wife can help me, you know, and then I give 200% for my, for my, for my seller or for my buyer. I represent name. Like sometimes like my buyers, they be like Chad how much I own like no you know anything because who’s paying me is the seller. They gimme me gifted, they give me like be like, oh my gosh you did such a great job. Like I wanna like president. No I’m the one that’s gonna give you a gifted because you gave me the opportunity to represent you to buy a house.

Thiago Lucas: (13:57)
’cause a lot of people they wanna buy. So a lot of people wanna sell by owner, you know, it’s not easy. They wanna cut the commission but it is not, you have to have somebody, they understand all the step by step, the paperwork and all the title company, everything. You have all this experience and then you can help your client to navigate it. All this informations and go through to buy or sell and have the experience. They help a lot. And then for me, I in my case, like I have the Portuguese background, Spanish, I’m seven footer, I play basketball, you know, I love basketball and I can sit with you say, let’s do a podcast about basketball. We can go here for hours, you know, so what I do, I put a lot passion, you know, like I came from another country, you know, and then I came from nothing when I got here. And then you learn all those stuff, you know, and so you wanna get better and better. And then like every day I try to learn something new so I can get better and better at what I do every day. That’s

Noah Kesslin: (14:50)
Awesome. Trilingual is amazing. I mean you have really good English for it being your third language. That’s awesome. Appreciate

Thiago Lucas: (14:55)
It. Appreciate it.

Noah Kesslin: (14:56)
Yeah. I know a lot of people measure, measure success differently. How do you measure success and what do you look at day to day to make sure that you are successful?

Thiago Lucas: (15:06)
For me it is like I don’t care if I have like a million dollar in my bank account or anything. It is not a success. I think that success for me, I’m able to repeat, repeat clients, you know, ’cause they knew that what they, I did it to them. Help them buy something that is cost sometimes hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars and they can come back, can still refer me. You know, I can’t have enough time to go. Like in the case I’m from Brazil, Oklahoma get cold, we go to Brazil for a couple of months, we can stay at home in Brazil. Also, my, my sister live in France this summer. You went to France and Spain in Italy for a month. You know, I have the freedom I work, but also I also, I can get it done. Like I was in the case, I was in Menorca, I went to Menorca, uh, in Spain and I was able to sign the two contracts.

Thiago Lucas: (15:54)
’cause I have people here on the ground, they still go show the house. Oh they like the house. My wife is with me in Spain, but she’s over there write the contract, we write the contract, she do the finance, everything. So we have this team that a lot of people don’t have it to be able to be another country and still get deals done. So I think for me, freedom is our able to support my family and then be able to travel and still take care of my clients. No matter if I’m here, if I’m in Brazil, if I’m in Spain or France, we still be there for our clients.

Noah Kesslin: (16:26)
Awesome. Cool. What are the biggest changes that you’re seeing in the real estate market right now?

Thiago Lucas: (16:31)
Right now is a lot of houses being going stay in the market for a long time. My is a buyer’s market. Like I say, when I started was a sellers market, like I told you was COVID. People was getting 2% interest rate. So it was crazy. Like people buying, they were buying like offer 50, a hundred thousand dollars more than the house worth. Waving, inspection, waving an appraisal was crazy. Like you, the house was in the market going to the market like at 8:00 AM by noon is already painting. That was crazy. Like, and then people like, they don’t care. Like if you open the door, if you’re the first one to open the door, you wanna have a time to, to lock the door anymore because it was this wave of Asians and people coming to lock the house because the market was so crazy and money was so cheap.

Thiago Lucas: (17:15)
No. ’cause if you buy a house for a million dollar day, you paying 2%, your payment is like so low. But now they, they a million dollar house that you payments, if you rates are six and seven, you know your payments gonna be super, super high. So a lot of house now stay in the market longer. I see a lot of house that being taking maybe two months, three months to sell it. So that’s the difference I see now, you know, like now it’s more the buyer’s market, not the sellers. So it is a lot of house I see is a lot, a lot of house days on the market, a lot of price drop like five, 10,000, you know. So hopefully my wife she’ll hear every time and almost every day people say next year the rate’s supposed to drop more, you know, so you gonna be go back to the uh, sellers market, you know. But right now I see the difference is a lot of houses being seen in the market for a long time. A price drop like crazy.

Noah Kesslin: (18:08)
Have you seen that the higher priced homes are staying on longer than more beginner home?

Thiago Lucas: (18:14)
Yes, a hundred percent. Like they always had hard to sell it. And then I’ve done before the, the highest one I saw there was $1.4 million. And then it is hard to sell it, you know, because it’s not there. So like the people that gonna buy is not as much that the ones like it was three, 400, $500,000. A lot of people can okay afford that. Well go to a million to millions, not many. So the, it is harder to sell it, so stay in the market, but a lot of you have to put a lot of money, a lot of effort, a lot of marketing, you know, no matter what the house worth, I saw my cheapest house was 40,000 in the most expenses, 1.4 million. So no matter what, if the house is like 40,000 or 4 million, it is always somebody to buy it. You know, you just find to find the right person in the right time, you know. But they both have dues, like ups and downs. No, but like for sure the higher price one is stay longer in the market because the way the market is right now.

Noah Kesslin: (19:11)
Yeah, totally. Let’s say you were to start from scratch today, you scrapped everything, start from scratch. What would you do first? I

Thiago Lucas: (19:18)
Don’t know, because like when I started, I have a friend of one, my good friend of mine, he is like Chad, just like have somebody do it with you. Like I’ll have a clients as soon as I got like my license. And my friend was like, bro, just so I have somebody take the client and then you can follow them, like middle them to see what they doing. So I was like, no, I’m just gonna learn myself. I watch feed and YouTube. I was like, man, I’m not gonna, my last, my very first one person I had was 400,000. I was like, man, I’m gonna make a, a big chunk of money. I’m not gonna just hand it to somebody. So I asked a question. I have a very good friend, her name is Evelyn. He, she’s from Brazil too. She um, and also have this lady, her name is Charlotte.

Thiago Lucas: (19:57)
She’s like, um, like four hours is the school, the real estate school. So every time I have a question, I’ll call in and ask it them because in my mind I could be like, people like, oh, just handle your deal to somebody and then they teach you how to do. So, no, every time I have a question, I don’t even know how to open the lockbox. I’ll go call somebody, make sure to do it. So I think I would change anything because like I say, I never like gave up always like find a way to, to learn without losing clients, you know? I was like, I’m already here. I got the, the, my first, my hardest part was pass the test. Being from Brazil, third language, you know, English, the test was like 150. Question was super hard. And I passed. After I passed the test, I knew that nothing would stop me.

Thiago Lucas: (20:38)
So I don’t think I would change anything because I always focusing do more. And especially when you see the 15, 20, $30,000 check that you are like, man, I used to work at the casino. That’s how much I make the whole year. Now I’m making one transaction and I may spending maybe three hours of my day because I have to go show the house, come back home and type the offer. And then you go one more time to the inspection and then you get back and then you go to the closing. They, I was like, man, I make 30 grand in like, in less than three hours. That’s what I wanted to do. And I also have houses, you know, I like to go see houses, you know, give my opinion to my clients. So I think that I wouldn’t change anything. I just, if I could just add more to make sure more success. Because more success you get it more, you wanna do it, you know? Yeah.

Noah Kesslin: (21:20)
On a more personal side, what, what do you think people would be surprised to learn about you?

Thiago Lucas: (21:25)
I don’t know. Like, I’m a very like, laid back, you know, I’m like a jokester, you know, I like to joke and a lot of people see me and they be like, oh, he probably, he probably like just, um, like laid back. He’s kind of like very personal. I know I’m a very open person now. Like I have a lot of friends, you know, I like to spend time with my family and my friends. I have always people come over to my house with barbecue and I’m very open. Like, if you need me, I’m the type of person that will give my jack off my back. Like, for you, you know? And I’m very simple, you know, like, and then I come for nothing and then now I’ll become successful and like, if something happen one day, I lose everything. Like, for me it’s nothing because all the material, all material thing doesn’t mean anything to me.

Thiago Lucas: (22:09)
And I just care that I have like a beautiful wife. I have a beautiful two kids. I have a lot of friends that supports me. I have a, a great family, you know, and that’s what I am, you know, I just like to help people and then I wanna just keep going then hopeful, like me and my wife talk about it maybe in the next 10 years, retire, you know, and then go travel to Brazil, travel to Europe. We, we wanna travel the world. We wanna show our kids before we all buy a lot of like material things, a lot of toys for our kids. And they be like, oh, why? They have all the stuff. They don’t even play with it. And now we just trying to instead off, um, material things, we try to do experience. So my daughter, she’s three, she’s gonna turn four in December, but she’s already been in 13 countries.

Noah Kesslin: (22:52)
That’s awesome. And my parents took me outta school for six months when I was in like, I don’t know, eighth grade, seventh grade. And we went and traveled around the world. It was, it’s definitely, definitely an experience for sure. That’s awesome. Well, cool. Where, where can people learn more about you? Where can they connect with you at?

Thiago Lucas: (23:07)
Well I have a Facebook, um, I have a Facebook page and like I say, I do a lot of business like, anyway, if you like from Houston, have anybody from Houston, they wanna move to Oklahoma, I would love them to help them too. Move here in Oklahoma is growing a lot. You know, they have a, the anybody champion, even like Houston played the Thunder last night. It was a crazy game. I was watching last night. It was like they went to two overtime. You know, Kevin Dore was here, you know, like I love, I know Kevin Durant personally, you know, and it’s something that a lot of people I see moving from Oklahoma to Oklahoma because Oklahoma is like a state that the price of leaving is not the expensive compared like my wife is from California, she’s from Dana Point. She live there. It is like crazy, you know, like it’s so expensive.

Thiago Lucas: (23:51)
We love to go to Miami. We go to Miami twice a year, you know, and then we go to Miami, Miami’s over there and we look house there before. It is crazy, crazy. Our house here that you have Oklahoma, we have anywhere in Miami or California costs millions and millions of dollars, you know, and here we have the time because it’s a city that growing a lot. You know, they’s building a lot over here. The basketball team now, they building a soccer field. They’re supposed to build the biggest tower in the country. So Oklahoma is growing a lot. You know, a lot of people, oh, Oklahoma doesn’t have anything to do, you know, but they’ll have a lot of stuff to do because it’s growing like crazy. I, I got in Oklahoma 2009 since I’m here, so I’ve been here for 15 years, so 15 years, 16 years already. So Oklahoma grow and I know I have a lot, a lot of space to grow. And like I say, anybody from Hillston, California, anywhere in the country, when I move to Oklahoma, I’ll be the person to help them to buy a house. And if they don’t speak English or first language or they speak Portuguese, Spanish, they feel better speaking the first language. I’ll be more than welcome to help them.

Noah Kesslin: (24:57)
Awesome. Thank you Tiago for coming on and talking to us today and thank you for coming on.

Thiago Lucas: (25:03)
Alright, thank you for having me. And like I say, if you need me, I’ll be here.

Noah Kesslin: (25:06)
Sounds like a plan. Thank you brother.