Eddie Garcia grew up with nothing.
The son of immigrants who had at times experienced homelessness, Garcia spent his youth in the rough and tumble “inner city” of Chicago. His family lived in a cramped apartment, and in a recent conversation with Inman, Garcia recalled being made fun of because he only ever had hand-me-downs.
That past, however, is a far cry from Garcia’s current life. Today, he runs Realty of America, a fast-growing brokerage that operates across the U.S. and has thousands of agents under its banner. And while speaking with Inman, Garcia recalled how hard work, determination and financial prudence helped him achieve the American dream.
“One thing I know is that this is the greatest country in the world, and that I could achieve whatever I wanted,” he said.
Growing up in the inner city
When Garcia’s family arrived in Chicago, he said, they shared a one-bedroom apartment with 11 people. And slowly, over time, as he saw drugs and violence in the neighborhood, he realized that he was poor. It was not something he liked.
“When I was 13, 14, I realized what it was to live in poverty and getting your box of food and living in a 50-50 apartment building, which is typically all low-income housing,” he told Inman. “I said, ‘I don’t want this for my family. And somehow I’ve got to change that.'”
Initially, Garcia’s plan was to go to college, possibly to become a lawyer.
The real estate bug bit
Twenty years ago, as a young adult, Garcia was making about $50 per week working at a car dealership. One day, he recalled, a man came in and spent about $100,000 — including tipping all the workers at the dealership $100 each. Garcia quickly discovered the man worked in real estate.
“I said, ‘Well, that’s what I got to do,'” Garcia said. “And I started looking into what it would take to get my real estate license. I got my real estate license without telling my dad. And then once I had my license, that’s when I made the decision. I told my dad, ‘Hey, let me drop out of college. I promise you I could become successful.'”
The decision to pursue real estate was a gamble on himself, but Garcia didn’t immediately find success. He recalled going to 16 different offices before someone would take him on. The fees and costs of getting started in the business were significant for a young guy with no money, and his first broker failed to provide promised training. Sales were slow, but Garcia did not give up.
“I never sold anything for six months,” Garcia said. “I started making my own flyers, my own business cards. And I started passing them out on the street. I would go to church, and the pastor would kick me out. I would go to the mall, so security would kick me out. I would go pass them out at the houses, and then I would get calls from the postmaster that it was a crime for me to be dropping my own pieces of mail in. I didn’t know that. I learned that the world wasn’t as nice as I thought it was.”
Eventually, the hard work paid off, and Garcia closed a deal with a seller. He should’ve been due to receive $16,000 in commission — a huge sum considering he was broke — but his broker refused to pay him, Garcia said. It was devastating.
“It was one of the lowest moments in my life,” he recounted. “You got to understand, dropping out of college, my parents weren’t happy with that decision. They wanted me to be an attorney. They wanted me to go to college. They weren’t happy with the decision, but they accepted it. And then now, six months later, I’m not successful.”
Persistence paid off
Despite early setbacks, Garcia persisted in real estate. He moved to a new company and gradually began doing deals.
Eventually, while “working from nine to maybe one in the morning,” he had managed to do more than 100 deals. Using his commissions from those deals, he began investing and flipping homes — all without ever taking out a mortgage.
“I bought my first house for $30,000,” Garcia said. “I probably put $15,000 into it. I sold it for $150,000. And then I took that $150,000 and bought three properties, then five and six. And I’ve done probably almost close to 200 houses where I bought them in cash, then fixed and sold them.”
Before long, other agents began calling Garcia, asking him for help and guidance.
“The same community that I grew up in, people said, ‘Hey, I’m interested in doing real estate. What do I got to do?’ And I have this belief that when God helps you out, that you open the door for others,” Garcia recalled.
Starting and growing a business
In May 2012, Garcia finally took the plunge and opened his own business, Realty of Chicago. Initially, there were no other agents, but the headcount quickly grew, first to five agents, then to 50 and, eventually, to 300. By 2023, the company had become one of the largest of its kind in Chicago and had done $4 billion in volume, Garcia said.
The company had no debt and no investors, but there was growing interest in the firm — including from outside of Chicago. So in July 2023, at one in the morning, Garcia got up and bought a new domain name: Realty of America.
“I said, ‘This is the way I can connect with all my friends across the country. For a long time, as I’ve been sharing my story on social media, people have been asking me from Milwaukee, from Austin, from L.A., from North Carolina, ‘Hey, do you mentor? Do you coach? Do you franchise?’ And I was like, ‘Realty of Chicago does not franchise or scale in the Carolinas, or in Florida or in Texas. I just don’t see how that works.’ But once I had this idea for Realty of America, I said, ‘This is how we can connect.”
Today, that company is 19 months old. Garcia said it’s about to hit 3,400 agents. It has expanded to 23 states and is preparing to open in Puerto Rico. Garcia still hasn’t taken on any debt.
Asked how he went from a one-room apartment to running a fast-growing real estate business, Garcia concluded that, “I had no other option.”
“If I failed, that meant going back to that one-bedroom apartment, living in that neighborhood,” he said. “To me, it meant raising my family in a neighborhood like that. And that was not going to be an option. When kids were teasing me when I was 12, 13 years old, that was the fuel, the fire in my belly. I said, ‘I’m going to be somebody. I’m going to make my version of my American dream.'”
