Martin Castro-Silva spent 12 years as a private client banker at Chase, sitting across the table from wealthy clients in South Florida and noticing a pattern: The ones doing the best were almost always connected to real estate. 

One young client kept coming in to wire money for house flips, walking away with $20,000 to $25,000 in profit in a matter of months. Martin started asking questions every time the guy walked in. He refinanced his home to pull out capital, got introduced to a wholesaler, and bought his first flip in February 2022. 

Four years later, he’s done 11 deals in a single year, moved his family to a more affordable market, and stopped working weekends entirely. 

Here’s how he built it.

Your first deal took seven months to renovate. What did the numbers actually look like, and what did you learn?

My mom and I bought a townhome in Lake Worth for $200,000 using her refinanced home equity, split 50% cash and 50% hard money at interest-only terms. It only needed about $25,000 to $30,000 in work, but since I was still working full-time at the bank, it took seven months to finish two bathrooms and a kitchen, and we paid roughly $7,000 in holding costs during that stretch. 

We listed for $320,000, gave a small concession I didn’t need to give, and closed at $310,000. Even with all the delays, I netted $37,000, which was close to half my annual salary from a single deal. That was the moment everything clicked.

You quit your job mid-renovation on your second deal. What gave you the confidence to make that leap?

I didn’t want to keep missing moments with my kids, who were 1 and 3 at the time. I showed my wife the spreadsheet from the first deal, the actual numbers, and told her worst case, I could always go back to corporate. 

I bought the second property, a single-family home two hours north, for $170,000 using a line of credit I’d taken out against my own house. I budgeted $40,000 for renovation and ended up spending $50,000, which wasn’t bad for my first full single-family gut job. 

The real lesson came at sale time: I overpriced it at $325,000 to $335,000 against my agent’s advice, turned down a $300,000 cash offer in week one, then sat on the house for four months before finally selling for exactly $300,000 financed. I still profited $35,000, but I paid for that lesson in carrying costs.

Your third deal used a cross-collateralized private loan. How did that financing structure actually work?

I didn’t have cash left after the second deal, so I went back to another bank client of mine, an agent, and offered him the deal: If he lent me the money, he’d get to list the property when it sold. 

He gave me a $150,000 hard money loan using my first single-family house as collateral. I applied what I’d learned about pricing and listed this one at $299,000 instead of overreaching, and it went under contract in six hours. I closed that deal and the second one in the same week.

Your fourth deal came from a neighbor of one of your own renovation projects. How did that connection turn into a deal?

I made it a habit to tell everyone I met that I bought houses, including neighbors near my active projects. I told the neighbor next to my first single-family flip that I’d help him sell whenever he was ready, and months later, he called. 

I bought his house for $150,000, which was $20,000 cheaper than what the wholesaler had originally sold me a comparable property for, and it even had an extra room. This time, I partnered with my siblings, who’d seen my results and wanted in, and we bought it in cash together. We put around $55,000 to $60,000 into the renovation and sold it for $320,000, netting about $65,000 split three ways.

What does your buy box look like now that you’re doing 11 deals a year, and how has real estate reshaped your life beyond the deals themselves?

I only buy in Vero Beach and Sebastian now, single-family homes around 1,200 square feet, three bedrooms (or two if the square footage allows adding a room), purchase price between $150,000 and $220,000, with a resale value under $350,000.

That price point keeps me safe: If a flip doesn’t sell quickly, I can always rent it and roughly break even instead of bleeding hard money interest. I actually moved my family to Vero Beach after realizing that’s where my deals kept coming from, which also got us a bigger, more affordable house. 

I now have a renovation crew handling the day-to-day rehab work, and this year, I stopped working weekends entirely. Saturdays and Sundays are just for my family.