Realtor^® Eddie Blanco: Broker Turns Problems into Wins

The Great Recession had hit, and foreclosures ruled the day. Instead of retreating, he built a system. “There’s a methodology,” he says. “If a process is created and applied properly, it can really make a big difference [in] the impact.” The foreclosure crisis became his classroom, and the foundation for Stratwell, a team-brokerage that he launched the same year.

Blanco entered real estate in 1998 with investor ambitions. “Then I realized you actually need money to buy real estate,” he says. After that, he anchored the brokerage in REO – real estate owned properties that a lender owns after a foreclosure sale failed at auction – and later private-equity work. The throughline is discipline.

On his team, roles are defined, such as team coordinator, closing coordinator, asset coordinator, field specialist, and outcomes are measured. “This is not just grab a house, put it in the MLS, and cross your fingers,” he says. “There’s a lot to the process.”

Blanco insists the engine isn’t only a process – it’s people. “The part I really get excited about is when a client has a problem, and I can work with them to figure out the best strategy,” he says. Sometimes that’s one house. Sometimes it’s “a couple hundred properties.” Either way, relationships compound: a multi-hundred-home client came from a connection he first made 15 or 16 years ago.

How he keeps those ties warm is intentionally segmented. Blanco divides his database by audience and delivers what matters to each: short YouTube explainers, market stats, and timely updates.

For his REO group, that recently meant a concise brief on Florida’s anti-squatter law. He still believes in the old-school touches, too: phone calls, in-person meetings, and planned coffee or dinner meetings with clients.

His “superpower,” as he frames it, is strategy married to execution. “Clients expect me to say, ‘What’s the best way to do this?’” he says. One owner was out of state with a property that looked rough. Stratwell fronted funds for paint, landscaping, and cosmetic fixes, managed the vendors, then got reimbursed at closing, while delivering a sales price above the owner’s expectations.

“That sets us apart,” Blanco says. “A lot of agents take photos ‘as is’ and hope.”

Community leadership is baked in. Blanco chaired his local economic development committee before becoming president of the Miami Association of Realtors® Residential Board in 2023; he’s now a chairman of the full association. Stratwell also hosts quarterly client events, including a fundraiser for Miami Bridge that drew a senator and a $250,000 check presentation.

Why pursue the Florida Realtors Board Certified Professional endorsement? Two reasons, he says: to help raise the bar and to model it. “I want more people to be Board Certified.”

As for “value,” Blanco is blunt: Real estate professionals should have been articulating it long before lawsuits became headlines. His advice? Find your niche, know your strategy, and deliver. Consumers, he says, really care about three things: “Do they like you? Can they trust you? And does what you’re saying create value for them?”

The rest, in Blanco’s world, is process and pride. “With commitment and passion and hard work in this country, anything’s possible,” he says. His experience proves it.