Carlos Vidal
Title: Agent, Keller Williams Realty
Age: 38
Experience: 10 years
After immigrating to the U.S. from Peru as a kid, Vidal grew up just outside Boston. A twist of fate brought him to Waltham 10 years ago, shortly after he launched his real estate career. Now he’s hoping to become the first Latino city councilor in the Watch City.
Q: How did you get into the real estate?
A: I was working in the software reseller business. I covered South America and Latin America, because I’m bilingual. This was around 2000, 2001. This was around when the whole Internet bubble burst, my company was bought out by a firm in Texas and I got laid off. I was about to get married, didn’t have a job, and my fiancée suggested: “Why don’t you try real estate?” And that’s when I jumped into real estate.
I always liked talking to people, and I think that’s a good quality for a person who does sales. Real estate is a little more passive. I can’t just push you to buy a house like a used car salesman, it’s a big investment. You’d probably run for the hills. So it was tough the first few months, trying to get my first clients. But I’ve been doing it for about 10 years now.
Q: What brought you to Waltham?
A: [I was living in Hyde Park, and] I had an appointment with some clients to show some condos, and they cancelled on me. I said to my wife, well, listen, I still want to go over and check out the building, do you want to come along? And she said, ah, sure, why not. So we came out to Waltham, and we fell in love with the condo, and ended up buying it ourselves. For me, coming out of Boston, it seemed very affordable.
Q: How did the political bug bite you?
A: For me coming out of a very diverse community in Jamaica Plain, [one of the things I liked] about Waltham was there was a very diverse community here as well. But not very well represented. So when I moved here I got involved. As a real estate agent, working in a certain area, you need to know the town, get to know officials. And as you get to know the issues, you start to think, well, why didn’t this happen? Why didn’t this project go forward? Why isn’t there more of a push for smarter development? So you get involved. And eventually, I thought, maybe I should run. Because there’s always a few things you think you can do better. I’m a buyer’s agent. I bring people to Waltham. I sell Waltham. So I want the city to be the best city ever. And if you want to make the city good, you have to get involved. I need to do what I can from my end.
Q: I understand you have a show on Waltham cable?
A: Actually, I have two shows. Being bilingual helps with having two shows. There’s a show that I started for the Latino community here in Waltham, which I do in Spanish, and we bring in different guests and talk about issues relevant to the Latino community here, [Contacto Latino]. But I’m also the anchor for the Waltham NewsWatch. I’m the co-anchor, and we tell you what’s going on in the city every week. We tape every Thursday. We used to do it live, which was scary. But I’ve always liked TV. I’m a volunteer. I do it because it’s fun. It is local access after all.
Q: How did you get started with that?
A: It was one of the things I looked into when I was looking for ways to get involved in town. Not to show myself off as a salesperson, a real estate agent, but just as a way to get to know the city on a lot of different levels. I’ve been doing it for about eight years now, the anchor position. The funny thing is, when it comes to public speaking, I’m horrible at it. But for some reason, a camera, I can talk to it. I’m more comfortable. When I’m in front of people, I get nervous and sweaty, my accent kicks in, it’s horrible. But when the camera turns on and the lights are burning on me, I’m OK. I’m the Latino version of Ron Burgundy.
Vidal’s Top Five Campaign Priorities For Waltham:
- Speed up permitting to increase development in the city.
- Fix the terrible snowplowing situation.
- Make Waltham more social-media friendly.
- Create a 311 for the city, for people to get info and let public officials know about problems.
- Attract more business to downtown.
