The Journey to Katrina Eileen Real Estate...Ready to start your journey?

Do you need someone to guide you through the complex world of real estate? Would you like to partner with someone who has the knowledge, skills, connections, and passions to help you find the real estate opportunities you’ve been dreaming about?

I was sitting at my desk on a rainy afternoon, working on the details of a deal on a 14-story building I wanted to build. The sound of the rain momentarily distracted me. At that moment, I found myself marveling at how I had come to be here, doing work I loved, running the business I had built.

My journey to becoming the expert you trust to lead you through the labyrinth of real estate opportunities began in childhood. I grew up around construction, both homes and commercial. I remember tagging along to construction sites where my dad was the general contractor. Since I was a kid, everything about construction has felt familiar to me.

From my mom, I learned about the craving for homeownership. Because we moved so often, we always lived in rental properties. My mom longed for but never had a patch of ground to call her own. She dreamed of owning her own house where she could poke holes in the walls to hang pictures or paint the rooms any color she liked. 

After graduating from high school, I wasn’t able to go to college. How was I going to have the life I wanted with no more than a high school education? I felt a burning need to understand everything from the internal workings inside out. So I taught myself to dig in and learn what I wanted to know on my own. That skill served me well.

When I was in my early 20s, I worked with my first husband in our mechanical contracting company. We worked on construction sites of anywhere from 50 units to several hundred units and installed plumbing, sprinkler systems, and radiant heat. 

That was where I mastered the business side of building and construction. Except for procuring the jobs and running the guys on site, I managed every aspect of the business. That included all of the administrative work: contract administration, human resources, accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, and 401k administration. I taught myself all of the functions of running the business.

When the time came to buy our first home, I wanted to know everything about the process, so I got my real estate license for that purpose. I was pregnant with my first child at the time. After we bought our home, we bought some land, subdivided it, and sold those properties. After my second child was born, I bought some rental property. I planned to use that property to cover the cost of putting the kids through college. From buying our first home, doing some land development, and buying rental properties, I became a student of real estate investment. 

I also had a few clients that I helped to buy homes. I realized that I loved working with clients. I loved helping them get what they wanted, whether it was selling their property or buying a house or finding the investment property that was right for them. Often, the relationships that you build as you help people through this time in their lives become lifelong friendships. And getting them great results is remarkably fulfilling.

I was still running the mechanical contracting business, but I was able to delegate a lot of the day to day work while I was raising my children and building my real estate business. By 2007, I had brought together a real estate team of ten brokers. But my journey wasn’t just continual learning and hard work.

The real estate market crash was devastating to me, as it was to everyone I knew in real estate. At the time of the financial crisis, I was dealing with divorce and also a broken leg that incapacitated me for six months. I folded up shop and thought, like many people, that I would never touch real estate again. I threw everything away, and what I didn’t throw away, I burned in my backyard.

However, even during the worst of that time, I had a lot of people coming to me for help with real estate. I couldn’t ignore them. I decided that, if I just served that base of people who already had confidence in me, I could do well on my own. Eventually, I started building a team again. 

In 2013, I ramped up my study to learn everything I could about real estate investing, learning about the tools and the mechanisms that large institutions and high-level investors use in negotiating contracts and purchases. I was able to open up a whole new world of opportunities in investing. I learned how to put transactions together, how to think about development, understanding the zoning, understanding land use issues, understanding a community’s comprehensive plan. I also learned the financing end of it, securing investors who have a similar vision.

I have put that learning to use for both my clients and myself. I have subdivided and developed land and created assemblages. I have built single-family residential homes. I have acquired and rehabbed properties for both my portfolio and for resale. I own and manage both monthly and nightly residential rental properties. For my account, I have arranged $5.8 million in acquisition financing, of which $2.3 million was seller financing. Most importantly, I have brokered over $100 million in residential real estate contracts for my clients. 

I am the Founder and Designated Broker of Katrina Eileen Real Estate. We service both residential and commercial clients. We are the first real estate company in Washington state to be organized as a social purpose corporation, which is like a benefit corporation in other U.S. states. That is genuinely important because it means that everything from our organizational documents and our initial charter reflects that our drive for profit is equal to our drive for purpose. That is a fundamental value that we hold in all of our investments and everything we do.

Because of the people that I’ve come to know in real estate investing, I have learned about tax strategies and mechanisms that billion-dollar corporations and large landholders use to divest their portfolios. Most people have never even heard about such approaches. But we’re able to bring those, too. We can connect the appropriate clients with people who can save them hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

I’m now working with the International Living Future Institute on a new kind of building, a new type of community. The ILFI is about creating living buildings and living communities that are built for the future. It’s about zero net carbon, zero net water, zero net energy. When I read what they were doing, it excited me about building communities that fit within their model.

The buildings include elements that make them even more of a worthy endeavor. Not only do they feature an area of affordable housing but also a portion of the building that will be granted to a nonprofit in perpetuity. Do you have a cause that you’re passionate about serving? The sort of nonprofit that will be housed in these buildings includes Level Up Seattle.

I started the nonprofit Level Up Seattle to serve foster youth and homeless youth. In the foster system and the McKinney Vento system, the day they turn 18 is the day they age out of the system, even if they are still in high school. As a result, less than 43% of kids in foster graduate high school in four years. We give them a place to live and systems so they can finish school well, and so they can receive additional education. We’re partnering with different organizations that can teach them trade skills, as well. 

One of the companies we have started is Cause Equity. The co-founder with me was the late Frank Shankwitz, the founder of the Make A Wish Foundation. Cause Equity is bringing together investors in a fund that will acquire properties that will not only give the investors a good return but also do good. They will provide opportunities for nonprofits to operate out of space that they might not be able to afford otherwise. But because we can acquire properties that have a great deal of investment value outside of just the cash flow each month, the investors can realize a return on their investment that can be quite lucrative for them. So it’s like giving the money to a nonprofit but then getting it back with interest.

Although I find much gratification in my other activities, my primary commitment is to building the great team we have at Katrina Eileen Real Estate. We are continually growing in expertise to serve our clients. Whether you want to buy, sell, or invest in real estate, we can help you. Contact me at katrina@katrinaeileen.com to discover what we can do for you.