About · Broker and REALTOR®
Broker and owner of CK Real Estate Services in El Dorado Hills. Twenty years selling here, and most of a life living here. Before that, an appraiser. Before that, twenty five years in healthcare. Both of those still shape how I do this one.
How I got here
For twenty five years I worked in healthcare as a dental hygienist. It is not the background anybody expects and it is the one I lean on most. You are alone with somebody for an hour, usually somebody who would rather be anywhere else, and the whole thing rests on whether they trust you enough to be still and tell you honestly what is bothering them. Twenty five years of that teaches you to listen before you advise, and to notice the thing a person has not said yet.
My degree is in Business Management, from St Mary's College. My husband worked in real estate and as a general contractor, and between watching him and being curious I ended up taking my real estate, appraiser and broker licenses all in the same year.
Appraising came next. I ran CK Appraisals as a certified residential appraiser and it grew almost entirely on referrals, which taught me early that this work runs on whether people trust you enough to send you their friends. It also taught me to look at a house as a set of facts first and a story second, which is a discipline I have never lost.
When the market turned in 2006 I started CK Real Estate to help owners in distress, which is not a gentle apprenticeship. It is, though, an unusually good one. You learn very quickly what is worth promising and what is not.
What I do now
Some are downsizing. Some are moving closer to family. Some are buying and selling at the same time and have no idea what order to do it in, which is genuinely the hardest part and the part almost nobody helps with.
The appraisal background is why I am particular about pricing. When we talk about what your home is worth I will put the comparable sales in front of you and explain the reasoning, rather than handing you a number and asking you to trust it. Then you decide, and I handle the rest.
I also work with buyers coming over from the Bay Area, who tend to arrive with good questions and no idea what Mello-Roos is. What it actually costs to live here is written down for them.
On the record
Outside the job
Long enough to have watched a few of them grow old, and long enough that a donation goes to NorCal Sheltie Rescue for every home I help sell. That is why, and where it goes.
In the press
CEO Weekly
The way the piece put it: success is not just measured in sales figures, it is measured in the lives touched and the positive impact created.
CEO Weekly profiled how I work, which is mostly with people leaving a house they have been in for decades. The piece is about the part of this job that does not show up in a sales figure: the planning, the timing, and the fact that nobody tells you what happens after the sale closes.
What clients say
Calm, clear, and never rushed. I did not set out to be known for that and I am quietly pleased that I am. Four of them said so in their own words, and if you would like to speak to one of them directly, ask me and I will see who is willing.
Tell me where you are and I will tell you honestly what I would do. Plenty of people call a year before they are ready, and that is the right time to call.
Lets connect
No contract, no obligation, and no pressure to be further along than you are. Plenty of people write to me a year before they are ready, and that is genuinely the right time to write.
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