Interview starts at 5:40.
[For your benefit, this is a direct transcription. Please ignore all typos.]
Pete: So without further ado, I’m going to talk to. I’m going to introduce you to the world famous Kim Sessions. Alright. And Kim, let me ask you, how did you get into real estate as a profession?
Kim: Well, actually I was teacher for eight years, but I was always fascinated with real estate. Bought my first house when I was 25 and West Palm was the 19 twenties house, gutted the whole thing and have just always had that fascination. And uh, my husband encouraged me to get my license and uh, we were trying to have kids and try to change things up a little.
Pete: So I just went for it for a 25 year old to take on a fixer upper. But let me ask you this. Okay, so you bought it, you fixed it up. Did you turn around, sell it for a profit? Yes, we did. Oh, I did something right right out of the gate. So we actually
Kim: see we’re not ever planning to move to Jacksonville. We thought we would be in West Palm for ever and uh, we actually paid I think $125k for that.
Pete: I remember those days. My First House I bought in Mandarin and it was for $57,000 a whopping fee. I’m old, I’m a dinosaur. So we had a 57 k house back in the day. That was in, that was a lot. I remember those days. Now. Are you a “real-tour”?
Pete: Okay. I don’t know how to say that properly because you know, some people are realtors, some people are real estate agents in, some are real estate brokers and I have no idea what the differences.
Kim: So a real tour is actually a trademark name. You have to be a part of the National Association to actually use that name. So you obviously are licensed, but you have to be a part of the association. You can be licensed and not be a part of the association. Therefore you can’t use that, that word, next year name. So typically when I advertise everything, I have my name, comma, real tour with the trademark right next to it.
Tips for Home-Sellers
Pete: Got It, got it. So let’s say I am right now thinking about selling a home. Okay. What are some of the things? Okay, I, maybe I’ve already come to that conclusion. You know what? I’m going to sell my house. What are some of the first things I should do?
Kim: Well, the first thing you should do,
Pete: it’s called Kim sessions, right?
Kim: Which is everyone’s non favorite thing to do is declutter, go through closets, a depersonalized, things like that. It gets very overwhelming because you open a closet and you have a small closet and you take everything out and it fills the whole room. It’s amazing what we just shove in places. So really it’s not really cost. Uh, that takes a lot for a lot of people their time.
Pete: Well, you know, in declutter to me would mean, oh, let me get all the stuff out of the main living spaces and throw it into the closet or bring it up into the attic. No, no. The garage to. Should that be. So you talking about maybe temporary storage or just …
Kim: depending on the situation. A, you could have a house that wasn’t even updated but was super organized and clean and you would maximize and get a great price for it. You can have an updated house that was dirty and not organized and people view that as you don’t take care of your house and you will not get the maximum price. You can’t for your house.
Pete: Got It, got it. Okay. So you know what, I get it. So we declutter. What about, you know, what? Deferred maintenance. I mean, a lot of times, you know, you have screens and in some of us take this for granted. Well that’s uh, uh, I’m just going to let the buyer handle that and I mean really it, these might sound like simple questions, but I know that pe
