Inspiring Conversations with Karrina Rotter of Krafted Renovations

Today we’d like to introduce you to Karrina Rotter.

Hi Karrina, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?

Hi there! Thank you so much for the opportunity and wanting to know more about me! Feel honored!
My story in regards to my career really started when I moved down to Phoenix fresh out of high school to go to Grand Canyon University. I moved from a small town in Northern Arizona called Williams, where I was born and raised. I had every intention of going into a career in business marketing. I graduated in 3 years with my business bachelor’s degree in Marketing.

A key part of my story happened around this time as well. I had made the decision to purchase a home in Scottsdale, in fact, I closed on the home the day before my graduation! I had the idea if I bought a home, I could rent out the other 2 bedrooms to roommates and their rent could pay the mortgage, and it did, so for a couple years I lived with some girls, had some fun, but all while gaining great equity in a home (if you know Scottsdale real estate you know if was around this time that south Scottsdale area started to boom)

After graduating I applied to hundreds of jobs all in the marketing field. Nothing was sticking. I was feeling so low, so disappointed, and felt like a failure. Which is the complete opposite of how I felt when graduating, it was very discouraging and something I know a lot of people go through after graduation.

I had mentioned and joked around about getting into real estate but it was my boyfriend, now fiancé, Marshall, who really encouraged me to do it and go for it. So I completely shifted gears and went into real estate school. I was so determined to get my license that I signed up for the two-week straight classes, put my head down, and got it done!

I was a licensed realtor exactly one month later. I was a Realtor for about a year, and let me tell you, much harder than you think! I could not see myself doing that much long let alone the rest of my life as a career. My experience as an agent wasn’t that great for many reasons but the number 1 being, it just wasn’t for me. I am still a licensed realtor, I buy and list all of our own properties and here and there will take on clients who approach me to help them buy and sell but this side of the business is now mostly just for me to be able to list our own projects.

After about a year of being just an agent, I started to feel discouraged again and started scheming up business ideas. I had one idea that I was 90% ready to jump on and do when my mom gave me “the talk” and helped me realize I was chasing that business idea out of wanting to do something so bad but that it wasn’t truly what I would want to do long term. She even said “I think you’re just liking the designing of the business and not the business itself.”

During all of this, we were going to see various “flip” properties for sale in the Scottdale area to maybe do an AirBnB with. As we walked these “flip” homes we all started to feel like the quality was just too poor for the prices we would be paying for it and they seemed cheaply done.

That’s when the light bulb went off! With the encouragement from my parents, I decided to remodel my own project, and at that time, do an AirBnB with it. The thought alone was so exhilarating and exciting, that I felt like it breathed life back into my state of feeling like a failure roaming around after graduating college with what I felt like “nothing to show for it.” Looking back on this time I would say that was my moment of connection, those feelings I got weren’t just from excitement, but now what I can see as finding my passion. It just felt so right.

Furthermore, it was “easy” and not in sense of actually easy, trust me, in this line of work you have to work hard, a lot of time, dedication, and PATIENCE. But easy in the sense that I feel like all the stars align for me in this business, whenever I start to feel worried about something; the houses selling, being able to find our next project, contractors to work with etc, all of a sudden something presents itself to lessen those worries or something presents it self so naturally. That’s what I mean by “easy” things just aligning.

After having this moment, I was determined to get this done… but how? It takes a lot of money to get going in this business and I’m barely scooting by being a Realtor. So, there was a reason I told the part about me buying a house in college. That was my golden ticket (Thanks past Karrina!) I had owned that home for two years by that time and the appreciation of the home in that two years went up…a lot!

So I had a big decision to make, do I keep doing what I’m doing and hope that things as an agent just get better and keep my adorable house in Scottdale, or do I risk it all, sell the home to literally put everything I have into an investment property, move back in with my parents and just go for it? The funny thing is, it took some weighing of the pros and cons, but I had this enormous amount of faith that it was going to work out (that feeling I mentioned above) it’s hard to explain but I just felt like option 2 was the only option I had if I wanted to make a change in my life towards a larger goal.

So I did it. Almost five years later, eight completed resell projects, 20+ client projects, and now with 3 more new builds for resell on the way (a place I dreamed of being when I first got started) I am beyond where I ever imagined I’d be in this business when starting it!

I am so happy I made that tough decision and had enough faith in myself to go for it. I really hope someone is reading this today who may be on the fence with feeling this same way and this inspires them to go for it!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

This brings back the point I mentioned before- it overall has been a smooth road, but that doesn’t mean the work put in wasn’t hard, long, stressful, nerve-wracking, exhausting, you name it, I’ve felt it!

But to expand on what I said before I strongly believe if you are meant to do something it “happens” for you. In this business, it’s not handed to you by any means but when you are in your element, stars align, but man once that star aligns I have to work my butt off to see it through! But I love what I do and in the end, it’s beyond worth it!

The biggest struggle I’ve encountered and still kind of do to this day is my age and being a woman. In the beginning, both of these made it really hard for me, more so the age. I feel like I was always being talked down to by contractors, agents when I list my projects for sale, some clients when we first met (and most that I did not end up taking on), and just random naysayers who were always so negative about me doing this along the way.

I interviewed 15+ contractors before finally finding “the one” and he has been my main guy since day 1! I also now work with a couple of others who are also good fits for me, who I feel take me seriously and don’t try to undermine and talk down to me. Let me say, it’s no easy task but I’m so thankful to have the crews I do now – it takes a lot of that stress away! Finding your “team” is crucial to success in this field.

But I still get a lot with my age, unfortunately. I’ve shown up for design consults and have had potential clients ask me if I’m “Karrina’s assistant” or ask “ so, when is Karrina coming” haha I get it a lot from clients saying they didn’t expect me to be so young, which I now take as I big compliment but at first it was hard because to me it felt like they maybe then started to question working with me on such a big investment they were about to make so it would sometimes make me have a moment of lessened confidence because I could sense that. So I may have lost a few jobs over it at first but I am beyond grateful for all my first clients who took that chance on me and didn’t let my age hinder what I could provide them. I hope they don’t regret that decision haha 🙂

We’ve been impressed with Krafted Renovations, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?

I started this business with the sole intention to buy properties, renovate them and resell them. Which we still do of course.

But now the business has grown into much more than that. We offer home design services for clients on their personal homes as well as for other investors looking to take their investment properties to a “higher level” of design to either resell or a lot of them are actually now for the AirBnBs. We have also helped a lot of remote or even out-of-state clients in designing their homes!

We also offer a service that we bring on our GC to actually complete the remodel for the clients while they have us there to make sure the project designs come to life the way we intended them to. Also helping the client navigate the remodel world and act as a consultant for it, being it can be a very stressful process, especially with zero experience in remodeling or knowing how to communicate your wants to a GC.

Our newest and most exciting is doing the new construction homes. We currently have three we are doing for resell all in the Scottdale/Arcadia area. One of them is almost complete should be listed for sale in June 2022! The second isn’t too far behind and on the 3rd we will be starting sometime in the fall.

This part for me is beyond exciting, when I first got started I dreamed of building gorgeous homes, and now that I’m living it, it honestly feels surreal!

Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?

To be honest I wouldn’t say I had a mentor helping me with much. I did have a couple of people I could call luckily if something came up to get their insight, advice, etc.

One that I would call a mentor is a builder who does 1-2 big new builds a year, was extremely helpful when I was first getting started. My parents actually ended up partnering with on a few Arcadia area new builds! So that alone gave me some great insight since I was able to see the process of new construction from those but even then, I wasn’t actually involved too much in them so I still didn’t get the full effect.

I had my cousin who is a badass in real estate that I was able to lean on A LOT for the resell side of things. Being the agent on selling the projects is the part I don’t enjoy and typically where I have the most questions, so having her in the beginning was a game-changer for me!

But overall, I feel like I had to figure out most of this business on my own, learn by experience, trial, and error, watching other investors, etc.

Unfortunately finding a mentor in this line of work (not as a realtor it’s easy to find a mentor there) is pretty hard unless you know someone doing it to talk to. Otherwise, even to this day, I wouldn’t know where to go to get a mentor for this unfortunately. But if you are considering getting into this, I am more than willing to talk to anyone that has some questions, so hopefully I can be of some help to someone!

Thank you so much for your time, I truly appreciate this opportunity and your platform considering and wanting to learn more about me and Krafted Renovations!

Contact Info:

• Email: KraftedRenovations@gmail.com
• Website: www.KraftedRenovations.com
• Instagram: @krafted_renovations

Image Credits:
Karlie Colleen @karliecolleenphotography