Black-owned Businesses: KSmith Properties Realty

A ‘Calling’

While Kristie Smith may have chosen the real estate path for its flexibility and to be more available for her young children, the self-proclaimed “house nerd” is nevertheless confident that home is where she belongs.

“I teach it. I practice it. The [COVID-19] quarantine let me know how much I really appreciate my own house,” she said. “I love all things home decor. I’m a plant lady. I love styling, decorating and HGTV. I mean, I’m pretty nerdy about it in all facets.”

As founder and principal broker at KSmith Properties Realty, Smith actually began her career in advertising and marketing. After earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and a master’s from Walden University, she worked for a marketing firm that served the Little Rock Convention & Visitors Bureau. Smith handled the diversity marketing for the organization, working to attract conferences to the city. The role required a lot of travel, however, and Smith’s two sons were still young. When her own mother — who was a practicing real estate agent at the time — suggested the career switch and the flexibility it would provide, Smith decided to make the leap.

“We were on the tail end of the first housing crisis, and I started out working in foreclosures, and that was pretty lucrative because you could really throw a rock and hit a foreclosure,” she said. “Well, that dried up once the economy started to bounce back, and then I got into new construction and started working with different builders.”

Yet the decision to branch out on her own, she said, really came down to how much she enjoyed that time at home — long before the pandemic forced so many to make the shift.

“It must have been about 2015 when I really started working from home,” she said. “We were going into the office less and less, and your office was pretty much a car if you were a practicing agent, so that really kind of sparked the ‘branching out on your own.’ I mean, I was always by myself anyway.”

In 2019, she did just that, opening KSmith Properties in Little Rock and adding additional agents to the team — the first of whom is still with her. In such a competitive field, Smith said her differentiator is all about focusing on her own improvement.

“I think how I’ve set myself apart has been not to compete with other agents but to compete with the agent I was yesterday,” she said. “I am my only competition because you will wear yourself out worrying about the next guy and trying to keep up with the next guy.”

That shift in mindset has allowed her to stay more focused on the client, which she said is the key ingredient in her success (and has also led to several repeat customers).

“The clients I have, we go from having a professional relationship to a friendship,” she said, “so I think that has had a big part in how I’ve been able to sustain my longevity.”

Now that her sons are teenagers, Smith has also begun nurturing the next generation of real estate agents. Not only has she served as an adjunct professor at the University of Phoenix, Strayer University and Remington College; she currently is a member of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Alumni Board of Directors. Homebuyers and aspiring agents can also take classes through the KSmith Real Estate Institute.

She said she thoroughly appreciates every aspect of the home buying and selling process, working with everyone from investors during the “cuckoo crazy madness of the pandemic” to young families looking to expand. Flips, rentals, new construction — she said every engagement and step in the process is enjoyable, especially inspections, an area in which she called herself a “stickler.”

“I’ve really worked in several areas. I can’t say that I have a favorite,” she said. “I love all of it. It’s the nerd in me.”

Now, a decade after making that career change for a little more flexibility, she said she enjoys the newfound satisfaction in her life.

“I work with people; I connect with people. I still get goosebumps when I take somebody into the house they love, and they don’t have to say a word when I know it’s their home. It’s like the hairs on the back of my neck stand up,” she said. “It’s a calling, definitely. I always say many are called, but few are chosen — so apparently, I was chosen.”