Karlee Van Dyke

Get pre-approved, not pre-qualified, before you start touring homes. A pre-qual is a guess. A pre-approval is a number sellers actually trust, and it tells you what you can really spend before you fall for something out of range. Know your walk-away number, separate from what the bank approves you for. Lenders will qualify you for more than you should comfortably spend. Decide your ceiling before you're emotionally attached to a house. Don't chase last year's headlines. The market moves month to month right now. Detached homes are still tight, most are selling in about a month at close to full price. Condos have more breathing room, longer time on market, more negotiating leverage. Know which lane you're in before you decide how aggressive to be. Keep your inspection contingency. Waiving it to "win" a deal is how buyers end up owning someone else's expensive problem. You can be competitive without giving up your ability to walk. Run the full monthly number before you write an offer, not just principal and interest. Property tax, insurance, HOA if there is one. The mortgage payment is never the real number. Work with someone who knows the actual streets, not just the city. School boundaries, HOA quirks, which blocks flood, which blocks hold value. That knowledge is worth more than a lockbox code.

Price it right from day one. Don't test high hoping to "see what happens." A high price doesn't find a buyer, it just guarantees a reduction later, and every reduction resets the clock and signals weakness to buyers watching days on market. Get your paperwork in order before you list, not after you're in escrow. Permits, HOA docs, disclosures. Buyers and their agents dig into this fast, and a scramble mid-escrow costs you leverage and sometimes the deal. Your first two weeks are your best shot. Most of your showings and offers happen in that opening window. A strong launch, priced right, photographed right, captures that activity. A soft launch wastes it. Photography and prep aren't optional anymore. Buyers decide whether to walk through your door based on twelve photos on their phone. Spend the money on real photography before you spend it on anything else. Fix the cheap, visible stuff. Paint, landscaping, decluttering. These are the highest return moves you can make, and they cost far less than a price reduction later. Know your number and your timeline before you're negotiating, not during. Decide what you'll actually accept and how long you're willing to sit before you're staring at an offer under pressure. Don't panic on the first offer, and don't get greedy waiting for a better one that may not come. If it's close to your number and your timeline, that's usually your best deal, not your floor.

I work both sides, buyers and sellers, though listings are where I've built my strength. My clients tend to be going through more than just a move: divorce, job loss, the death of a spouse. That's not the exception in my business, it's a pattern I've come to expect. Most of my clients live in the Poway school district corridor, Rancho Bernardo, Poway, Rancho Peñasquitos, 4S Ranch, Del Sur, and a lot of them end up moving to La Jolla when it's time to downsize. I also handle downtown San Diego condo deals. I've navigated complicated property situations too: HOA and master-planned community deals, older homes with permit histories that take real digging to untangle. My very first escrow had an active flood discovered mid-inspection. I was a solo agent then, without much support, and I got my clients through it and closed on their dream home anyway. And I've got relationships that come back around. One client, a former broker herself, tried working with me off-market once, went to two other agents after that, and now she's back, this time with a real deadline on the table. I'm not a volume agent. I'm the agent people come to when the sale is tangled up with something bigger than the house.

Breaking sales records across North County and exceeding a sales price higher than the homeowners expected. Sold in a weekend, multiple offers.

I got into real estate because it wasn't a question of if, it was when. I owned a studio before this, and when COVID hit, it shut down. We reopened, but the timing lined up too well to ignore, my kids were at an age where I finally had the bandwidth, and everything happening at the time pushed me to rethink what I was building anyway. It was one of the hardest stretches my family had faced, and instead of just riding it out, I decided it was time for reinvention: time to own my outcome, time to make a big move. That's what launched my real estate career, five years and over $100 million sold since.

I hold two designations that directly shape how I work: Luxury Listing Specialist and Seniors Real Estate Specialist (SRES). The luxury training sharpens how I price, market, and negotiate higher-end homes, exactly what I bring to my $2.5M-4M sellers. The SRES designation is just as core to my business. It's specialized training for the real issues that come up when clients are downsizing or making a move later in life: things like reverse mortgages, estate considerations, and the emotional weight that often comes with the decision. Between the two, I'm equipped for both ends of the corridor I work: the family moving up into their next home, and the downsizing seller heading toward the coast.