Top Agent Magazine Featured Article
KARA HINSHAW
With seventeen years in the business, Kara is the broker and owner of Key Associates Signature Realty serving southern Indiana, helping clients find their dream home in the place she’s called home most of her life.
Kara is a real estate professional for our times, combining an engineering background with hometown person-ability and a local’s regional knowledge in a people-focused approach to the industry.
Having watched her parents work in real estate for years, Kara decided to try the family business after moving back to her hometown. Today, with seventeen years in the business, Kara is the broker and owner of Key Associates Signature Realty serving southern Indiana, helping clients find their dream home in the place she’s called home most of her life. Currently eighty-five percent of her business derives from repeat and referral clients.
Kara’s knowledge of the area is second to-none. Through her brokerage’s YouTube channel, Kara educates homebuyers with in-depth videos that give a greater context and understanding of the ins-and-outs of local markets than can be gleaned from a Zillow listing.
Though her brokerage has grown considerably in the last five years, Kara operates her business as a team, giving needed support to new agents, helping to start their careers, while ensuring that her clients are paired with agents who have studied Kara’s local-market fluency.
“I think building that niche expertise makes you a better agent,” Kara explains. “That’s where I feel a lot of agents these days are lacking.”
Kara’s emphasis on knowing her market, and her client-first approach to navigating a transaction bring buyers and sellers back to work with her and refer her.
“It’s exciting to help people,” she says. “That’s what I love most: the challenge of finding solutions for buyers when there’s no inventory. That takes knocking on doors, working with people you know, and seeing what you can connect people with.”
Kara adds, “That’s when you truly know who the market experts are – agents who aren’t market experts can’t find the inventory.”
Kara’s service to her clients doesn’t stop at finalizing a transaction. Through a comprehensive combination of social media interactions, quarterly check-in calls, and annual Christmas parties, Kara fosters lasting relationships, keeping her clients at top of mind long after closing a sale.
When it comes to marketing, Kara utilizes all avenues to reach the right buyer. Once a property is prepared with professional photography and videography, Kara engages a robust digital marketing rollout for each listing. Posts across a wide range of realty websites plus boosted ads and video-tours on social media platforms put Kara’s listings right at a buyer’s fingertips. Last year, Kara closed $33 million of her own volume. Key Associates Signature Realty as a brokerage is on track for $70-80 million in volume for 2021.
As a business-owner who cares about her community, Kara is involved in her church and associated charities. When she’s not working, Kara stays active running and exercising regularly. A lover of travel, Kara has maintained a passion for seeing the world ever since studying abroad in Australia during college.
Looking to the future, Kara envisions expanding her business across southern Indiana and beyond. “I was a small brokerage in a town of 2500,” Kara concludes. “Now I’m at twenty-eight agents and three offices and still going!”
To find out more about Kara Hinshaw, call 812-686-3268, email karahinshaw@keyassociates.com or visit www.karahinshaw.com or www.youtube.com/keysigrealty
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