Craig Shatilla

At the age of 10, Craig started working in the family business on Saturdays, which involved the manufacturing and sale of dance recitals and Halloween costumes. His job was to sweep floors and clean out sewing machines. Not glamorous, but it was a beginning. At the age of 17, as a high school senior, he was given a choice: to go on a business trip with his dad and miss an exam with no option for a makeup test. Given this binary choice, he took the trip, which would result in him receiving an “F.” To this day, he feels that he made a difficult decision but believes it was the correct one.

Real estate has been in Craig’s blood since his late teens. When he was 19, he purchased his first piece of real estate, which was a row of five garages in Staten Island, New York. Craig began to experience what it was like to be a landlord. He found it interesting to negotiate lease agreements with people more than twice his age and be in a position of ownership.

Not too long after that, he moved the family business two times in the next 12 years. Craig was part of the negotiations for both moves. The second time he moved, he was in negotiations with Home Depot on the sale of their building. He learned a lot during this transaction, particularly, which honed his negotiating skills beyond his wildest expectations.

“My next foray into the market was when my wife, Kirsten, and I bought our first home. We rented it for a couple of years and wound up doing a complete renovation before moving our family there. This lasted for two years, and we flipped it and bought/built another home in New Jersey, where we stayed for about three years and did the same,” reflects Craig.

He realized that there is money to be made on the investing/buying side. So, when he moved to North Carolina, the first thing they did was get their real estate licenses. Before their sphere was large enough to support both in real estate, Craig took employment with the Leith Automotive Group in sales and later in management for four years. But real estate was calling his name, so in 2014, he jumped in with both feet and began his full-time real estate career. With all his prior experience, making the jump was a breeze.