Jen Burkamper
The housing market in Iowa continues to be strong with bidding wars, and realtors struggling to find houses for their buyers.
Iowa Association of Realtors president, Jen Burkamper of Ames, says that issue hasn’t dampened interest in the profession. “No, actually we make it look easy — so everybody wants to get in,” Burkamper says. She says many people have joined the realtor ranks in the past couple of years.
“At the Iowa Association of Realtors we just broke 8,000 members,” Burkamper says. “In my 21 years we’ve always ranged around that 7,800, 7,700, and we just broke 8,000 members.” Burkamper says the pandemic has had a lot to do with the increase.
“With the changes in jobs and unemployment and everything in the pandemic, I think it’s caused people to want to get into this industry,” she says. Burkamper says quick sales and higher selling prices may draw people to the business — but she says you have to be ready for the long haul.
“It looks easy when things are selling quickly, but they don’t see all the work involved in what that takes,” according to Burkamper. She says Iowa is a good place overall to be a real estate agent. “We are pretty steady — we’re not like the coasts where you have high fluctuations and then you have high drops — we sit pretty steady,” Burkamper says. “So as long as you are on top of your game and doing what you need to do, you are probably not going to see a problem in sales. You’ve got to work hard.”
Burkamper calls the most recent market is the craziest she’s seen in her career, and expects things will eventually return back to a more normal situation.