The short version: Every real estate salesperson and broker working in Iowa is licensed by one authority — the Iowa Real Estate Commission — and every license can be checked in the state’s free “Licensed in Iowa” public search. Iowa licenses run on a three-year term and all of them expire on December 31 of the third year, so the expiration check is unusually simple: the record’s expiration date should be a December 31, and it should be in the future. Search by the person’s name or license number, confirm the status is active, and confirm the employing broker on the record matches the brokerage the agent markets under.
We built Neighborhood Registry on exactly this check — every professional listed in our Iowa directory is matched against the Commission’s record before their profile is marked verified, and re-checked on a schedule afterward. But you don’t need us for the check itself. Here’s how to run it yourself.
Step by step: checking an agent with the Iowa Real Estate Commission
Step 1: Get the agent’s legal name and license number
Take it from their business card, their brokerage page, or ask directly. Nicknames are the most common reason a search “fails” — the record lists legal names. Our Des Moines realtor Jessica Kiester’s license number, for example, is S62729000 — the same number on her Registry profile and her verification record.
Step 2: Search the state’s “Licensed in Iowa” public search
Use the Iowa Real Estate Commission’s public search. Free, public, no login. Search by name or license number. One practical note, stated honestly because it shaped our own process: Iowa’s portal gives no clear machine-readable confirmation signal, so automated checkers (including ours) cannot always read a result — which is why Jessica Kiester’s application was held for human review and her verification was completed by a person reading her record directly, not by a scraper dressed up as one.
Her record, read directly in the Iowa Professional Licensing Bureau’s portal, reads: Jessica Kiester, license S62729000, Salesperson, Active, expires 12/31/2028, firm Real Estate Concepts LC, with no discipline on the record. One correction belongs in the open: an earlier Registry publication carried the wrong license number for her (S6927000). A direct read of the Bureau’s record on Oct 25, 2026 caught it; the number was corrected to S62729000 everywhere it appeared, and the correction is recorded in the Registry’s public ledger. That is what the direct-read rule is for.
Step 3: Read the record — type, status, and the December 31 rule
- License type — salesperson or broker. A salesperson works under an employing broker; the broker named on the record is part of the check, not a detail.
- Status — the holder must be active to practice. An inactive or expired license authorizes no work for compensation.
- Expiration — under Iowa Administrative Code 193E—3.3(2), real estate broker, salesperson, firm, branch office, and trade name licenses are issued for a three-year term (counting the remaining portion of the year issued as a full year) and expire on December 31 of the third year. Renewal to active status requires 36 hours of Commission-approved continuing education in the term (193E—16.4). So a healthy record shows a future December 31 expiration; anything else needs an explanation.
Step 4: Match the record to the person in front of you
Confirm three things line up: the legal name, the license number, and the employing broker on the record versus the brokerage on the agent’s marketing. Jessica Kiester’s record names her firm as Real Estate Concepts LC — the RE/MAX Concepts firm she markets under and that her Registry profile shows. A broker mismatch is the most common legitimate hiccup (agents change brokers), but it should always have a simple explanation — and the record, not the agent’s website, is the source of truth.
How Neighborhood Registry checks Iowa licenses
Licenses are checked directly against the Commission’s record before a profile can be marked verified, re-checked weekly where the portal allows a machine read and by documented manual review where it does not, and formally re-verified every 12 months. Each Iowa profile shows its last-checked date and its next re-verification date — Jessica Kiester’s record shows first verified Oct 23, 2026, against the Iowa Real Estate Commission, re-verification due Oct 23, 2027. The full method is on How We Verify.