Today we’d like to introduce you to Dylan Van Gerpen.
Hi Dylan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My path into real estate wasn’t exactly traditional. Back in 2008, I was living out of my car for a while, and the job that turned things around for me was in property management on the south side of Kansas City — it’s actually what got me my first real place to live. I left that job eventually because the environment wasn’t a great fit, and I moved into IT work for a few years.
Real estate found its way back into my life when I bought my first home. It should have been an exciting milestone, but the experience was genuinely rough — and somewhere in the middle of that frustration, I realized I still loved this industry, I just didn’t love how I’d been treated in it. So I made the decision to get back into real estate myself, with a simple goal: make sure other buyers don’t have to go through what I went through.
By that point, I’d already put down roots in Kansas City’s Historic Northeast — I’d been living there for 1 year before I ever specialized in it professionally. Once I was back in real estate, it just made sense to focus where I already had real relationships and real love for the neighborhood. That connection to the Northeast is also what eventually pulled me into the nonprofit and advocacy side of things, which is a big part of my life today.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not always, no. One of the biggest ongoing challenges is balancing running the business with the nonprofit and advocacy work I do in the Historic Northeast. Both are things I genuinely care about, but they both demand real time and energy, and finding the right balance between the two is a constant, active effort rather than something I ever fully “solve.”
On the transactional side, every deal has its complications — that’s just real estate. But the harder struggles are usually the personal ones: there are mornings where it’s genuinely hard to get up and hustle like I’m brand new to this, like I’m starting over from scratch, even after years in the business. That feeling doesn’t fully go away just because you’ve been doing this a while.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m a Realtor with Real Broker, LLC, working under my own brand, DV Real Estate KC, and my specialty is historic properties and urban core neighborhoods across the Kansas City metro — places like Scarritt Renaissance, Pendleton Heights, Columbus Park, Paseo West, Indian Mound, Sheffield, Lykins, Independence Plaza, and the Historic Northeast more broadly. What sets me apart is depth: I’m not a generalist who occasionally sells an old house. I understand the quirks, the history, and the real value of these neighborhoods because I live in them and advocate for them, not just sell in them.
On the real estate side, one of my proudest professional moments was being brought on to sell an entire historic district of Painted Ladies at once — a project that really let me put that neighborhood-level expertise to work at scale.
But honestly, some of what I’m proudest of lives outside a closing statement. For six or seven years, I ran Scare-It, a Halloween event that drew 7,000 to 10,000 kids in a single evening. I also helped create the Northeast Neighborhood Coalition, where I now serve as president — alongside my roles as secretary and Housing Chair of the Scarritt Renaissance Neighborhood Association, secretary of Historic Kansas City, and a director with Parade of Hearts. Between the real estate work and the community work, what I’m most proud of is the same thread running through both: showing up in a real, sustained way, not just a transactional one.
How do you define success?
Honestly, I think I’m just now, after all these years, starting to actually understand what that word means for me. If I boil it all the way down, success comes down to making a positive impact on someone else — especially someone you don’t even know. Not a client you already have a relationship with, not a neighbor you see every week, but a stranger whose day, or whose home, or whose neighborhood is a little better because you showed up. That’s the version of success I actually care about now.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dvrekc.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/dylanvangerpen
- Other: https://NNCKC.org
