Chris Costa says watching the Knapp Properties team grow and bring their own decisions and ideas to the table to improve the company — and its relationships with clients — brings him joy. So does being on one of his motorcycles on the open road, where he acknowledges he might go faster than he should.

Costa, 61, president and CEO at Knapp Properties, is the Business Record’s 2026 Commercial Real Estate Pro of the Year. 

The award is designed to highlight an outstanding CRE professional from Central Iowa for their professional accomplishments and community engagement.

A Hoover High School graduate, Costa is a proud Des Moines native. He later attended the University of Iowa, where he began studying engineering.

“But my first month I looked around and said, ‘I really don’t fit in,’ so I switched my major to accounting,” he said. “That worked out pretty well for me.”

Costa began his career at Deloitte & Touche, where some of his early clients included a partnership between Bill Knapp and Denny Elwell, giants in the Central Iowa real estate market.

“That was interesting to me, and then R&R Investors was also one of my clients the first couple of years, so I got a little taste of real estate,” he said. “Being exposed to it and having an understanding of the industry, I felt like it was something that would appeal to me long term.”

Costa joined Knapp Properties in 1997 as a controller, eventually moving up to chief financial officer. He was named president in 2018 and added CEO to his title in 2020.

Costa said the leadership of Knapp Properties co-chairman Gerry Neugent and Bill Knapp helped shape who he is today as a leader, and instilled in him the importance of community involvement and giving back.

Neugent wrote about Costa’s involvement in the community in his letter nominating Costa for the award: “Chris Costa’s commitment to community service is rooted in a belief that leadership carries responsibility beyond business success.” 

Costa has been involved in numerous nonprofit and civic boards, including United Way of Central Iowa, Easterseals Iowa, Above and Beyond Cancer, the American Heart Association, the Animal Rescue League, Prairie Meadows and Iowa Confluence Water Trails, among others. This year, he is also serving as chair of the Greater Des Moines Partnership.

Costa’s leadership philosophy has created “stability across market cycles,” and his impact on commercial real estate “extends well beyond individual transactions,” Neugent wrote.

“He has played a significant role in shaping industry collaboration, infrastructure planning, and long-term economic strategy across Greater Des Moines and the state of Iowa,” Neugent wrote. 

Tiffany Tauscheck, president and CEO of the Greater Des Moines Partnership wrote in her letter supporting Costa’s nomination for the award that he “exemplifies excellence in commercial real estate through his sustained professional success, ethical leadership, and deep commitment to the Central Iowa community.”

She said Costa has been key in advancing meaningful development projects that have made the region stronger and improved the quality of life in Des Moines.

“Chris is a thoughtful advocate for smart growth, innovation and partnership-driven development, and he consistently works to elevate the industry as a whole,” Tauscheck wrote. 

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AT A GLANCE
Age: 61
Hometown: Des Moines
Family: Married with two children
Education: Degree in accounting, University of Iowa
Activities: Volunteering, spending time with family and motorcycling
Contact: Chris.Costa@knapplc.com

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The Business Record caught up Costa in late February to learn more about his journey, his thoughts on leadership, what he learned from Bill Knapp, who died in November, and how being a two-time cancer survivor —  who is now battling his third cancer diagnosis — has affected his approach to leadership and life.

This Q&A has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What does it mean to you to receive this award?

I’m just in awe. I’m a north side kid from Hoover High School. I grew up middle class, grew up with nothing and I never expected to have the opportunities that I’ve been provided. I never expected to have the career that I’ve been provided and to be in a position where people see what you’re doing and think it creates or gives value to either our profession or the community. I just have a lot of humility. Man, 20 years ago, this is not where I thought I would be and I’m just very happy with how things have turned out for me.

How has the Des Moines market changed since you joined Knapp Properties?

We’ve gone from being really a smallish market to a market that any investor in the country likely has knowledge of the opportunities here in Des Moines. For an organization like Knapp Properties, which is essentially a family office-type business with some great partnerships and great community leaders, it changes and evolves over time. In the early 2000s, if we wanted to buy an apartment project, we had very few competitors, and they were local. Then, as we got into the 2010s, there was regional competition, and now it’s national competition. 

There are brokers here in town and their investor list is over 30,000 people. So, every time they get a listing that’s who it goes out to, and that is our competition. It has changed dramatically in terms of what opportunities make the most sense for us. There are still pockets of real estate that make a ton of sense. Where there is traffic, retail works really well. Multi-family still works in certain areas, but there’s been so much construction in Central Iowa the last few years that probably needs to slow down a little bit. We don’t do a ton of industrial. And then office is nobody’s darling currently, but I don’t think it got as bad as people predicted post-COVID. A lot of organizations aren’t at five days a week in the office, but when they are in the office they want to provide their employees with the best experience they can, so they are investing in good space. Good, Class A space. There’s still a great market for that. Where we find most opportunities is on land we already own. We still have a little less than 2,000 acres that we have available to us and that’s where we try to create our own opportunities.

What lessons do you hope to instill in the next generation of real estate professionals?

I want people to learn that this is a value proposition. I know you’re showing up because we’re giving you a paycheck, but I want you to take away more from that than a paycheck. I want you to take away the ability to think critically, to make yourself accountable, challenge yourself, and if you’re not being challenged, come to leadership and ask for different ways to be challenged. We are constantly focused on what it means to be an employee but we don’t want people to necessarily always have an easy answer if they don’t have it. I could answer so many questions throughout the day that I instead give them an idea where to go to find the information or what route to go down. That gives me way more joy because I feel that person is going to benefit in the long run from that knowledge or that process. I don’t need to micromanage anything. Nobody wants to be micromanaged. I’ve been micromanaged somewhere else and I hated it. If you empower people to think and make decisions, we as an organization are going to be better off because now we have six or seven or 50 different great minds working towards a solution, instead of everyone looking to one or two people to come up with the right answer.

Describe Bill Knapp’s mentorship and what it meant to you.

Bill is phenomenal. His mentorship didn’t boil down to analyzing any financial data. He was interested. He was curious. He wanted to know, but that’s not how he determined whether something made sense. He managed with experience and gut. That experience was so valuable because there were so many times when the financial analysis was different than Bill’s gut and Bill’s gut usually won and was usually right. So, I saw that analyzing something to death isn’t the end all, be all. To look at opportunities and his ability to base his decision-making on his experience was so invaluable, and I think very few people have the ability to have a front row seat to that. I like to think I ended up at the perfect place for me. I was given the opportunity to learn at the feet of giants. Bill used to be the first call for anybody looking to sell something. He would get upset if there was a deal that they didn’t call him on first. I remember thinking how crazy it is for a person to have established themselves to that level in the community that the expectation is that you’re going to hear about virtually every opportunity before other people. Bill acted and that’s what people liked. They wanted to know are you a go or a no go? Don’t sit around the table analyzing this. I’m showing you first and I need to know you’re on board. Bill could formulate that and that’s tough to do anymore.

How has working under Bill Knapp and Gerry Neugent shaped your own leadership style and placing a priority on giving back to the community?

Gerry is an attorney and attorneys are black and white. He just let me be. I don’t operate in black and white. I operate in the gray. I don’t need every piece of information or know every potential question I have to ask. I like it to play out and be given the opportunity to ask questions and maybe cater the conversation to areas I think need more focus. He let me assimilate into this situation where I could come to a meeting with my own set of criteria and information. Attorneys prepare for court and have to know and be prepared for every possible outcome. I just never managed from that perspective. But the other thing is I think it’s so important and vital to give back to the community, and nobody did it better than BIll Knapp. He was the standard bearer for so many decades and this is an organization where I’m able to do that. It’s not only good for business, it sets a culture of giving back which was so important to Bill. If I heard Bill say it once I heard him say it 1,000 times: Making money is a lot of fun, but giving it away is way more fun. He truly believed that. A lot of times he made money so he could give away money. Being part of an organization where that is thought of as critical or important and is a cultural benefit, that’s why I love Knapp Properties.

You are a two-time cancer survivor and have had heart issues during your lifetime, how have those experiences shaped who you are today?

Well, I’m hoping to be a three-time cancer survivor. I just found out five weeks ago and I started chemo a few weeks ago. This latest cancer is the result of my first cancer when I was 19, where I had radiation and that radiation caused the tumor that I now have. So, I’m working on it. I’m having chemotherapy, and ultimately I’ll have surgery and hopefully a year from now everything is great. Even though the radiation caused my tumor, what a great 42 years it’s been. Would I have changed anything? Not at all. But it really helps you appreciate things more. I have a lot of empathy. Some people mistake empathy for weakness and that’s not it. I’ve lived with a lot of challenges. I know what it maybe is like to walk in somebody’s shoes. The heart issues came up probably 30 years ago. I had rheumatic fever as a kid. That screws up your valves and stuff, so I’ve just dealt with that and I’ve managed that with medication. Each one of those challenges has been an opportunity for me to overcome it and look around and see that somebody always has it worse. If anything, my afflictions have intensified my feelings of empathy that I have for our community. 

Tell us something about yourself that maybe people don’t already know.

I have six motorcycles. Not a single one is a Harley. I like on-road, off-road. I like fast, I like touring. That love started as a kid riding minibikes. Few places make me happier than being out on an open road on a motorcycle, listening to some music through my helmet, just enjoying my surroundings. Sometimes it’s probably faster than it should be, but it’s all part of the enjoyment.

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Previous CRE Professional of the Year recipients include Bill Wright, senior vice president at CBRE; Justin Lossner, senior managing director at JLL; Kris Saddoris, vice president of development at Hubbell Realty Co.; Gerry Neugent of Knapp Properties; Rick Tollakson of Hubbell Realty Co.; Richard Hurd of Hurd Real Estate Services; Jake Christensen of Christensen Development; Jennifer Cooper of Bankers Trust Co.; Kevin Crowley of NAI Iowa Realty Commercial; Mark Rupprecht of R&R Realty Group; and Brad Schoenfelder of Ryan Cos. US Inc.