Who buys $3 million homes? What company was fined $125,000 for gambling violations? How long do felons serve in Iowa?

10/1/2025

Ever wonder who buys those $3 million homes? Wonder no more. Here are six homes with some of the highest sale prices we found this year. Two sold for $3 million. Two were in West Des Moines. Two were in Johnston. One was in Clive. One was in Urbandale. But, who’s counting?

On Feb. 4, the home at 1726 Glenleven Terrace, West Des Moines, sold for $3 million from the Tamara Gaye Deyarman declaration of trust to Big Bear Real Estate. The home has three bedrooms, five bathrooms, 4,268 square feet and comes with a backyard pool. The house sold in 2019 for $1.7 million.

 In May, the home at 7395 N.W. 100th St. in Johnston sold for $3 million by ASG Development LLC to Aaron Jones. Jones, an attorney at Belin McCormick who focuses on mergers and acquisitions and intellectual property matters, now owns this new home with seven bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms and a 25-acre lot. The home has a pool, a piano and a home theater.

In June, an Urbandale home at 14140 Maple Drive sold for $2.6 million. The 3,367-square-foot, four-bedroom, five-and-a-half bathroom home was previously owned by Des Moines native and former Major League Baseball pitcher Jeremy Hellickson. He sold it to former Iowa Realty CEO Michael Knapp. This home has a pool, a theater room and a gym. 

The newly constructed home, built in 2024 at 5095 Grand Ridge Drive, West Des Moines, was purchased for $2.53 million in January by Chelsea and Steven Wood. Details on the number of bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage of the home were unavailable.

The most recent sale on our list is the home at 7580 N.W. 100th St. in Johnston, which sold in September for $2.525 million. Former chief human resources officer at Principal Financial Group, Jon Couture, now managing director and chief human resources manager at Vanguard, sold the home to Heather McGee. Couture purchased the property in 2023 for $2.475 million. The home has five bedrooms, five and a half bathrooms and 4,360 square feet. And, yes, it has a pool.

Another West Des Moines home, this one at 3870 Timberline Drive, sold for $2 million from the Bradley Brody estate to Terry Aikin. Brody, before his passing in 2024, was the chairman of the UnityPoint Health System. The four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bathroom, 3,907-square-foot home also has a theater, a gym, and an outdoor pickleball court. …

At the July 11 meeting of the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, which oversees racing and gambling in the state of Iowa, a hearing was held regarding Betfair Interactive US LLC, the U.S. division of the British gambling company. Betfair, a popular sports wagering company, and FanDuel are both owned by Flutter Entertainment. The hearing included five violations of the Iowa Code. According to the meeting minutes, “counts one through four all involved impermissible wagers. Count five involved a responsible gaming issue as well as an issue of not following internal controls and representations made to the Commission and the public.”

Ben Roth, the director on the regulatory team for FanDuel, represented the gambling company. He said in response to the violations, “FanDuel has worked to remediate the various root causes through a combination of manual remediation efforts that include increased training, more detailed checklists, and automation wherever possible to avoid the potential for manual error.”

Several members of the IRGC board had stern words for Roth. Commissioner Amy Burkhart responded, saying, four of these counts were not self-reported but rather issues IRGC staff caught during a compliance check, wanting to know how staff decides who and when to conduct these compliance audits and checks.

Commissioner and Vice Chair Mark Campbell asked why count five took 64 days to notify staff. Roth explained the complexity of the issue and how the company was doing its own investigation to determine how customers might have registered themselves through roundabout methods. 

That answer was insufficient, according to Commissioner Alan Ostergren, who said the delay in reporting the issue was not acceptable to him. He said, although the fix was made two days after the incident, the commission was not notified for 64 days, and he saw no technical reason as to why the IRGC could not have been notified within 72 hours. 

Chair Daryl Olsen said in the last two years that Betfair has had two stipulations come before the commission, four to the gaming board, and now, an additional five counts. “Sloppy at best,” Olsen said. He also stated, that had this been one of the brick and mortar casinos in Iowa, the commission would be hammering them, and that this cannot continue to happen. 

The end result? Betfair Interactive U.S. LLC was fined a total of $125,000 by the IRGC. … 

Felons in Iowa do their time. According to a study conducted by Simmrin Law, Iowa imposes the longest prison sentences for felony robbery in the U.S. Using data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s 2024 Federal Sentencing Statistics, the average sentence for a robbery in Iowa was 110.33 months. The next closest was Mississippi’s average sentence of 30.40 months. The national average is 8.56 months.