Woodland Park Realtor Irene Tanis earns Circle of Legends award | Pikes Peak Courier

Experienced, dedicated and enthusiastic about the real estate market in Teller County, Irene Tanis has received the RE/MAX Circle of Legends Award. Broker and team leader associate, Tanis has been with ReMax Performance, Inc. in Woodland Park for 30 years. Ten years before joining ReMax, Tanis was in the vanguard of agents who helped the city grow from a small town in the mountains to a place where people want to invest, in houses and in the community. Looking back over her four decades in real estate, Tanis seems blown away by the longevity mark. “40 years? My goodness sakes!” she said.

In many ways, her career tracks the development of the city. “I started out with Chuck Tubbs selling townhomes in Columbine Village,” she said, referring to homes north of the city. From there, she sold single-family homes in a new subdivision on Valley View Drive in Woodland Park. “That used to be the old golf course,” she said.

Telling her story, Tanis gets a kick out of it, enjoys a laugh or two. At one point, she joined Walker & Co. “We were in an office in a mobile home where Coldwell Banker is now,” she said.

Her last stint before joining ReMax was working with the late Fred Mills at Woodland Real Estate.

Real agent with stick-to-it-ive-ness, Tanis has seen it all, the booms, the busts. “Right now, the market is a little quiet,” she said.

For now, “quiet” is not bad. “For the last couple of years, it was nonstop, seven days a week,” she said. “Now it’s like ‘where did all the people go?’”

Of all the ups and downs in the real estate market, the Great Recession was probably the worst time, Tanis said. “There were lots of foreclosures and short sales,” she said. While the market is slower these days, some of it is due to winter, in addition to the higher interest rates. “Some people are taking their homes off the market,” she said.

Tanis doesn’t think interest rates of anywhere from 5% to 7% are that onerous, considering higher interest rates of the past. “In my lifetime, that was kind of the norm,” she said.

In the effort to counteract the effects of the pandemic on the economy, the Federal Reserve is enacting a series of cuts to the interest rates. “People got very spoiled with low interest rates,” she said. However, people are still buying homes. “They want the equity buildup and the tax credit,” she said. Tanis has inspired a legacy, with her son Joe Tanis, part of her ReMax team for 26 years, and his wife, Stephanie Tanis at 16 years. Her daughter-in-law Paige Tanis, who is married to her son David, is her assistant.

Over the years, Tanis has collected a series of ReMax awards: Hall of Fame, 100%, Platinum, Chairman’s, Titan and Diamond clubs, along with a Lifetime Achievement Award.