Joy Baresel
COVER STORY
PHOTOS BY SHAWNA MCDUFFIE, PEAK RES | STORY BY ZACH COHEN
In college, Joy Baresel was a painter and fine arts major. She thrived in the university environment; a community of painters surrounded her, offering support in the form of companionship, friendship, and creative solutions.
Joy sees herself as “a mover, a doer, a people person.” So, what allowed her to thrive in college became a challenge post-graduation.
“After I graduated, painting was pretty isolating. I was alone in a room painting, just me.”
In the following years, Joy got married and worked as an art teacher and painter around her role as a stay-at-home mom. But one day, she got a bold idea.
“I want to flip a house and let that be my art.”
Creating a Masterpiece
“I wanted to use color, use materials, and do something different,” Joy continues. “And I don't want to be sitting in my studio alone doing this. What if I could create a space, interact with different trades, and then interact with homeowners to create something for them? That would use my art and creativity skills.”
In 2015, Joy flipped her first home, a concrete, unfinished Art Deco house.
“It had nothing inside of it,” Joy reflects. “There were homeless people living there that started fires inside the house because everything was concrete, but I was totally inspired by the architecture of it. So I paid $30,000 for that concrete box — no sink, no toilet, no electric, and no plumbing. I learned everything. It was a crash course in homes and real estate.”
While Joy continued flipping homes, her friends began to ask her to help them with their home purchases. Joy became a real estate agent before she quite realized what had happened.
“I did it organically through passion to get houses ready and marketing them and negotiating. I loved that part of it,” Joy says. “There was no ‘aha moment.’ It was purely organic.”
Building a Community
Over the past eight years, Joy’s business has grown tremendously. She started a team in 2018 and opened a brokerage in 2019. She continues to invest in real estate alongside her sales work.
“It’s gone so well. I really dug into understanding the industry,” Joy says. “I’ve been able to serve my clients in a progressive way, and pretty quickly, I started a real estate team, so it’s not me alone. I always had this idea that one single person can't be great at everything.”
In 2019, Joy opened the first Engel & Völkers office — or “shop,” as Engel & Völkers prefers to call them — in the state of Oklahoma. In 2022, she’s looking toward opening her third shop in Norman. She currently runs shops in Oklahoma City and Edmond.
“Engel & Völkers is changing the landscape of real estate in Oklahoma. What that means to me is I want a place where we can elevate the industry of real estate, give a service that is more professional, and in doing such a thing, people would have a new respect for real estate. And I wanted a group of people to really do business with.”
In 2021, Joy’s team closed $47.9 million, and her brokerage closed $169.8 million.
The brokerage has about 40 real estate advisors, and the shops are in midtown Oklahoma City and downtown Edmond, two highly trafficked, popular locations at the center of their respective communities. Both buildings are filled with character, a nod to the creative, and modern outlook at Engel & Völkers.
Perhaps most importantly, Joy has built a brokerage with a sense of community. Her team enjoys giving back to charities like Focus on Home, an organization that helps furnish homes for those in need.
“We work hard together, and we give back to the community together,” Joy smiles.
Since she left college, Joy has had the desire to build a community around her that shares similar values. While she initially hoped that community would form in the fine-art world, her life took an unexpected turn into real estate — and she couldn’t be more pleased with the results.
