How Dallas Sells Dirt

D Magazine, Sep 01, 2004 by Evans, Mary Candace

IT WAS A PERFECT FRIDAY EVENING IN MAY. Two Rolls-Royce Phantoms were parked in the circular drive, models dripped with diamonds from Eiseman Jewels, and Jan Strimple worked the room. The guest list included several folks who could write a check for a $330,000 car or a $5 million home - or both. They nibbled foie gras from Wendy Krispin and sipped Domaine Leflaive Meursault Sous le Dos d'Ane. The talk was of grown children, boats, vacation homes. Discreet security guards made sure house trinkets and jewelry did not disappear.

All to sell a house.

But not just any house. This was a sixbedroom, 11,000square-foot mansion, with handcrafted molding, library, exercise room, office adjacent to the 625-square-foot master suite, balcony overlooking the pool, terraces, fountains, and 2 impeccably manicured acres of landscaping. Originally built by Cy Barcus for Belo exec Robert Decherd, the pink brick home was on Hollow Way Road in the heart of Old Preston Hollow. You couldn't find a better neighborhood, with neighbors who regularly entertain U.S. congressmen and presidents.

The man making it all happen was Dave Perry-Miller, who was so broke in 1981 that he had to leave his watch at a gas station. Now he was marketing a $5.74 million palace. Welcome to the rarefied world of the new real estate power broker. (See p. 103 for our list of the best and a note about the difference between a broker and an agent.)

Selling dirt in Dallas is a different ballgame than it was 20 years ago. We've come as far from the St. John-suited ladies trading house fliers over coffee as we have from affordable square footage. Once upon a time, through the '80s and early '90s, Jennie Ling and Mona Biskamp competed fiercely at Henry S. Miller, selling almost a third of the homes north of Mockingbird Lane and south of LBJ Freeway. Biskamp, in fact, topped the property sales charts in Dallas for 15 consecutive years and put two of her five kids through college by selling the same home on Dentwood Drive five times.

But in the mid and late '90s, merger mania and aggressive acquisitions brought franchise brokerages to Dallas, wiping out the mom-and-pop firms. The hottest stock market in history pushed land values sky-high, and the building boom made any house more than 15 years old a scraper. Today, despite a weird economy, year-to-date sales of million-dollarplus homes in the Park Cities, Preston Hollow, and Plano are up more than 50 percent over all of 2003.

It's made for a wild ride for those who were here during the lean years. Delia Lively's first sale in 1979 was 2 acres at the comer of Harry's Lane and Lennox. She sold it for $103,000. Three weeks later, she sold it again, for $119,000. "I've seen it go from $100,000 to $1 million an acre, she says. "And I was here when it all crashed."

Location, location, location? Timing, timing, timing. Fresh out of her noncompete with Ebby Halliday, who bought her highend boutique company in 1995, Ellen Terry had a nice Mother's Day treat this year. An out-of-town buyer called her just after church and wanted to see 10265 Inwood Road, the 3-acre estate of the late Home Interiors founder Mary Crowley. List price: $3.5 million. "Well", Terry said, "I'm just about to have Mother's Day brunch with my family, so can I meet you there later this afternoon?" They set an appointment for 4 p.m. Two days later, the buyer signed a contract for full price; the deal closed in 11 days. Terry represented both the buyer and the seller. Cha-ching.

More often than not, though, big buyers today want new homes, so sales of preexisting homes have slowed while raw land and tear-downs have skyrocketed. "Those lots in the Lobello-Palomar area [of Preston Hollow] are now more than $1.2 million an acre," Eleanor Mowery Sheets says. "Raw land is out of sight."

"We were in a slump last summer, and 2003 was a disaster for many Realtors," Keller Williams' Connie Fife says. "But we got out of it real quick last November." That was about the time Martha Tiner at BriggsFreeman sold 8602 Jourdan Way, originally listed by Ebby Halliday's Mary Jane Young for $16.99 million, for less than $12 million. Tiner's sale, Dallas' biggest in 2003, kickstarted more.

"Everything started selling, and builders were selling whatever they had on the ground and once again building custom," Fife says. Now they are begging her to find tear-downs and empty lots.

Though the Connie Fifes, Dave PerryMillers, Doris Jacobses, Eleanor Mowery Sheetses, Ellen Terrys, the Briggs-Freeman folks, and the other power brokers make it sound like a piece of cake (frosted by recordlow interest rates), in fact, today's top real estate agents work their fingers to the bone for every commission penny. Thirty years ago, all you needed was a driver's license and a few dollars and you were a real estate broker. Flash forward to what agents face now. In today's litigious world, they must take 180 classroom hours to get a broker's license, even more once they join a firm. They have to hone their marketing skills. Blitz advertising is the name of the game. Perry-Miller estimates he spent more than $200,000 on advertising last year; Erin Mathews runs ads until the buyer leaves the closing table. And forget having an open house unless you hire those off-duty cops. Last year, several real estate agents were mugged at gunpoint while trying to hold open houses for their clients, including one top Poston producer who gave up $200,000 worth of jewelry and begged for her life.