How Dallas Sells Dirt

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

Then there are the expanded duties that come with being a power broker. Top real estate agents know that to move the meat in this town and move it fast, they need to help their clients get it together. When a property has been sitting on the market for too long, like A-Rod's $4.7 million listing on Douglas, some real estate agents bring in William Lawrence to decorate with wares from his Design Center showroom, William & Wesley Company. For a price, he decks out a house so well that it often sells in days. ARod's place had been on the market for four and a half years when Allie Beth Allman brought Lawrence in. It sold seven months later for $4.5 million to J. Baxter Brinkmann. Another house that had been on the market for three years sold seven days after Lawrence went to work.

Good decorating always helps. So does good design - web design, that is. It wasn't too long ago that pundits were predicting the end of the real estate agent all together. The Internet, they said, would save grateful consumers their commission fees because buyers could check out homes on the Web, take a virtual tour, and e-mail contracts faster than an agent could touch up her lipstick,

As it turns out, the InterneC has only enhanced the profession. Seventy-one percent of buyers hit the Web as their first step in buying a home, says Virginia Cook, president of Virginia Cook, Realtors. Seventyeight percent of those buyers contact the agents who "grabbed them" online. Five and a half million prospective homebuyers per month visit Realtor.com, according to the National Association of Realtors. Aggressive agents have web sites that link to the Multiple Listing Service, voice mail, e-mail, PDAs, and an always ringing mobile phone.

Like Judy Pittman's. She moved out of Preston Hollow and sunk her perfectly manicured nails into the old folks' homes the high-rise market on Turtle Creek, that is. The Claridge, the Vendome, the Mansion Residences. Seventeen years and millions in sales later, Pittman rules the Dallas Gold Coast. In the first half of 2004, she sold $71,314,500, driving to as many as 11 closings in one day in her Rolls-Royce. At a 3 percent commission, that's $2,139,435. The year is still young.

Which brings us to the prickly matter of reporting sales volume when it climbs into the eight digits. Some real estate agents shout figures as if PA systems were attached to their jaguars; others closely guard their numbers, sharing them only with the IRS. It irks solo agents that "team" sales obviously outsize the loners. Compare Doris Jacobs , 2003 sales volume of $40 million versus team Perry-Miller's $70 million. But those figures can be misleading. Even team queen Eleanor Mowery Sheets cautions against "double dipping." When a fortunate agent represents both the buyer and seller, that agent might figure the house twice, so a $1 million sale will count as a sales volume of $2 million. Gross commissions earned is a better gauge of how well an agent is performing.

About those commissions. They're negotiable, especially within the firm, which iswhy real estate partners and agents often par ways. For top agents, there's always a firm out there that will give them a better cut. In fact, three top Adleta agents just left to join Allie Beth Allman. "They didn't pack up and move because Allie Beth throws a better holiday party," one observer says.