Why (Gasping) Rick Perry Is On His Way Up In The Polls: Texas Is a Stud State for Realtors

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Fun Perry visit to Bootjack Ranch

Update: At that Vail meeting with Kelcy warren et al, The Daily Beast is now reporting that the Koch brothers compared President Obama to Sadaam Hussein.

He is picking up money like crazy. On the Perry bandwagon now apparently is energy billionaire Kelcy Warren, he of pipeline magnate Energy Transfer Partners, and owner of one of the  most expensive homes in Dallas: 5323 Park Lane. The former home of Joyce and Larry Lacerte has entertained, among others,  former President George W. and Laura Bush,  Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Jaap van Zweden, Prince Edward,  Caroline Rose Hunt, among others, plus feted countless Dallas charity galas and pre-galas. 5323 was listed in 2008 for $45 million, then was lowered to just under $40 million. ( Zillow, in it’s infinite wisdom, had it “zestimated” at $26,063,000. Funny.) Warren snapped it up for just under $30 million-ish, and asked for an outside appraisal.  Seller’s agent was precious Ralph Randall, Dave Perry-Miller & Associates. The buyer’s agent was Rosie Waters of Allie Beth Allman and Associates, who is married to football legend Charlie Waters, who I believe works or worked for Mr. Warren.

In late June, the Wall Street Journal reports,  lucky ducks Rick and Anita Perry hopped on Kelcy Warren’s private jet to travel from Mr. Warren’s ranch in southern Colorado, Bootjack Ranch, to Vail, where Mr. Perry spoke to a conservative forum sponsored by Charles and David Koch. Warren, who is a savvy real estate consumer, bought the 3500 acre Bootjack in April 2010 for $46.5 million, or almost half the asking price.

Then there’s Harold Simmons, who gave Perry $1.1 million. But Perry’s biggest contributor to date is home-builder Bob Perry — more on that in a future post. Now here is something that caught my eye and kind of blew me over more than the wind this Labor Day weekend: four of the nation’s ten top income-producing markets for REALTORS are in Texas. In other words, these are the top markets where agents stand the best chance of making a good income selling homes. This should all but guarantee Perry the vote from the National Association of Realtors, and if his campaign is smart, they will pick up on it and promote the hell out of it whether it has anything to do with Perry or not.

Look at this: top ten markets for higher agent income. Number one,  Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Wash. OK, no shocker that agents here do well, really well. They average 5.1 sales per agent in a year for an annual average sales volume of $1.54 million. Median sales prices are $290,000 as Seattle etc. homes are not so cheap. But look at market number two: Arlington/Fort Worth, Texas: 8.3 sales per agent for annual sales volume of $1.17 million. That’s on lower priced homes, too, like $144,000 ish a pop. What made me blink was that of this top ten list, FOUR markets are in Texas. Next Lone Star stud was San Antonio-New Braunfels, 4.3 sales per agent for annual volume of $675,833 on homes that average $158,163. Next up is Dallas-Irving-Plano, at 3.7 sales per Realtor with annual sales volume of $635,661 on homes that average $175,000. And there is one more Texas market where agents do well — yep, that’s Austin-Round-Rock-San Marcos with 3.2 sales per Realtor, $611,660 annual sales volume on average home prices of about $203,125.

In case you don’t click over to the source story, the other markets were Pittsburg, Nashville, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Denver and of course Seattle, which I mentioned first. So basically, Texas and the rest of the non-sinking world.

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Candy Evans, founder and publisher of CandysDirt.com, is one of the nation’s leading real estate reporters.

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