Thanks, Tom, With a Capital “T”: Hicks’ Crespi Estate Really Spotlights Dallas Luxury Real Estate

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Singapore mansionThis story in TIME ran mid-January,

“An exclusive Dallas mansion has become the most expensive property for sale in the U.S., with a whopping $135 million price tag. The Crespi-Hicks Estate boasts a five-story main residence, three-story pool house and two-story guesthouse, altogether offering 42,500 sq. ft. of living space across 25 acres of manicured land.”

Dallas agent Doug Newby has done a marvelous job of promoting the Hicks home on Walnut Hill Lane by pure, sheer PR. The home is NOT listed in MLS because, he says, the owners (naturally) want privacy and can you imagine the lookey-loos who would traipse through the Crespi Estate? Still, I fail to see how this guards the privacy of the Hicks family when Doug talks about the home on The Huffington Post. In any case, the home and it’s hefty price tag are drawing more eyes to Dallas real estate market and those eyes are blinking twice!

My mother told me this: someone else will always be prettier and richer than you. The same is true in real estate. Lookie here: in Singapore, there is a house on the market for $300 million pounds (or $242 million US dollars). Singapore is Asia’s most expensive housing market, after Hong Kong. The 85,000-square-foot site is on an elevated lot at 33 Nassim Road, near the city’s Botanic Gardens. It includes a two-story home, a swimming pool and tennis court, and neighbors include the British high commissioner and the Japan and Russian embassies. The site could also be sold as lots, to yield a total of five homes. Doug told Bloomberg it’s all about the cost of dirt:

“The price is 79 percent higher than the $135 million listing for the Crespi-Hicks Estate in Dallas, according to broker Douglas Newby, which is marketing the property. The home on the 25-acre site, owned by former Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks, is touted as the most expensive property for sale in the U.S., according to a report by Time Magazine on Jan. 31. “The primary value of a property is based on the land value,” Newby said in a phone interview yesterday. For the Singapore property, “if the land is worth $150 million to $200 million, then this might be a legitimate buy.”

Doug is pretty keen on the Hicks’ dirt being valued at an easy $2 million per acre, this in the honeypot of Preston Hollow. Of course, Della Lively always told me that when you have these huge parcels, you do not count each acre the same — the first acre is always the highest. In any case, thanks to Tom for once again putting our real estate on the international map, and remember: there is always a more expensive house (or bauble)  just around the corner or other side of the world. You know what’s important? Be happy with what you have!

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

2 Comments

  1. […] and written about in many regions from the Bloomberg Bureau in Singapore, which real estate blogger Candice Evans impressively brought to the attention of her readers, to the Tribune de Genève newspaper in the […]

  2. […] and written about in many regions from the Bloomberg Bureau in Singapore, which real estate blogger Candice Evans impressively brought to the attention of her readers, to the Tribune de Genève newspaper in the […]

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