Dallas Real Estate 2015: Hearting Ebby Forever, Allie Beth Sells to the Oracle of Omaha, & Briggs Freeman Finally Opens Fort Worth
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2015 was probably the biggest year in Dallas/Fort Worth real estate history, and it was not entirely because of the steroidal market. While the first six months were such a frenzy of sales activity that agents could barely cash commission checks, the news of Billion Dollar Mile with Toyota relocating it’s California headquarters to Plano in the Nebraska Furniture Mart/Dallas Cowboys corridor pumped up Plano, Frisco and McKinney sales like nothing we could fathom. The area still remains the hot center of real estate transactions.
More than 90,000 preowned homes were sold by real estate agents in DFW in 2015. Median home sales prices are at an all-time high of more than $200,000 here, which is 20 percent above where they were at the market peak in 2007. Due to a shortage of labor since that recession, the homebuilding biz is lagging pre-recession days. Labor squeeze plus rising material prices have made building costs higher than ever. Still, Dallas home builders will start about 28,000 houses, a little more than half the 50,000 plus houses the industry produced here before the Great Recession.
Come fall, we lost our beloved Ebby Halliday Acers, but we will never, ever, ever forget her.
Dear Ebby Family, It is with great sadness that we write to inform you that Ebby, our beloved founder, passed away last night. She died peacefully at home from natural causes. While we certainly grieve the loss of Ebby, we celebrate a long life well lived. Each of us who had the good fortune of knowing Ebby has been touched by the grace, fortitude and compassion with which she lived her life. As you know, Ebby had a very simple saying that she lived by, ‘Do something for someone every day.’ That small bit of wisdom served Ebby very, very well and she left the world a better place than she found it. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to one of the causes Ebby was most passionate about: Ebby’s Place at the YW, The Ebby House at Juliette Fowler Communities, Happy Hill Farm and Academy, or the charity of your choice. We will share information on how to make donations soon. Memorial service details will be forthcoming. Mary Frances and Ron.
“Ebby was the first First Lady of Dallas,“spending much time at her own White House, the one we know so well at the corner of Northwest Highway and Preston.”
If Ebby’s death did not make us look in the mirror and see real estate time marching on, it was the surprise sale of Allie Beth Allman & Associates, Dallas agent/broker to the stars and a former President, to the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet’s HomeServices of America, Inc. a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. The Omaha-based and fast-growing real estate company snapped up Allman’ $1.5 billion in sales in early November, promising agents nothing would change except for a drop sign with Berkshire Hathaway’s name, maybe more agent support and expansion.
Sidenote: I am writing this from Austin, where Concierge Auction founder and CEO Chad Roffers told me that Allie Beth Allman is not just one of the sharpest real estate minds he has ever known, she is also one of the sharpest women!
All the while Allie Beth and Pierce were negotiating with Warren Buffett, her $100 million listing on Walnut Hill Lane, Tom Hick’s Walnut Place, was being sized up by Dallas billionaire Andy Beal, or so saith Steve Brown. (We are still watching that one, and we think he’s right! Meantime the Hicks are looking at the Ritz Residences and Museum Tower, and I learned in Austin they still have their place in LaJolla.)
According to my sources, Allie Beth probably sold her company for $7.8 to $10 million. HomeServices contacted the luxury boutique firm and Allie Beth says the offer was too tempting to say no to. The announcement was made at the agents’ November agent appreciation lunch at the Dallas Country Club. Allie Beth is the agent to the stars of Dallas: former president George W. and Laura Bush, Tom Hicks (who moved his $100 million Crespi estate to her and David Nichols this March after Doug Newby had it listed), Troy Aikman, the estate of Trammell Crow, John Amend and his $20 million Mt. Vernon. She is even marketing the Greenbrier’s Oakhurst vacation home residences for West Virginia’s Jim Justice, owner of The Greenbrier. Not bad for a gal from Graham, Texas near Possum Kingdom Lake (where Pierce and Allie Beth are also selling an amazing lake home at Hell’s Gate) who got her start in real estate by managing some apartments as a new young bride for “something to do”. We did a profile on Allie Beth Allman in 2013. 
After years of fighting to expand his real estate brand, Robbie Briggs opened a mega real estate office in Fort Worth,announcing his Cow Town presence not just with a bang but a BOOM. Three smaller brokerages joined the Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Real Estate Fort Worth office — Brants Realtors and Mira Vista Realtors, representing decades of classic market knowledge in Fort Worth. A trio of high performing women agents known as the Bloom Group also joined the Briggs Fort Worth expansion. Crucial to that office is wonder agent John Zimmerman.
Sidenote: we have started covering the Fort Worth market with at least a weekly frequency this year, from the keen real estate eye of interior designer Eric Prokesh.
There were more fabulous stories, too: Preston Center became a constant battleground, from Luke Crosland’s now defunct Highland House to Transwestern’s battle to build a luxury high rise residential apartment Behind the Pink Wall, which finally passed and found City Council approval. Construction begins this year.
Crosland gave up on changing the Doctor’s Building on Westchester into Highland House, and sold it to Leland Burke.
Trammell Crow tried to put a skywalk to the top of the Preston Center parking garage on level 2 in Preston Center for a potential grocery client. And Jennifer Staubach Gate’s Task Force continues to try and figure out what to do with Northwest Highway.
Oh yes: Preston Hollow Village opened in early 2105, a major change for a weedy field at Central and Walnut Hill that had been vacant for years.
There were many fabulous residential real estate sales in 2015 we shall talk about later. Meantime, this conference gal needs to grab some zzz’s.
