Auctions, Auctions Everywhere: The Champ, Eagle Mountain Lake Estate, and the Home of the Crystal Heiress

Yes, there are a proliferation of fabulous real estate auctions coming up, including our very own CandysDirt.com Staff Party TONIGHT in Vaquero, at the 8,923 square foot estate of Swarovski heiress Vanessa Swarovski. Vanessa was formerly married to MLB player Jorge Piedra, but she got the house. Her 1.7-acre estate has six-bedrooms and nine-bathrooms at 2208 Vaquero Estates Blvd. in Westlake. The home, exquisite and oh so polished, will be sold at an absolute auction, without reserve, to the highest bidder on June 30. (CandysDirt.com will have full coverage.) This is the very first home to be auctioned in Vaquero, home to countless sports stars and celebrities, including Glenn Beck who once leased 2208 Vaquero Estates Blvd when he was house hunting in North Texas. This home, in fact, led him to buy his current home (really two lots) from golfer Brandt Jobe, one inside Vaquero, one outside. I dare not tell you where.

Vanessa is, of course, heiress to the famed Austrian crystal company, Swarovski. The auction is being conducted by Florida-based Elite Auctions, one of the nation’s fastest growing real estate auction companies. In fact, we are working on an update to our original Real Estate Auctions 101. Do come tonight, and do RSVP.

Champs d’Or is up for auction again. and so is Mariposa del Lago!

Champs is the Hickory Creek, Texas estate that has been written about more than any other home in North Texas. Why? Well, probably because, when it was built 15 years ago, the home was an anomaly of the market. We were not used to 48,000 square foot homes back then.

Now, that’s the billionaire norm.

And when Champ was built, not much was around it. It was literally in the middle of “gold fields”.

“Fields of Gold,” is being sold without reserve at an auction on June 28th, but agents can preview it Wednesday Thursday June 15 at a special agent luncheon right in the glittering grand dining room! That’s Thursday! There is limited seating on a bus departing Regions Bank 16600 North Dallas Tollway  at 11 am SHARP, then departing Champ d’Or at 1 pm to get back to North Dallas. Email [email protected] if you want seat on the bus. You must reserve a seat to ride!

By the way, we are having a contest later to see if you can name all the agents who have had tried their hand listing Champ d’Or. 

Champ d’Or sits on about 40 acres of land at 1851 Turbeville Road in Hickory Creek in Denton County, 45 minutes north of Dallas. It has a 1.5-acre lake on the property.

“The owner has been doing some feasibility studies in the last two years to possibly convert the property to a hospitality use or other type of commercial property,” said Kyle Crews of Allie Beth Allman and Associates.

The estate is selling without reserve, or to the highest bidder. Concierge Auctions has a suggested opening bid of $5.5 million to $10 million. How about that! The Champ was once listed for as much as $70 million!

Then there is Mariposa del Lago, or “Butterfly of the Lake,” the family getaway for the Goff family, as in John Goff, founder of Fort Worth-based Crescent Real Estate Holdings. This is a place you have to see, and someone is going to pick up the bargain of the century in Fort Worth come June 28. The sale is part of a larger curated auction in Shanghai designed to attract a bigger global buying pool, said Ethan Shadden, a project sales manager at Austin-based Concierge Auctions. 

The home was re-created by Richard Drummond Davis as a 6,500-square-foot main house, with double-sided, stacked-stone fireplace, formal dining room with wet bar, library with a second-floor fireplace, a temperature-controlled wine room and a gourmet kitchen. The house also includes a recreation area and arcade. The maser bath is one of the best I have ever seen.

The estate also offers a Moroccan-inspired, 1,500-square-foot guest cabana with a lower-level bunk room. There is a two-story boat dock and a secondary grill and bar for entertaining guests on Eagle Mountain Lake, 15 miles northwest of Fort Worth and a lot of fun.

The property also includes a pool with stone spa cascades, a six-hole putting and pitching green, tennis court, basketball court and a playground. That putting green is famed for the spot where Goff sold his company to Morgan Stanley for $6.5 billion in 2007. He later bought it back for pennies on the dollar. Mariposa del Lago also includes an outdoor kitchen with grill, barbecue pit and smoker and pizza oven next to a dining balcony. I mean, you can never have enough grills! The Goffs claim to have stuffed $10 million into this property, and I believe it. First listed for $8.9 with ABA’s Kyle Crews, then $5.9 with Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s John Zimmerman, this beautiful retreat is being auctioned on June 28.