Just talked to Robbie Briggs about the Williams Trew deal with Sotheby’s. Briggs-Freeman owns the Sotheby’s franchise for Dallas and Collin Counties, NOT Tarrant. William Trew got the Sotheby’s application through likely because they are a local firm, he says, and Sothebys likes strong local, upscale brokers. But, he said, that is not going to stop Briggs Freeman from selling real estate in Fort Worth. Continue reading →

Oh the battle for the high end real estate dollar is getting heated up in our sister city to the west, Fort Worth. Williams Trew, a high end Fort Worth residential real estate firm, is becoming an affiliate of Sotheby’s International beginning May 1. The company will be re-named Williams Trew Sotheby’s International Realty, the companies said officially Thursday. Continue reading →

Social. Mobile. Tech. Video. Gadgets. Blogs. If you are in real estate, they can make or break your career. If you are just getting in, bless you, you’d better know what they all are.
And if you are too cheap to pay the $49 fee, you can always play our “Whose The Agent Contest” to win a free ticket to Dallas Agent ReBoot. See ad to the right and click, click away to register.

First of all, I’m cheating, but I can because I live in Dallas. It’s Thursday $300K and this home is $400K, but go ahead, make an offer. The price has already been lowered by $30K and DCAD has it appraised at $366K, so there! Talk about a great little woodsy, tucked away location… 6520 Linden is it. This home is being marketed as a lot, which is why they are not showing the interiors. But look at that lot! It’s on the private, dead end of a street off Preston Crest north of Forest, still south of LBJ. You have a creek on the west side and in the backyard and about .5 of an acre to play with. Trees, trees everywhere! Tear down, start from scratch, or why not gut and remodel this 2200 plus square footer with three bedrooms, two baths built in 1955, (remodeled in 1980)? Great bones for a soaring mid century. This is a home for someone with VISION! Walkable, too: Cooper Aerobics is just one-half mile away.

Or Mini Champs. McMansion Champs –McChamps! This could be why Alan Goldfield has decided to auction off the over the top dream chateau with the Chanel Boutique-replica closet etc. etc. that he has been trying to sell for almost ten years up there in Hictory Creek. A few weeks ago I found out that a chunk of Goldfield properties in Hickory Creek surrounding Champs were sold to Centurion American Development. As in the man I call Saint Stoneleigh,  Mehrdad Moayedi, head of Carrollton-based property developer and investor Centurion American Development Group, who paid $4.55 million for the Stoneleigh Hotel.

We skidded in at Number 9, but no wonder we love big bedrooms so darn much! Dallas still made it into the Top Ten! Washington, D.C. made the tip top of the list of U.S. cities with the most members per capita at Ashley Madison, that notorious adult dating web site for married people who like to, well, cheat. The website says it has around 13 million members in 17 countries around the world; and here’s a shocker: AM membership spiked by a whopping 977 percent on February 15. Guess wives go out and cheat on husbands when they don’t like their Valentines Day gift, which is why I just buy my own! Continue reading →

The winner gets a ticket to next Wednesday’s Inman Agent reBoot… 6 hours of learning fun and of course, gossip!

Hint: Joan Eleazer with Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s was first and, quite possibly, the last agent. Hey, be happy I didn’t ask for how much all these agents spent in marketing…

Do you sell or invest in real estate? Need a content strategy that sells? Is your web site stuck in no man’s land? Is real estate moving to the web and leaving you behind the wheel of your Mercedes?

As I told you either late last night (I blog into the wee hours) or early this morning, Champ D’Or, arguably the most significant piece of real estate on the market in the greater Dallas area, will be sold at auction March 30. It has been on the market for ten years. The auction will be conducted by a New York City-based house, Concierge Auctions, right here in the Lone Star State, AT Champ D’Or. Do not think this will be a circus: only qualified buyers will be allowed in the gates. I pride myself in giving you news before it is news, but the press release is not yet written, though Rubenstein Public Relations  will be handling PR, and the website for Champ is under creation as we speak. So all I can tell you at this point is that you can see the property live on the Concierge site next Thursday. While you are at it, check out the other goodies Concierge has to offer, including one of my favorite of all ski spots, Spanish Peaks at Big Sky Montana. I cried when I heard that Spanish Peaks had filed Chapter 7, but Concierge is auctioning off some of the famed ski resort’s glorious residences. (Tune into SecondShelters.com soon for more on that bankruptcy.)  Oh, Concierge is also auctioning a home at the venerable Yellowstone Club, too.

This photo is so dark, but hopefully you can see all the stuff loaded in the front yard of 2013 Annabel Lane in Flower Mound  last night when the movers yanked everything out of the home after the new owner, who bought the home out of bankruptcy, hired a mover to clear it. The family had apparently been living in the home for about six months, and the wife told KXAS she had no idea who owned the house because her husband handled all the paperwork:

I have been sitting (or rather, skiing) on this news for about a week now, verifying. Listing agent Joan Eleazer with Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s has confirmed that Champ D’Or, the 48,000 square foot Turbeville Road mansion up in Hickory Creek, near Denton, French baroque castle meets Plano McMansion dream chateau, clearly the most outrageous home in Dallas, or rather, North Texas, will be auctioned off March 30.

Used to be you couldn’t get people IN houses, now you can’t get them OUT! I got a call from folks up in Flower Mound that another house squatter has been told to get out of a luxury home located at 2013 Annabel in Flower Mound, this one about two miles south of the neighborhood where James Robinson squatted for more than six months. Continue reading →

I love Dallas real estate because only $215,000 buys you this gorgeous, super clean ranch style brick home in Richardson ISD in Country Forest. 10250 Chimney Hill is pristine and spotlessly clean for the OCD in you and young engineers will appreciate all the replacements, from roof to gutters and even attic vents, air conditioning new last July when we all were sweltering. The 1978 interiors have new paint, carpet, even mini-blinds as well as pretty light fixtures. You get a whopping 2626 square feet with three bedrooms, THREE BATHS (I kid you not) and a sprinkler system to keep the grass green, mature trees lush. The home features many built-ins so a young family doens’t have to charge their life away at IKEA. And I’m pretty bullish on Richardson schools: my nieces and nephews attended Richardson schools and one went to Harvard, another Wellesly Wellesly, and the one who went to Duke is producing a movie now with Tim Tom Hanks in L.A. Not too shabby! (PS: Obviously I am NOT a product of RISD… maybe I would have learned to type. And spell!)

Why is everyone so surprised over energy billionaire Kelcy Warren buying the naming rights to Woodall Rogers Park? It’s not like I haven’t been telling you this is a man who REALLY likes dirt. On February 18, Cheryl Hall at the Dallas Morning News had a dandy exclusive story about Warren’s (rumored) $10 million purchase of the naming rights to Woodall Rogers Park, our venerable 5.2 acre greenbelt park over the freeway that will frost the Arts District in green. He is naming it after his nine year old son, Klyde, who will have to intern there until he’s 21. Cool story, but it’s not as if I haven’t been telling you for years that Kelcy Warren is a cool, self-made man who likes him some real estate and also, apparently, music. While Warren did not make many changes to the Cole Smith designed home of Joyce and Larry Lacerte at 5323 Park Lane he bought in June 2009 for about $29 million, he did add a private, secret music studio hidden off a shoe rack in the spacious master closet. It is designed to be soundproof and that closet is the size of most apartments. Continue reading →

I figure that once you leave the White House, you might be a little weary of pomp, circumstance and overdosing on traditional. Laura Bush is said to vastly prefer clean lines in her home decor, I guess that’s what all that Williamsburg cherry ball and claw does to you after eight years! So why not make your NEXT White House a striking, clean as a whistle contemporary like this uber mod baby by Lionel Morrison, he of the $9.75 million  Northaven home design fame (off the market, currently), One Arts Plaza, among many, many others. 3215 Princeton boasts three bedrooms, three and a half baths in 3680 square feet with excellent natural light, fourteen-foot ceilings, limestone walls, art lighting, built-ins, rich, warm hued hardwoods and a wall of magnificent floor to ceiling windows (with retractable electronic shades) that overlook a lap pool, picturesque fountain and outdoor fireplace. Priced at $2.4 million. The only problem I can see is the home’s address on Princeton Avenue. Say what? I’m not saying Princeton is NOT one of the most prestigious addys in town, but most recent presidents have hailed from Yale and Harvard.

OK, here is another home you absolutely have to see while it’s open Sunday February 19 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. This home, once owned by interior designer extraordinaire Laura Hunts’ parents (and has her signature design all over it!) is Unit 6B at the venerable Vendome on Turtle Creek. It’s 3869 glorious square feet with everything you will ever want or need in a sky home, from a private elevator entrance with vestibule entrance to three bedrooms (one is a duo purpose office) to space for 3 cars in the valet garage. Talk about values, we are talking $381.24 a square foot. This home will also be one of my up coming House Stories: Inside the Most Beautiful Homes in Dallas. Get by that open house Sunday but if you cannot, stay tuned!

I’m in Park City, Utah, checking out some amazing second home bargains for SecondShelters.com and yes, testing the slopes. (Big snowfall tonight!) But if you are in Dallas this weekend, you can get out of town without ever paying the tolltag fee at DFW. Just check out the amazing Open House at 8545 Midway: a home on Midway that is really NOT on Midway. It is so beautiful I have the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing about it. You know how Midway meanders down towards Lovers Lane in Bluffview and then becomes, well, Bluffview (a.k.a.the real Midway?) This Midway is a little off-shoot of Midway that becomes Capps and really should be called Little Midway Enclave. It’s a private, quiet lane and holds some amazing homes, including this one that is seriously orgasmic! If you think I’m full of it, just check out the July/August issue of Verandah Magazine where the home was featured. Quietly commanding, 8545 is more than 9000 square feet on a delicious 1.26 hilly acre lot, a modernist interpretation of a Spanish colonial home designed with meticulous, delicious attention to detail. You simply must see the kitchen with morning room and second catering kitchen. In fact, this home has inspired me to bring you a comprehensive weekly house story on CandysDirt.com that will go beyond the listing info and dirt. Whenever I find a knock-out house on the market, I’m going to spend a little more time on it, interview the designers and builders. It is my mantra that every home has a story, some just take longer to tell!

“Location, location, location! This is one of the few places in Dallas with so much within walking distance!” said Jim Olvera, photographer extraordinaire.

Say what?

Olvera is a gentleman who has only lived in the most tasteful neighborhoods in Dallas and calls it like it is. He now lives one block south of our Friday $500K, 6414 Northwood. I mean, this IS Preston Hollow, known for those leafy, patrician acreages and lawns, and a certain former President. Who walks here unless the Jag has sprouted legs? Still, maybe there’s a pocket even Candy hasn’t uncovered?

Here’s another project for you to steal down in Kessler Woods: $304,200, reduced from $319,000. This house SOLD for $435,000 back in 2007. Great bones and a view that is more San Fran than Dallas. Hill top privacy with wrap around balcony and tree top views on  an elevated .43 acre lot. Great Chef’s kitchen with a Viking commercial range, custom stainless and granite countertops, designer cabinetry and built-in internet video screen. Huge master suite with private access to the back yard pool! About that Black is Black master bath — adios baby. I go in there and all I hear is the Stones’ “Black is Black” in my head. I would rip it all out and go clean white Carrera marble. More than 2400 sq.ft. with three bedrooms, two baths including an outdoor entertainment area, with serene Japanese garden and Koi Pond. Which you will need with all that damn red in the house.

Dear Tax Doctor: From reading the recent post, the one about the guy building a compound on Walnut Hill Lane, it seems that you can get a tax break from living on a busy street. Someone else also told me this recently. We want to lower our property tax burden and get a smaller house. I am told to buy one on a busy street (our kids are grown) to keep the property taxes down, but realize we may not see great appreciation in that busy of a location location. Is this true? How much can you save by buying on a busy, hustle bustle street? Thanks! – Traffic Cone Lover