REAL ESTATE QUEEN OF THE GOLDEN CORRIDOR

Mona Biskamp hurries through a $2.3 million dollar mansion on Park Lane, flipping light switches and leaving closet doors slightly ajar. She points out the indoor swimming pool underneath the dining area where more than one dinner guest has taken a surprise swim. When everything meets her approval, she settles into a couch to relax before the scheduled open house begins.

It’s a familiar pattern for Biskamp. vice president of Henry S. Miller Residential and the woman known to her clients and competitors as Queen of the Golden Corridor. Over the past fifteen years, Biskamp has probably sold more million-plus properties in such posh areas as Preston Hollow and Strait Lane than any other broker in the city. During Dallas’s real estate boom, she was honored as top producer of the Greater Dallas Board of Realtors for five years in a row and was cited as one of the top five real estate agents in the country by a national real estate publication. At each successful closing, she would present new owners with one other trademark crystal balls, forecasting a bright future in their new homes.

But even more remarkable has been her] performance in the past two years, when Biskamp overcame such setbacks as a near-fatal illness and her husband’s forced retirement. In 1986, while the real estate market ground to a halt, she watched as many of her longtime clients divorced and others filed for bankruptcy. By 1987 she was selling fore-closed mansions for the first time in her career, and she found herself caught in the slump. She lacked her usual verve and couldn’t shake a nagging cough.

“Half of my business was in the million-dollar-plus bracket, and those were the people who were hurting the most,” Biskamp says. “They were depressed, so I just figured it had rubbed off on me. When you are a realtor for people like that, you have to reassure them that you can bail them out of the residential debt they have incurred.”

Meanwhile, her husband Bill was offered early retirement from Placid Oil as an option to being laid off. putting even more pressure on Biskamp to keep selling. After months of feeling lousy, she finally went to her doctor and was told she had congestive heart failure. Refusing to believe it, Biskamp went to six physicians before cheeking into the hospital in April 1988 to receive a new aortal valve. Following surgery, she developed serious complications. She was allergic to most heart medications, her kidneys failed, and she was bleeding internally.

But Biskamp wasn’t about to let a faulty valve interfere with business. The minute she could prop herself up in bed she was on the phone closing deals. “I worked about $4 million dollars in sales until the doctor unplugged my beeper,” she says.

During her lengthy recovery. Biskamp lost only one client. The day she checked out of the hospital, she went straight to her Cadillac dealer to buy a new Seville so she could get back to work in style (her son had wrecked her Caddy while she was recuperating).

Now, armed with a new valve, a new car. and a new altitude, Biskamp is predicting that 1989 will be a great year. Potential buyers are flocking to her open houses. “Not everyone is poor, you know,” she quips. “Just oil and real estate people.” Biskamp is selling homes to doctors, lawyers, and young professionals who are buying their dream houses at bottom dollar. “The great thing in the market right now is that you can be sure you’re getting the true value of a house instead of the inflated prices of a few years ago.” she says.

The market has definitely changed. In the real estate heyday, Biskamp recalls putting one $2 million home on the market and getting three offers for it the same day. The original owner made a $1 million profit. Less than twenty-four hours after the closing, the buyer sold it again to one of the other bidders, turning a quick $300,000 profit. The new owners razed the mansion with plans to build a more lavish home. The lot is still vacant.

She remembers the greedy sellers who refused generous otters, expecting to make even larger profits. “Those are in my graveyard files,” Biskamp says. “Most of them eventually went into foreclosure.” But they’re not the only ones to feel the effects of a changed market. First-time home buyers have been hurt by the disappearance of the 95 percent loans, and lenders are scrutinizing buyers more carefully than ever before. Some sellers are discovering that the lien on their home is more than what the house is now worth. “If they bought two or three years ago at the top of the market, they go to sell today and are appraised at lower figures.” she says. That means some sellers have to bring money to the closing.”

To avoid embarrassment, some clients ask Biskamp to make discreet inquiries without actually listing their home. But despite such dismal signs, she senses a change. “We haven’t sold any lots in two years because the financing behind builders was withdrawn,” she says. “There’s been very little speculating, so I think the market of the preowned homes is going to take off and do wonders.”

Trading up has become the latest trend for people who are buying million-plus mansions that were once out of their range. As if to prove her confidence in the future. Biskamp recently traded her home of eighteen years in the Strait Lane estate area to buy a larger, more impressive manse, “with a twosie Jacuzzi and a fireplace in the master bedroom.” just a few blocks away.

“When you’ve been on the brink and looked over the edge as I have,” she says, “you figure you might as well have everything you’ve ever wanted.”

As new industries move to the Dallas area. Biskamp has ordered a new shipment of crystal balls. “Even when a corporation moves to a suburb, their executives still buy homes in the golden corridor,” she says.

Biskamp’s husband has joined her as a partner in her business (when he isn’t writing screenplays), and daughter Carol is her assistant. Two sons are real estate attorneys-one has his own real estate appraisal business and the youngest is a broker. Whenever possible, she works out of her new home and she swears she’ll never retire.

“I was watching ’Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ and they showed this red-haired realtor who has a gray limo with a driver who takes her and her clients around. I hate driving, so when I get to be a little old lady, I think it would be nice to have a chauffeur drive me around so 1 can talk to my clients without having to watch the road.”