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WHAT IS YOUR HOUSE REALLY WORTH… NOW?

Dallas-Fort Worth real estate is hot again. We rank the best areas, from the proven markets to the up-and-coming neighborhoods you may not have heard of-yet.
By D Magazine |

IN THE GO-GO WORLD OF HIGH-END RESIDENTIAL REAL estate, Carolyn Shamis is beside herself.

As in the 1980s, she’s working 14 hours a day, seven days a week selling high-end condos and mansions. But she’s not as tired as she was eking out deals after the Texas real-estate crash. Not long ago Shamis watched deals wither when lenders and some buyers were too nervous to sign the dotted line.

This May she closed sales totaling $7 million.

“Now you can feel the difference,” Shamis gushes into a cell phone as she drives between closings. “It’s a happy time. You can’t sit down long enough before you’re writing a contract.”

The residential real-estate market in Dallas is back, from the condos in Oak Lawn, to showcase homes in the Park Cities and North Dallas, to historic houses in steadfast East Dallas near White Rock Lake, Meanwhile, strong demand continues in the northern tier of mushrooming suburbs. Everywhere, it seems, property is trading and prices are rising for the first time in a decade.

Thanks to strong local and national economies, demand is great for existing homes and brand-new megahouses.

Part of what’s happening is that after a decade-long exodus to the suburbs, where cookie-cutter developments proliferated, buyers are looking in Dallas again. Some want to live closer to jobs downtown, so condominiums in the Turtle Creek and Oak Lawn areas are in demand, as are houses in Hollywood Heights. Lake Highlands, the M Streets and Lakewood. Real-estate agents say they often don’t have enough houses in these areas to show potential buyers-houses in Lakewood sell almost twice as fast as those in Highland Park-and that offers come quickly in established residential areas near shopping, restaurants and cultural activities.

Meanwhile, the housing boom extends far beyond the borders of Dallas, where construction continues at a steady pace, especially in North Piano and the surrounding area and suburbs near Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

All of this good news may hark back to the early ’80s when oil and real-estate wealth fueled a legendary boom, but now real-estate brokers say things are different. A key difference is that today’s market is driven more by cash than credit. Those who buy often put down huge chunks of cash, because the era of 100 percent financing ended when the Texas banking industry went south.

The strong economy is not all that is driving the surge in demand for housing: homeowners’ changing needs are also a factor. Some empty-nesters sell out to move to smaller homes that better fit their lifestyle, while others trade up to custom dream houses. A few want to split time between urban condos and rural retreats.

Real-estate agents see demand for urban housing as a sign that the Dallas market is maturing and stabilizing after recent upheaval. Eight $260,000 condos under construction in the 4100 block of Travis are already under contract.

According to Ebby Halliday Acers, owner of Ebby Halliday Realtors, the boom is bringing in more business than at any time in recent memory. Her company is listing the most sales ever in its 52 years, is opening two new offices in Frisco and McKinney and is expanding offices in Southlake, Arlington and the Las Colinas area of Irving. As of mid-June, her firm had sold 8,500 houses all over the Dallas-Fort Worth area, breaking the record from last year-three months before the end of the fiscal year.

Acers points out, too, that low interest rates are keeping home ownership affordable across a broad spectrum of price ranges. But her philosophy on the market’s recent buoyancy best sums up the real-estate boom: “They say every man and woman has a house inside their head. When they get rich, they put it on paper and start building.”-Dairell Preston



Fun Fact : Many of the charming old homesaround town with steep-pitched roofs and inviting front porches were the tract houses of the 1920s, when it was popular to select a house from a catalog and hire a carpenter to build it by the book.

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