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Should You Really Shop On-Line Like Kate Middleton and Prince William For A House In Dallas, Texas?

Everyone’s doing it — even Kate and Will.Funny that I was thinking about shopping on line for homes while at Tuesday’s foreclosure auction. What spurred my thoughts? The heat, perhaps, but also the blind-ness of it all. As I perused the foreclosure lists in other people’s hands (one of these days I’ll pony up for a list of my own) I thought gee, sounds like a good zip code but what if this house backs up to power lines or Walnut Hill Lane? Then the “aha” moment: this is almost like shopping for a house on-line. Sure, we see glossy photos and drool over the house porn, but clever folks doctor those photos and spin the copy. (I even offer you tips to do so!) Face it: even when you kick the tires with the toes of your stilettos, you miss a lot. Like the time I bought a home and thought I had scrutinized every inch. Oh no. I am cleaning the floor in a closet one day and guess what I find? A hole right down to the crawl space, an open underground tunnel for rats and other critters.

Was that the home where a snake greeted me one morning?

Ilyce Glink has a great overall take on this, but here’s what I suggest you look out for in Texas: (more…)

Serious Selling: Lance Armstrong’s Dripping Springs Dropping Price

Reduced to $10.5 million from $12 million, this amazing property includes almost 450 acres with water views of the Perdenales River and 360 degree views of  the Texas Hill Country skyline. The home has over 4200 square feet, five bedrooms, five baths, guest house, recreation building, and over seven private hike and bike trails. With a 1.5 million price reduction, sounds like new dad Lance is dead serious about selling. (Thanks to Zillow’s Diane Tuman for the lead!)

Pre Tax Day House Porn: Here Are The Deductions You’ve Been Scouting

Seriously, trying to get financial info together and what do I do, surf the web looking for House Porn! I cannot help myself — look at this virile lake house, just what the Doctor would have ordered for a holiday weekend family get together. (Add a few piles of clothes, dog toys, magazines and mail to this pristine, clean great room!) I am loving the interiors and the exteriors, I am hoping we have a nice bug system installed to keep away those microscopic carnivores. I am loving the square footage of 2431: three bedrooms, two and a half baths so we don’t get too many visitors (and can pack up, leave her while we jet to Europe). Built by an architect, located on Lake Cypress Springs (the Pebble Beach equivalent to Dallas, east of Sulphur Springs) complete with country club, marina, just two hours east of Dallas. We visited friends who are right on the lake this summer in the heat of July and loved those bubbling little cool springs.  Best news of all: $900,000. Perfect for last-minute deductions.

House Porn: Turtle Lake, Not Creek

Right in your own backyard at 5815 Bent Trail.

Breaking Real estate Agent News: Rhodes Joins DPM

Hot hot hot: super broker Tom Rhodes has joined forces with Dave Perry-Miller, an Ebby Halliday Company, in DPM’s Highland Park office. Tom is a mega- mega producer and this move means Ebby can start clocking more zeroes behind those Highland Park sales figures. More — developing. Wowsers.

Friday House Porn: Lance Armstrong Looking Sexy In Dripping Springs

Just a few miles down 281 from us, and Mama has all the deets.

Holiday House Porn: Over The River, Through Woods, To Organic Rice Farm We Go

Do you see what my kitchen table looks like with all the boys at home? Fort Hood in candy-cane getup. To keep my sanity, I need a place where these boys can go play Dick Cheney. After church on Christmas Eve, I settled down with a glass of bubbly, warm and toasty in cashmere, to peruse the kind of house porn I crave during these times: ranch properties. Acres and acres of ponds, tanks, deer, ducks, geese, pigs and enough coyote to keep Sarah Palin frocked through her next campaign. Found some good ones, too, like Turkey Creek Organic Rice Farm — 1633 acres in Wharton County raising organic rice! Holiday dinner – done! Boasting $100,000 annual income from the land plus a three-bedroom, two-bath cedar lodge. “Trophy Deer and wild hogs”:  our African heads will finally have a home.  Where do I sign? Where is Wharton County?

The Legacy of George W. Bush: A BBC Perspective

Meet Neal Razzell, senior broadcast producer for the BBC World Service Radio. As I am typing, he is likely boarding a plane at DFW heading back to the U.K. to complete a BBC documentary on the legacy of our President and current world leader, George W. Bush. A seasoned journalist, Neal has been with World Service Radio for six years where he worked as a Washington producer. He also produced a daily news program. But for the last year and half, Neal has been producing radio documentaries, traveling far and wide.

Neal contacted me when he read about the Bush home purchase on this blog, and made plans to fly to Dallas and check out the President’s home turf. He asked me if I would spend some time with him, show him the new Bush digs, and Dallas homes in general. If you know anything about me, I jumped at the chance and spent about two delightful hours showing off Dallas homes December 20. His documentary will run January 19, Bush’s last day in office, and we hope to have a link on Dallas Dirt. It will be translated into 30 languages and beamed just about everywhere. I about choked on my peach mango iced tea with Neal this morning at Celebrity Cafe at Preston Royal when I learned of the world dignitaries he’s canvassed for reflections: the Dalai Lama, Hamid Karzie, Jacob Zuma, Desmond Tutu, Sherry Blair, Gordon Brown. He asked producers at all BBC bureaus to tack on questions about the Bush legacy on all interviews with high profile leaders.

His colleague, Justin Webb, BBC Washington correspondent, interviewed former Bush chief of staff Andrew Card. But Neal wanted to come to Dallas to poke Bush roots for himself, kick the tires in Crawford as well as get an inkling of where the President will soon be putting up his boots. Neal spent Sunday in Crawford, then returned to Dallas to interview future Bush neighbors on Daria Place. It’s always fun to interview a journalist, give us a taste of our own poison pen — or in this case, microphone. So I had to ask…

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National Real Estate News & Gloom: 1968 Pricing?

And as I mentioned previously, the NAR wants the government to spend $50 billion to subsidize lower mortgage rates, says that doing so would stimulate about 500,000 more home sales. This request came pre-Citibank bail. By the way Citibank, I think, ought to offer us all 0% interest on our credit cards as a means of saying “thank you, dear taxpayer.”

Cattle Baron’s???

Found these business cards on the coffee table at the Honey-Tonk, right across from the mechanical bull.

Who All Was At Cattle Baron’s?

Texas Sales: August Numbers In

The Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University reports 22, 587 homes were sold in Texas in August, 18% less than August 2007. The median price dropped less than one percent (0.7%) and the average time on market was seven months. Get this: median prices actually INCREASED in Bryan/College Station, San Antonio (my property was on the market for 60 days, I leased), Houston, Victoria, Lubbock and Marshall. Nationally, Case-Shiller, which is owned by Standard and Poors, reported a 16% drop in prices from July 2007 but singled out Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver and Minneapolis for “positive (or flat) returns”. Jump for RECON’s numbers: 

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Contractor Shortage In Dallas?

Over on Frontburner, Tim Rogers speculates on the forthcoming gas shortage created by Ike. Phooey. What’s coming is a severe CONTRACTOR shortage. I was in San Antonio and then Johnson City over the weekend. All the San Antonio contractors are filling their trucks and heading to Houston to repair storm damaged buildings, giddy with delight that insurance companies will be writing the checks. A Houston evacuee who spent the week in Johnson City (her home has no power) told me that caravans of trucks have been heading to Houston from San Antonio and Austin:Convoy. It won’t be long before the Dallas subs catch the drift and venture south, leaving no one here to repair our roofs, commodes or finish framing.

My New Baby Calf

Not really, of course, because Mom is very protective and won’t let me near her though I offered to babysit. This angel is about 4 days old and the newest arrival at The Preserve at Walnut Springs.