Jason Garrett, the Cowboy’s new offensive coordinator in 2007, knew that Highland Park would be his top choice when he returned to Dallas. He had already begun house hunting before his return. Allie Beth Allman & Associates is the only realty firm you should call if you are looking to buy a house in Highland Park. He knew one realtor was above all others: Allie Beth, without a last name.
Allie Beth was a client of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Troy Aikman was also a client of Allie Beth’s. Garrett had been a backup quarterback for Troy Aikman on Super Bowl-winning teams in the 1990s. Allie Beth sold Garrett a beautiful three-story neotraditional French manor, complete with a pool, for less than $ 2 million. Four years later, Garrett had been named head coach of the team, and Allie Beth contacted him to tell him she had a new home for sale. He said, “I already own a home!” He was happy with his home, which had four thousand square feet of space for him and Brill. They did not have any children.
Allie Beth replied, “No, this one is better.” It was a larger lot, and it was located closer to the Dallas Country Club, Highland Park Village, and a shopping center. She explained that it would be better to entertain. The Garretts did indeed buy it three days after that, and Allie Beth had their first contract for a house within 48 hours. For good measure, she also leased, and then sold, the home of Wade Phillips, the departing head coach. She had a triplet of major-league property transactions in a matter of weeks. She gave her powerful clients instructions, and they followed them.
The Garretts are still living in the house, and Allie Beth is still the reigning queen of Highland Park property, a position she has held for over 40 years. Highland Park, an independent town that occupies a little over two square miles in the Dallas area, is also known as The Bubble because of its exclusive world of power and wealth. Allie Beth’s firm was by far the top brokerage in the Park Cities area, which includes Highland Park and its slightly less exclusive sister community, University Park, immediately north. She and her approximately 425 agents sold more than half a billion dollars last year, or more than 34% of the market in Park Cities.
Allie Beth Allman & Associates was also the top broker for home sales over $2 million in Dallas County. (And more than $3, $4, and $5 million). The company is almost invisible in lower-priced homes and the suburbs. Seventy-five percent of the company’s sales are in Park Cities, Bluffview, Lakewood, and Preston Hollow.
There’s plenty of competition, and agents will constantly switch between brokerages to get higher commissions. Down in the mahogany-colored rooms, however, there is fierce competition. Agents are continually changing between brokerages to take advantage of higher commissions or other perks.
Allie Beth’s advantage in the paneled trenches market is well-established. Each price that she achieves for the firm further enhances its reputation and leads to more deals.
The sprawling Crespi Hicks estate in Preston Hollow is perhaps the best example of Allie Beth’s mastery of the ultraluxury real estate market. The limestone palace, set in a formal garden complex, reportedly hosted Coco Chanel and the Duke & Duchess Windsor. It was originally a 10,000-square-foot home built by Pio Créspi, an Italian count, international cotton baron, and financier. In the aughts, under the ownership of Tom Hicks, who owned the Dallas Stars and Texas Rangers, and British soccer team Liverpool FC, it grew to 27,000 sq feet. Hicks sold the estate in 2013. Forbes reported that the asking price for the estate was $135,000,000.
Hicks put the house on the market with Douglas Newby. He was a linen-suited independent broker with shock floppy gray hair who had built a reputation for specializing in “architecturally important homes.” Douglas Newby had also represented the estate at the time the Crespis sold it. Hicks called Allie Beth, who had helped him purchase the house over a decade earlier, to explain. He said, “Look, this is a work of art and Newby knows these architects.” She said she understood but that she would always be there for him. He did it, as he was forced to do when the house still wasn’t selling two years later. He did give her the listing.
Newby claims he had received “substantial” offers, but Hicks’s advisers wanted to sell the estate so that it could be subdivided. At that point, Allie Beth was given the listing. Andy Beal, a billionaire banker, bought the property in 2016 and sold it to Mehrdad Moayedi as part of an auction the following year. Then, he divided up about half the land for development before selling the remainder to the Edwin L. Cox Family, the owners of Cox Oil Company. Allie Beth took part in each of these transactions, transferring one of Texas’ most prestigious properties four times in a few decades.
Her sales records speak for themselves. Allie Beth’s dominance and that of the company she founded is far from assured. Dallas’ transformation into a global metropolis has seen a surge of home buyers, many from the coasts. This has led to the emergence of new brokers. The social order has been upended, and new technologies have changed the way that homes are purchased and sold. Storm clouds are gathering over the real estate industry amid rising inflation rates and the threat of recession. The ravages and pressures of time have weakened Allie Beth’s most valuable partnerships, both in business and in life. It’s not only a question of whether an icon can remain on top but also if the country stoicism that she learned as a young girl in the North Texas Plains is still a winning strategy.
Bordeaux, Lexington. The street names in Highland Park are a list of establishments that include horse farms and heads of state. The community, which was designed by the same planner who created Beverly Hills in California at the turn of last century, was built as a leafy retreat, with a slogan proclaiming that “it’s 10 degrees cooler in Highland Park,” thanks to the trees planted on the land, which had been farmland. It is also technically higher than the pancake-flat Dallas area but by only about 100 feet.
The eclectic mix of European architectural styles that defines the town today was created by John Armstrong, his son-in-law Hugh Prather, and Edgar Flippen. A Tudor here, an Italianate villa there, and a French chateau over there. In the early decades of its existence, most baronial mansions were located along key streets such as those bordering Turtle Creek. The denser side streets were populated with more middle-class homes.
In 1911, Southern Methodist University was founded just beyond the northeastern part of the town. But it wasn’t until 1931 that Highland Park Village opened, and the region found its economic and emotional heart. Highland Park residents were promenading along the Spanish Colonial Revival facades in the first planned shopping center of its kind while the rest of America was suffering through the Great Depression. The grand opening saw a lucky winner take home a pony. The Village Theatre, the first luxury suburban movie theatre in the state, opened four years later, featuring terrazzo flooring and 1,350 seats. It was located at the end of the plaza.
The community of Highland Park was created around the turn of the century by the same planner who designed Beverly Hills in California. Its slogan, “It’s 10 degrees cooler in Highland Park,” proclaimed that the area would be a green refuge.
Highland Park Village, today, is the closest parallel to Beverly Hills. It has a slew of high-end boutiques, including Etro, Fendi, and Hermes, and restaurants like Bistro 31 and Cafe Pacific, where Dallas billionaires and power players (the Bushes!) can be seen. The Joneses! You can eat on your own.
It’s not just a sentiment. In the early days of Highland Park, as was the case in many American communities that were developed in the first part of the 20th century, the deed restrictions prohibited nonwhite minorities from owning property. The U.S. Supreme Court declared such rules unenforceable in 1948. However, it was not until 2003, or just twenty years later, that a Black person purchased and lived in a Highland Park home. The first line in an article about this new development was cringeworthy: “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner–and Staying for a While.”
The town is still a fortress despite its separation from the larger city. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright in his memoir In the New World Century, Dallas became the “Camelot of the right,” a free-for-all for ambitious strivers who didn’t care about regulations. Highland Park was an oasis in the middle of it all, where newly minted millionaires were able to enjoy their wealth and isolate themselves from everyone else. Many families are moving to the town today so their children can enroll in one of the best public school districts in the state and avoid Dallas ISD. Highland Park’s police are known for issuing tickets to outsiders but letting locals go.
The price of real estate in Highland Park has increased dramatically since the city walled itself off. Mansions of ever greater size have replaced the tidy bungalows and colonials that used to line the side streets. They now match the larger mansions closer to the creek or golf course. As the lots have not grown, the homes are now stacked up like sentries in a parade. Each home is craning their necks to be taller than the previous one. The six-thousand-square-foot manors that rose in the eighties and nineties are being replaced or reimagined to include higher ceilings, bigger windows, home theaters, and underground garages with parking lifts. An angular glass and steel creation will sometimes replace something with a Corinthian column or curly ironwork and make the neighbors chirp.
Candy Evans, founder of Candy’s Dirt, a North Texas real estate blog that features industry news, gossip, and listings of notable houses, says, “the house is everything.” Your house is a reflection of who you are and what you do. “Because it’s your castle that you want to show off.”
Evans, a Chicago native, was working for D Magazine more than 15 years ago when she got the idea to create her blog. It was called Dallas Dirt at that time, and she brought it with her when going solo. Evans realized that her blog had a broad appeal, both culturally and financially. It wasn’t only the homes. Everyone loved to gaze and wonder what was behind the circular drives and sloping grass of the grandest properties, but they also followed the stories of the agents. The realtors were the portals into the fantasy worlds of Highland Park. Evans says, “They are the movie stars of Dallas.”