A $100 million home in Dallas: Is real estate at its peak?

ver wanted to buy a home with 11 fireplaces, 12 bathrooms and two "staff wings”? The price tag, which started out at $135 million, is now $100 million. This property is on 25 acres in one of the most prestigious areas in Dallas, Preston Hollow. Preston Hollow is home to such billionaires as Kelcy Warren, Ross Perot, Mark Cuban and a handful of other notables.

The estate is on such a large piece of land that the entire subdivision is named after the owner, Thomas Hicks. Upon purchasing this home, you would become neighbors with Thomas Hicks's longtime friend, George W. Bush. A sports tycoon, Hicks has been an owner of the soccer club Liverpool F.C., the Texas Rangers baseball team, the Dallas Stars hockey team and the Mesquite Championship Rodeo.

A $100 million single-family home is certainly a sign that the real estate market in Texas is at its highest point ever. The most expensive home ever sold (on record) was listed for sale at $30 million in 2009. Texas has a disclosure law, so the sales price is unknown. As of now, there are five listings in the city over $27 million.

Another active listing, located in Highland Park, sits on 6.138 acres and just took a massive price reduction to $46 million from its original listing price of $59 million. It is a single-family home as well.

When breaking down the comps for the $100 million estate you can see that a neighbor of Hicks had a price tag of well over $5 million, and it was on 1.1 acres. Another neighbor listed a home closer to $6 million, and it was on 0.85 acres. There is house right down the street from Hicks’s that is listed at $27.5 million. It is on 6.4 acres. These homes are not being sold for lot value, but you can start to see where this $100 million number came from. A 25-acre lot has never been for sale in Preston Hollow publicly.

Dallas is a booming city, and real estate investments are paying off. The relatively low cost of living and expanding job market have people flocking from all over the world. Even during the recession, the market stayed strong. Home prices, on average, did not drop as drastically as in other major cities. While certain neighborhoods were hit worse than others, this graph shows the Dallas market compared with other major cities.

Typically the real estate market is on a seven-year cycle. We are nearing that seven-year end point since the recession, and the bubble is certainly going to have to either deflate or pop in the near future. Dallas is a resilient city, and the tax laws in Texas (no state-level corporate or individual income tax) keep the economy flourishing and promote company moves to Texas.

Half of the 16 U.S. metro areas whose local economies grew at a 6% pace or better last year were in Texas. Toyota, State Farm Insurance, Liberty Mutual Insurance, and others have office deals totaling just shy of 8 million square feet, bringing 

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