Hip Pocket Listings for Park Cities (Dallas, Fort Worth: for sale, real estate, mortgage)

[mccoy228]

What is the best method to find houses not listed on MLS for the Park Cities? My sister is a realtor in Fort Worth and so I feel like we are missing out on houses that are hip pocket listings that other realtors with a grip on the area have. Any ideas?? TIA!

[bencronin04]

You're going to want to find a Realtor with experience in the Park Cities, or possibly make some friends in the area. We get emails almost weekly about hip pockets in HPISD, though they are all out of our range.

[TurtleCreek80]

Yes, you are definitely missing out. You need to ditch your FW-based realtor ASAP (you can make sure she gets a referral bonus from your Park Cities realtor) as over 30% of Park Cities sales are hip pockets. Your realtor will never know about them unless she is a $1M+ market seller in FW with strong connections in Dallas. I'm sure you were planning on your sister kicking back most/all of her commission to you, but it's not really worth the savings if you'll only have access to 60-70% of the available homes for sale.

If you want some recommendations, I can PM you several names.

[octo]

Why don't those homes go on the open market? Wouldn't that yield a higher price? If I had a home to sell, I'd want as many people as possible to consider purchasing it, not a small group of insiders.

[bencronin04]

There's a few reasons. Some people don't want to have a large group of people coming through their house, privacy reasons, more selective, sometimes you get a much higher bid then expected, agents jump on hip pockets and show them to qualified buyers sometimes more quickly because they know they have a great chance at landing the deal due to a limited market, etc. You put that house in MLS and do an open house, there is no telling who is walking through the front door of your home.

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by octo

Why don't those homes go on the open market? Wouldn't that yield a higher price? If I had a home to sell, I'd want as many people as possible to consider purchasing it, not a small group of insiders.

It just depends.

Many buyers and sellers want their transaction completely out of the MLS system so the tax man won't know what they paid. This is a direct result of MLS eliminating the ability to "z" out the purchase price a few years ago. I'd rather let DCAD guess and go argue with them if they guess too high than let them know what I paid. We bought a hip pocket about 18 months ago and are on the tax rolls for about $150k less than we paid and $250k less than market value. That equates to about a $5500 savings on our property tax bill. Because we put more than 20% down, dcad obviously looked at our mortgage loan and assumed we financed 80%.

Some sellers don't want a ton of strangers traipsing through their homes....remember, a good chunk of homes in the Park Cities are selling for $2-5M so it's not uncommon to have art collections, antiques, major jewelry, etc in the home. It also can take a LONG time to sell homes in the $5-$15M++ range so being a hip pocket completely elmininates the "looky-loo's" and ensures only serious, vetted buyers view the property.

Other sellers are SO convinced that if they don't list with one particular brokerage, their home will never sell. This particular brokerage has done up to 50% of their volume in hip pockets over the last few years, marrying sellers with well-qualified buyers. It seems most of their transactions involve the buying and selling agent both working for their brokerage.

From what I saw when we were looking in the Park Cities and Preston Hollow almost 2 years ago is that hip pocket sold comps are as much in line with market values so in this case, I'm not convinced sellers would get more on the open market. Now, when you're talking $350k homes in Coppell, of course it behooves the seller to get a bidding war going!

[JTC Mom]

Good info above. Our experience from a couple of years ago is that many hip pockets are widely marketed among park cities realtors even if they are not listed in the MLS. As a result many hip pocket listings do still get multiple offers and bidding wars.

[GreyDay]

You need a realtor who's been here forever. A realtor that raised (not is raising) kids here. A realtor that's been around.

Hip Pocket listings eliminate lagging on MLS for a long time. 1) Either the house sales without listing on MLS - though at some point it technically is listed. 2) If their price is out of wack, they know based on interest from the pocket listing comments.

The market in Park Cities is 100% built-out and there are only so many properties in a given price range 1-2M, 3-5M and 5M+. I would say the normal rules don't apply, but it's the opposite- extreme demand (at least for those who decided to live there and nowhere else) and limited supply. There won't be a Park Cities Phase II anytime soon.

[JTC Mom]

Originally Posted by GreyDay

You need a realtor who's been here forever. A realtor that raised (not is raising) kids here. .

Ha! There is a bradfield mom i know that sold $50m last year and over $40m this year. At least thats what her website says.

[MenardMQ]

Park Cities real estate really is it's own world where the normal "rules" don't apply.

Real Estate agents in the park cities are practically a cartel comprised of Allie Beth Allman and Briggs Freeman. If you are going to be successful in your search for a property you'll want to go with an agent who has been around the park cities for at least 20 years - since there are so many stumbling blocks to real estate deals there and that experience is invaluable.

You'll find that park cities residents even posture in their own bubble based on location - for instance the "fairway" (between Hillcrest and Preston) are the most desirable properties, while anyone living on Mockingbird might as well be living in Oak Lawn.

I went through an extended search for a home in HP a few years ago (1.7 to 2.5m range), saw probably 15 homes, and at least half of them were pocket listings or "informal" listings meaning the owners were "thinking about" selling. We put in offers on 3 homes, each of which collapsed due to crazy issues (one house wasn't "really" for sale, just mired in a divorce, one offer was just completely ignored, and one offer almost resulted in a lawsuit due to the sellers not returning earnest money when the contract was terminated due to us not being able to come to terms). It was an enlightening experience, since most park cities residents are high flying highly competitive type-A families, so transactions with those types aren't always smooth. You've got to have a thick skin, that is for sure, and you've got to definitely have an experienced agent that can quickly identify these types of issues and keep you moving forward.

Further, the real estate agents in the Park Cities all know each other, they all for the most part hate each other, so the hunt for a property there is also entertaining since it is like putting two cats in a room and watching them posture. I'd also venture to say that if you came into the Park Cities with a buyer agent from Plano or Fort Worth, sellers agents wouldn't even do business with you.

And.... this is how the demographics of the real estate agents are that work in the park cities play out 90% of the time:

- Grey hair, pearls, VERY well connected, has sold the same home on Beverly drive 6 times
- 24 yr old sorority girl from SMU who went to HPHS, thinks she's well connected