So it was that very first asset purchase of apartments in Waco, Texas, little old Waco, that ultimately landed Beal the keys to the two most expensive homes in Dallas.
Looking at my most favorite site in the whole wide world, the Dallas Central Appraisal District — you know I scan it 24/7 — I see that the estate of the late Margaret Crow at 4500 Preston Road has changed ownership. It is now owned by “The Trust,” which has an address of 6000 Legacy Drive. The deed transfer took place on February 26, last month.
6000 Legacy Drive? Why, that’s the corporate offices of Beal Bank! As in Andy Beal, the wealthiest man in Dallas according to Forbes. The billionaire who just snapped up the Hicks estate, the most expensive home in Dallas and likely Texas. I had been told he was shopping both properties and, just like when I cannot choose between two pairs of Jimmy Choos or Louboutins, I think Beal just bought BOTH of them! Two of the most amazing properties in Dallas!
The appraised value of the Crow home, which had been listed with Allie Beth Allman, is $24,265,480. The listing expired November 17, 2015. Last asking price was $46,000,000 for 6.13 acres in the prime part of Highland Park, with a 9500 plus square foot home of the utmost elegance.
In January, Andy Beal bought the $100 million priced Hicks-Crespi-Walnut Place estate at 10000 Hollow Way Road. The Hicks property is now owned by “The Daria Drive Trust” under the name of Jacob Cherner, founder and chief executive at CSG Investments at… 6000 Legacy Drive in Plano. The appraised value of the former Hicks estate, by the way, is now $41,274,000 on the 20 acre plot of land, then $3,082,500 on 2.466 acres. Which means Beal likely did not pay $100,000,000 for the whole estate (are those enough zeros?).
I LOVE the way this man buys dirt!
Andy Beal is apparently a genius at finding and buying value, and he doesn’t overpay. I love the way he has his executives prepare reports on available assets, then questions them in a room called “The Fishbowl” while he keeps his computer covered in cardboard. Would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when they were discussing this real estate. The man likes his privacy and he doesn’t follow the herd mentality, according to this 2010 Dallas Morning News article .
Not many years ago, lenders were bagging profits by making loan after loan after ill-fated loan. Andy Beal saw the easy money and ran the other way.
The loans made no sense to his mathematical mind. As a giant credit bubble expanded, he let his Plano-based financial business shrink. He all but stopped lending between 2004 and 2007.
Now that the bubble has burst, the numbers make sense again and Beal’s business is booming. He’s also emerging as one of the nation’s few tycoons who added to their fortunes during the recession. His net worth of $4.5 billion makes him the richest man in Dallas, according to Forbes magazine’s 2009 ranking of the richest Americans.
Banking is far from his only interest, however.
Brandon Formby says Beal “dropped out ” of Michigan State University where he was taking math courses, but I have heard that he may have just been bored because of his highly gifted math intelligence. He came from a lovely middle class family in Lansing, Michigan: mother was a state government secretary, father a mechanical engineer. And it seems like he has been working since he was very young:
As a kid, he found a lot of ways to earn money.
He mowed lawns. He and his brother charged other kids to throw darts at balloons attached to wooden boards in his backyard. He and an uncle repaired and sold televisions. Beal started a business that physically moved houses from one part of town to another. He also managed about a dozen rental properties.
In 1976, when Andy Beal was 23, he bid on some distressed real estate at a federal auction in Washington, D.C., and almost got a Gulfport, Miss., apartment complex but ended up with a Waco apartment building instead. His winning bid was $217,500, which included $17,500 of his own money and a $200,000 loan, according to The Professor, the Banker and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time, a book by Michael Craig.
“I had never been to Texas,” Beal told The Dallas Morning News in 1997. “My plan was to finish college at Baylor, but I got busy starting little businesses and never did.”
He sold that apartment complex three years later, netted a million profit, and started doing more real estate deals and organized seminars on government loans, then banking, then poker, etc.
So it was that very first asset purchase of apartments in Waco, Texas, little old Waco, that ultimately landed Beal the keys to the two most expensive homes in Dallas.
