This comes as no surprise to us, but it is always nice to have outsiders tell us how wonderful our local Dallas and Fort Worth Real Estate leaders are. That is why we send a big huge congratulations hug to Mary Frances Burleson, President of Ebby Halliday Realtors, at being named to the coveted Swanepoel 200 List of the Most Powerful people in Real Estate in the U.S.
What is the Swanepoel 200? It is a curated list of the year’s latest movers and shakers in real estate. Stefan Swanepoel is one of the Real Estate industry’s top visionaries. Guy knows his stuff forwards and backwards. He gets it through hard work and tons of research. TONS! His Swanepoel Trends Report is an annual analysis (published 4 times a year) of how societal and economic changes impact the real estate business and affect real estate brokers, agents and home buyers. Every home buyer should read his books, and every agent in this country should read and hear him speak at least once a year.
So annually his team comes out with this Top 200 list. They scour the Web, read hundreds of bios, LinkedIn pages, send out requests for additional information, make endless telephone calls to verify or confirm statistics, and cross-reference data with surveys. They also review company financial data.
They do, as Stefan says, “more homework than anyone else does.”
So after some 400 hours of evaluation, eight members of the SP200 Editorial Committee got together for a face-off to deliberate the nominees. Some of the winners have entrepreneurial power, and some have financial strength, some hold high office, some have personal power, some have positional power while others have political and media clout. (One of my good friends Katie Lance was honored.) The leaders come from all fields in real estate: innovators, some executives, some doers, some dealmakers. It doesn’t matter. They are just the movers and shakers in residential real estate today. And we are so fortunate to have Number 8, Mary Frances Burleson, right here in Big D!
“I am honored to once again be recognized in the Swanepeol 200 list. I have been fortunate to serve a company founded by Ebby Halliday, whose impact on the real estate industry is unmatched,” Mary Frances told me. “But our Associates, who seek every day to follow Ebby’s example of service, are the basis of our company’s success.”
