This says so much about the Dallas real estate scene and the razor-sharp competition between brokers for tip-top producing agents that brokers don’t just fawn over — they recruit, pursue, and hound, offering gigantic marketing budgets, hefty splits, trips to wealthy enclaves, and connections to some of the world’s top producers.
But even then, longevity trumps the glitter.
But first, a little story.
There is a Texas Monthly reporter in town, a decent chap named Tom Foster. Side note: Hasn’t TexMo just been getting more stellar? The answer is “Yes,” in this humble journalist’s opinion. Tom is a seasoned business reporter over there. Here is what I love about Tom — he is not just reporting on the numbers. He is looking deeply at Dallas real estate and the broker craziness and seeing the potential for something bigger. Point is, he gets exactly what snagged me into embedding myself into this business more than 20 years ago: He is smitten with the business. And he is a damn good writer.
So it was Tom who asked me last week if I thought the old guard of real estate was changing in Dallas. Not on your life, I told him.
Douglas Elliman may have briefly snagged Doris Jacobs and her daughters, but the Old Guard is rock-solid. Allie Beth Allman may have sold her firm to Berkshire Hathaway, and Robbie Briggs may have sold part of his company to Peerage Realty Partners, but both were not just still contractually involved in their firms. They are invested 1,000 percent.
The fact that Allie Beth did not give up trying to get Doris back the moment Elliman announced their union is a great example of that investment. Despite all the press releases and news trickling out of Elliman, Allie Beth called Doris, her founding partner, nearly every day.
And interestingly, even her clients started asking Doris why she left ABA.
“You just cannot leave me,” Allie Beth told her. “We have been together too long.”
“I just couldn’t leave her,” Doris told me. “It was like leaving home.”
The girls, Kim Calloway and Teffy Jacobs, follow their leader, their mom. Teffy agrees that Doris, a founding partner in the company, was ultimately too close to Allie Beth to leave the firm. While she loved Douglas Elliman and all the people there, ABA just feels like home.
On the upside, Douglas Elliman has been gracious about the group’s return to its roots.
“We wish Doris, Teffy, and Kim nothing but the best,” said a representative from Douglas Elliman Realty.
