The largest and perhaps most notorious home in North Texas is now on the market with an absolutely staggering price tag.
The North Dallas home of Dallas businessman Tom Hicks is now for sale for $100 million. The home sits in the Preston Hollow area of Dallas, which also boasts former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, as fellow residents.
Hicks’ home is the stuff of legend for those of us in the North Texas area. According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, Hicks’ home is more than just a home. It sits on 25 acres, features a 50,000-square-foot main house, a 6,400-square-foot guesthouse and a 9,194-square-foot “recreation building” with a full-size movie theater in the basement.
The main house’s master bedroom suite checks in at 3,000 square feet. Yep, you read that right…the master bedroom alone is 3,000 square feet.
At that size, the master bedroom in Hicks’ mansion is larger than the average home built in the U.S. in 2013, by a couple hundred square feet. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average new home built in the U.S. in 2013 was 2,598 square feet.
For the uninitiated, Tom Hicks built one of the largest private investment firms in the U.S., specializing in leveraged buyouts. He was, at one time, listed on Forbes’ list of billionaires, and he used some of his money (and a whole lot of other people’s money) to launch Hicks Sports Group, which Hicks built into a formidable empire.
In 1995, Hicks bought the NHL’s Dallas Stars and in 1998 he purchased MLB’s Texas Rangers, from a group of owners that included Bush. In 2007, Hicks partnered with George Gillett to purchase the English Premier League’s Liverpool FC.
His time with each team was marked by early success, but it all came crashing down around 2009.
Hicks Sports Group began to default on the nearly $525 million in debt it had taken on to finance the purchase of the various teams.
From the Wall St. Journal in 2009:
Mr. Hicks missed a $10 million quarterly interest payment on March 31, triggering the default notice. The teams are unable to fund both their operating expenses and debt service, and Mr. Hicks has declined to continue making up the difference out of his own pocket, according to a person familiar with the matter. That has angered some of the lenders — a collection of large banks and smaller investment funds — for whom the default notice begins a process that could put the banks in control of the teams.
From there, it only got worse.
Hicks Sports Group eventually sold the Stars to Canadian businessman Tom Gaglardi, but only after operations of the Stars were taken over by the NHL itself in an effort to fend off Hicks’ creditors. The Rangers were also sold, but through a very public and bitter bankruptcy auction process.
The situation surrounding Liverpool was even more toxic. Hicks’ three-and-a-half year reign at Liverpool was recently called “divisive and deeply damaging” by London’s Daily Mirror.
All you need to know about the swath that Hicks cut with his sports ventures is the range of publications that are writing about him selling his house.
The potential sale of Hicks’ mansion made news in Dallas (obviously), New York, London and Liverpool (and now HousingWire too!).
Hicks previously listed the house for $135 million, which made it the most expensive listing in the country as of Jan. 2013.
Hicks and his wife bought the home in 1997, and subsequently expanded it in extravagant fashion.
From the Dallas Morning News:
The former Crespi Estate was totally rebuilt and substantially enlarged starting in 2000.
“The renovation took 33 months with 250 people a day working on the house,” said Allie Beth Allman’s David Nichols.
Once the work was done, the three-story house featured more indulgences than any human could possibly need.
From Forbes:
Among the home’s outrageous amenities are a library paneled in 19th-century Italian walnut and burl, a main kitchen tiled in 10th-century Dutch Delft manganese tiles, a mirrored art-deco bar room, and an exercise room. The pool house boasts an outdoor living room and kitchen, an indoor catering kitchen, a massive game room, and a home theater spanning an entire floor. The grounds encompass two guest houses, a tennis court, several greenhouses, a tree house, rose and vegetable gardens, and a second hidden driveway entrance onto the property.
So if your wish list includes living the highest of the high life, wanting a former President as your neighbor, wanting to sleep in a room that’s bigger than the country’s average house, and have an extra $100 million burning a hole in your pocket, then this is the perfect home for you.
Or maybe you’d able to put down a 20% down payment (a mere $20 million) and secure financing on the Hicks estate. According to Google’s handy-dandy mortgage calculator, your monthly payment would be $378,252.
A steal at twice the price.
(Main image courtesy of Stephen Reed Photography)
