Ebby Halliday & Mary Frances Burleson: A Pioneer and Her Successor Parlay Simple Principles into Big Business

By Bob Barnett

If the homebuying public were asked to picture a real estate agent in their collective mind’s eye, the picture would most assuredly be female. It seems only natural in this day and time, but it wasn’t always so, of course.

Not so long ago men dominated the profession to such an extent that in many areas it was inconceivable that a woman would be entrusted with responsibility for selling a house and closing the transaction. It was in this world, in Dallas in 1945, that Ebby Halliday sold her first house.

She was asked by the husband of one of the customers of the millinery store she then owned to sell cement houses, because, as he said, “If you can sell those crazy hats, maybe you can sell those crazy houses.” Halliday went on to sell an astounding 52 cement houses in the next nine months.

Perhaps she sold so many houses because she was clever enough to decorate one of them as a demo, thus pioneering the concept of the model home. Asked how she came up with the idea of a model home, Halliday credits necessity: “Those cement houses were ugly — cement floors, cement walls; I had to do something.”

Perhaps she sold so many houses because she was fortunate enough to be selling houses at a time when there was a ready supply of returning World War II veterans looking for inexpensive housing. Whatever the cause, or combination of causes, her success in that first venture cannot be overestimated.

Had she failed, it could have set back for many years female efforts to join the profession, at least in her area of the country. That she succeeded so spectacularly established that women could sell houses at least as effectively as men.

Buoyed by her initial success, Halliday opened Ebby Halliday REALTORS® in Dallas in 1945. Not only did Halliday ultimately develop the state’s largest independent residential brokerage, which today has 29 offices, 1,600 employees and annual revenues of $4.7 billion; not only did Halliday help pioneer standard industry practices, such as the model home, relocation services and training classes; not only did Halliday lead the way for women to join the National Association of REALTORS®; not only did Halliday serve as one of the first presidents of WCR; not only did Halliday go on to become widely known as the “First Lady of Real Estate;” but she also helped completely transform an industry in which now well more than half of all agents are female.  

Halliday Hones Her Skills
Halliday’s successful real estate career was hatched in 1929 during the Great Depression when she went to work for $10 a week in the millinery department in the basement of a Kansas City department store. Over the next 11 years, in three cities with the same company, she honed her sales skills – “Hats were not a priority in the Depression,” she notes dryly – and saved her money.

In 1936 Halliday moved to Dallas, her third and final stop with the company. She remembers it was a good time to be in Dallas, with bands playing and happy times all around, because the mayor had declared the Depression over, and Texas was celebrating its Centennial.

As Halliday continued to hone her sales skills and save her money, she realized that what she really wanted was to be in business for herself. “I always wanted to be an entrepreneur,” she said, “even though I couldn’t spell it at the time.”

One day, as she sat in the doctor’s office to have her tonsils out, she heard the nurse bring the doctor information on the stock market, which sparked an idea. After recovering from the procedure, she went back to the doctor and asked him to advise her where to invest the $1,000 that she had saved. “I don’t advise women,” he said testily, “because if they lose, they cry.” That harsh comment hardly deterred Halliday. “Well,” she said, “you try me,” and he did, advising her to invest in cotton futures, which turned out to be good advice, causing her $1,000 investment to grow to $12,000.

With the money, Halliday opened her own millinery shop, in the front bay window of an old redone Victorian house. She brought with her to the new business not just many of her old customers, but also the department store’s hat designer. After that fateful day when the customer’s husband offered her the opportunity to sell his crazy cement houses, she sold her business to the hat designer and set off on her new career in real estate.

How in the world, one wonders, did she have the courage to sell a successful business in an industry she had worked for more than a decade to launch a new career in a male-dominated world with no experience and no guarantees? “I was ready,” she said. “I was a salesman. I had learned the fundamentals. I knew the importance of being interested in what the customer wants. I knew that I could do it.”

And do it she did. But she was a doubly rare specimen in those days in the real estate business because she was not just a woman but a woman who owned her own business.

Halliday’s New Career Takes Off
In setting off on her new career, Halliday’s timing couldn’t have been better. Not only was there a steady supply of returning GIs looking for affordable housing, but there was also pent-up demand for new homes because few houses were being built during the war.

The two bedroom cement houses sold for $7,500. The three bedroom model was $9,500. She laughs as she recalls how easy some of those early sales were. One guy, she says, set out with a shotgun over his shoulder to hunt rabbits and came back with a signed contract for a cement house. And so did his brother-in-law who was with him.

Shortly after she began selling the cement houses, Halliday hired her first agent, the wife of one of the couples who bought a cement house. Halliday and her agent worked at first out of one of the cement homes before opening what Halliday calls “our first proper office” in a new shopping center. As her business grew, many of her new hires were widows referred to her by banking friends she had met in her civic activities.

In those early years, Halliday personally handled all employee training. She tells of one widow the bank sent who had five boys and no work experience. Halliday had her sit across the desk from her and follow her on appointments for 30 days before letting her go out on her own, in what has to go down as one of the all-time great real estate training opportunities.

The new employee called Halliday one night, filled with excitement at selling her first home. “Did you get the contract signed by both parties?” Halliday asked her. “No,” the widow replied sheepishly. “Do you remember that I told you never to let the sun go down without getting both signatures?” Halliday asked her. “Yes, but the sun is no longer shining,” the widow replied, hoping for a break. “It is somewhere,” Halliday responded, and out the widow went to get the signatures. Continue to page 2

- Posted January 2008