Hotel News

New hotel and conference center capitalizes on its DFW lakeside locale

Flower Mound is about to get a showpiece hotel, overlooking Grapevine Lake, just minutes from DFW Airport. Called the Pearl on the Peninsula, the contemporary 12-floor hotel and conference center will capitalize on its lakeside locale.

It will be the centerpiece of the lake’s southern 25-acre peninsula, which is part of the 150-acre mixed-used development called Lakeside DFW (where a new Moviehouse & Eatery is going in). The hotel will have 220 rooms and luxury suites, including “sky villas” on the top level.

The Pearl’s perch 140 feet above the water will provide views of sunrises and sunsets; renderings show that public spaces are oriented toward those water vistas.

The hotel also will have plenty of meeting space (hence the “conference center” in its title), including a 10,000-square-foot ballroom. Also expect an infinity pool and two places to dine: a European market and a full-service signature restaurant and bar. Another bar will serve the sunbathers on the pool deck.

Just this week, the Flower Mound Town Council approved a measure that will assist New Era Hotels & Resorts and Sunset Legacy LP in the hotel’s development. Flower Mound resident Scott Tarwater, a partner in New Era, is leading the charge; his family used to own the land, which they sold to Sunset’s Stewart family in 1984. So both parties have an attachment to the place.

“Over 30 years ago, my father, Peter P. Stewart, envisioned an international hotel overlooking the lake to complement the new DFW International Airport,” said Alan Stewart of Sunset Legacy in a release. “Our family is thrilled that he will see this dream come true right before his 95th birthday.”

“It is an honor to bring another wonderful hotel to the Flower Mound, particularly on the land that my parents, grandparents and I grew up on,” Tarwater said. “The opportunity to bring a truly unique, luxury hotel concept that honors our community’s heritage, along with creating a premier international destination for guests and locals to experience, is very significant to me.”

DePalma Hotels & Resorts will manage the property. The rest of the project team includes Merriman Associates/Architects, TBG (landscape design), Duncan, Miller, Ullmann Design (interior design), Gateway Planning (master planning) and Kimley-Horn (engineering). Balfour Beatty is acting as design builder.

New Era Hotels & Resorts’ first project is the Courtyard by Marriott in the River Walk at Central Park master-planned development in Flower Mound, which is slated to break ground this September. The Pearl on the Peninsula is its second. Groundbreaking should begin in July 2016 with a projected opening date in the fourth quarter of 2017.

The Pearl on the Peninsula is coming to Flower Mound in 2017.

Rendering courtesy of Balfour Beatty

The Pearl on the Peninsula is coming to Flower Mound in 2017.

unspecified

REAL ESTATE NEWS

Nearly half of Dallas home sellers are slashing prices amid buyer’s market

Photo by Dillon Kydd on Unsplash

Nearly 58 percent of San Antonio home sellers dropped their list price in February

Prospective home buyers in Dallas may want to seal the deal this spring. According to a new Redfin report, nearly 47.3 percent of home sellers in the city dropped their list price in February.

Two other Texas cities clocked ahead of Dallas: In Austin, the number was 55.2 percent, and in San Antonio, it was an eye-popping 57.9 percent — the highest share among the 50 most populous regions in the U.S.

According to the real estate marketplace, Texas’ dominance on this list isn't coincidental. Along with Florida, the state has been building more homes than anywhere in the nation, giving prospective buyers more options and bargaining power.

Nationwide, 34.2 percent of February home sellers cut their asking price, a 31.5 percent rise from a year earlier and the highest share ever since Redfin began tracking markets in 2012. The average cut was $40,915, approximately 7 percent of the original sticker price.

Redfin attributes the discounts to a classic supply-and-demand imbalance. High mortgage rates combined with economic uncertainty have kept buyers on the fence while sellers continued to flood the market with new homes. The company speculates that the real rate of cuts may be higher since it does not account for delisted properties.

“A lot of people who couldn’t sell their homes last year opted to delist instead of reducing the price, with a plan to relist this spring because they knew that would give them a better chance of selling,” says Redfin real estate agent Aditi Jain, via a release “Some homeowners need to move immediately, but those who can afford to time the market may get a better price.”

Redfin says that spring consistently produces the lowest share of price cuts, with May having the lowest share in six of the past 10 years, and April taking the title in three others.

Sellers who closed in December faced the highest likelihood of cutting their price. Sellers who have owned their homes longest are also better protected from market fluctuations.

Owners who have lived in their homes for at least seven years cut prices at a rate of 31.8 percent, compared to 37.4 percent for those who have owned for two years or less. More recent buyers who purchased their homes at the height of the pandemic boom are now reluctant to accept what the market will actually bear.

The five U.S. cities with the highest shares of cut listing prices are:

No. 1 — San Antonio, Texas (57.9%)
No. 2 — Austin, Texas (55.2%)
No. 3 — Dallas, Texas (47.3%)
No. 4 — Tampa, Florida (45.9%)
No. 5 — Fort Lauderdale, Florida (44.9%)

economy home market rankings real estate home-for-sale housing market