Ask Ebby Halliday whether she recalls her first sale and she returns to 1922, when she was 11 years old and growing up on a wheat farm. “I rode my pony to neighboring farmers and sold them Cloverine salve,” says Halliday, 103. “That’s how I learned the profit system. The salve cost 15 cents and I sold it for 25. I learned the value of customer service and repeat business.”
In 1938, she moved to Dallas from Kansas City and took a job selling hats in a department store. In 1945, she started her own boutique, Ebby’s Hats, in Dallas. And then one day that year, a customer – the wife of the oilman Clint Murchison Sr. – dropped by with a business problem.
“The next time you visit your friend who sells crazy hats, ask her if she has any ideas to sell my crazy houses,” Murchison had told his wife, Virginia, to ask Halliday.
Murchison had made the 52 new two- and three-bedroom houses on the Walnut Hill Golf Course in north Dallas of insulated cement panels put together one piece at a time, and he was trying to sell them at $7,500 and $9,500.
Halliday perked up the homes with carpet, curtains and “cottage” furniture and sold them within a year.
“I dressed those houses up – what today is called staging – and proceeded to sell them one by one,” she says. “Most of the homes were bought by soldiers returning from World War II.”
That marked Halliday’s move into real estate full time, where she built a legendary career and empowered women who wanted a career.
In 1963, she helped found an inter-city network of independent real estate brokerages known today as Leading Real Estate Companies of the World. The global network of more than 500 real estate firms has 3,500 offices and 120,000 sales associates in nearly 50 countries.
In 1963, she also became the first Texas woman named Texas Realtor of the Year. In 1979, she received the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Realtors. And in 1985, she was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the International Real Estate Federation at the Rome Congress.
Halliday has long held an affinity for widows, young single women and divorcees and regularly gives inspirational speeches to groups of them.
“Keep learning,” she encourages them. “Go to college, take special courses, read, listen, observe and get out there and participate.” Her husband, Maurice Ayers, whom she met in the late 1950s and who died in 1993, gave her what she calls the best advice she ever received.
“My husband and the love of my life kept a sign on his desk that read, ‘Do something for someone every day.’ I have tried my best to observe this simple message and I hope you will too,” she says.
In the late 1950s, Halliday was the national president of the Women’s Council of Realtors. She made at least 100 speeches and travelled more than 100,000 miles, she estimates.
“My advice was simple,” she says. “Act like a lady and work like a man. And, know your business.”
Luminaries such as Dirk Nowitzki, Ross Perot, Roger Staubach, Emmitt Smith, Jerry Jones, T. Boone Pickens and Warren Buffett helped Halliday celebrate her 100th birthday, a charity benefit.
“Understand the need for purpose, the need to have goals and objectives outside of yourself, a need to increase the value in your life and the lives around you,” she says.
– Scott Nishimura