Texas says goodbye to Dallas’ ‘First Lady of Real Estate’

​DALLAS – Ebby Halliday, the city’s first lady of real estate and a long-time friend of the Real Estate Center, died peacefully in her sleep Tuesday evening at the age of 104.

She founded Ebby Halliday Realtors in 1945. It’s now the largest independently owned residential real estate company in Texas and ranks tenth in the country. The company has 1,700 sales associates and had sold 19,200 properties through 2014 with a sales volume of $6.64 billion.

Halliday was known for her philanthropic efforts, receiving the Horatio Alger Award in 2005. In 2014, she founded Ebby’s Place to help pull economically challenged women out of poverty.​