About Douglas Newby
Your Interest is Our Passion
TEDxTalk by Douglas Newby
Douglas Newby explores intrinsic characteristics of homes that make us happy.
Douglas Newby is an insider guide at the intersection of art, architecture, neighborhoods and community.
D Magazine Profiles Douglas Newby - Best Dallas Real Estate Agent
Douglas Newby is an Expert on Neighborhoods
Douglas Newby is a national award-winning real estate agent specializing in architecturally significant homes who is passionate about identifying the best neighborhoods, sites and homes that will make you happy. He enjoys sharing your values. You will enjoy his vision and approach focused on benefiting you and your interests.
Douglas Newby knows the potential inventory of architecturally significant homes and the nuances of neighborhoods better than any real estate agent in Dallas. Understanding inventory is more than relying on MLS or “hip pockets.” It is approaching the market as if every home in Dallas is for sale. When a buyer looks for a home from that perspective, they are not constrained by a random slice of what is presently on the market or hoping something better will magically come on the market. A traditional approach leaves economics and aesthetics to chance. For decades Douglas Newby has identified architecturally significant homes and helped clients select neighborhoods in good locations that make them happy.
The majority of Douglas Newby transactions are not through MLS. Values are determined by more important criteria than what has sold in the last six months. Homes are more important now than they have ever been. If you want more than an agent who will point out amenities and statistics, if you want an advisor, someone knowledgeable, experienced and someone you would like to collaborate with, then you should contact Douglas Newby.
He loves working with smart people who understand a home is an important economic investment and an important investment in a place that will make them happy living, working or playing in the home.
Contributions Douglas Newby makes to preservation continues. Douglas Newby is currently serving on the Texas Preservation Trust Fund Advisory Board.
Here is How Your Architect-Designed Home Can Outperform the Market When it Sells
Additional Resources Provided by Douglas Newby to Learn About Him - Information He Provides on Neighborhoods, Architecture, and Homes
Here are 25 websites, YouTube, and social media sites with a specific focus created by Douglas Newby that will contribute to learning more about Dallas Modern Homes, Historic Homes, Architecturally Significant Homes, Dallas Homes for Sale, Dallas Neighborhoods, Dallas Architects, Dallas Architecture, Organic Urbanism, and Homes that Make Us Happy.
Dallas Modern Homes For Sale
DallasModernHomesforSale.com is an excellent resource to find Dallas Modern homes that are for sale in MLS and find which modern homes in MLS are designed by a significant architect.
Dallas Mid Century Modern Homes
DallasMidCenturyModernHomes.com is a website dedicated to Mid Century Modern homes in Dallas. Here you will also be able to find Dallas Mid Century Modern homes and homes for sale from the 1950s that are listed in MLS.
Dallas Architects
DallasArchitects.com is specifically devoted to helping you identify prominent architects in Dallas and see examples of their architectural work.
Dallas Architecture
DallasArchitecture.com was developed as a site where you will be able to review architectural styles of Modern, Texas Modern, and Eclectic styles of architecture, and see the architects that designed these Historic, Modern, and Classic homes.
Rivercrest Bluffs Fort Worth
Here is one of my favorite niche neighborhoods in Fort Worth found along the Trinity River.
Highland Park Dallas
Highland Park is the finest town in the country that is surrounded by a vibrant city. Here you will find out more about Highland Park Dallas and homes for sale in Highland Park.
Crespi Hicks
The Crespi-Hicks website links you to relevant information about the Architecturally Significant Crespi Estate home and its estate neighborhood, Mayflower Estates.
Glenn Abbey Homes Dallas
Glenn Abbey Homes Dallas provides and easy place to find good information about the Glenn Abbey neighborhood in North Dallas.
Belmont Conservation District
The Belmont Conversation district is an historic neighborhood in the heart of Old East Dallas which warrants its own website. Here you can find out about Belmont neighborhood history and homes for sale in the Belmont Conservation District.
Preston Hollow Dallas Homes
Preston Hollow has the finest estate homes in Dallas and many architecturally significant modern homes along with significant historic homes that you will learn about and in addition to the rich history of Preston Hollow and its current homes for sale.
Swiss Avenue Homes for Sale
Swiss Avenue in Munger Place is a neighborhood with the finest Dallas architect designed homes from the early 20th century. Here you will be able to find Swiss Avenue Homes for sale and see pictures of every home on Swiss Avenue in geographic order.
Organic Urbanism
When you understand the evolution of neighborhoods, you understand the city and its home. OrganicUrbanism.com discusses how cities can best evolve.
Munger Place Neighborhood
Munger Place is where all the great neighborhoods in Dallas received their inspiration. Here you will be able to see every home in the Munger Place historic district and the current Munger Place homes for sale.
Architecturally Significant Homes YouTube
You will see select neighborhoods known for their architecturally significant homes and also videos of architecturally significant homes.
Facebook Dallas Modern Homes for Sale
Here is an opportunity to see Modern homes that are featured and to see Dallas Modern homes for sale in MLS.
Facebook Architecturally Significant Modern Homes
Architecturally significant homes are featured along with the architect that designed them in Dallas.
Facebook Highland Park Dallas
Highland Park and University Park have a great collection of architecturally significant and historic homes. Highland Park Facebook will showcase some of these historic and architecturally significant homes in the Park Cities.
Facebook Preston Hollow Dallas Homes
Facebook Swiss Avenue Homes for Sale
Facebook Dallas Architects
Facebook Midcentury Modern Homes
Blog - Douglas Newby insights on Architecturally Significant Homes, Neighborhoods, and the Evolution of Cities
Instagram - Douglas Newby
Twitter - Douglas Newby
Understanding Real Estate Development
Architecturally Significant Homes® provides insights and services relating to the highest quality real estate development: consulting, planning, advising, concepts, vision, value. Whether you are starting with undivided land or a well-defined tract, Douglas Newby will help you interpret the site, the project, and the ultimate value of your Architecturally Significant Homes® endeavor.
My Favorite Introduction of Douglas Newby - Delivered by Mary Vernon
Introducing Doug Newby to Town and Gown is like going into Sherwood Forest in the old days and introducing Robin Hood to his own merry band. We all know Doug Newby so well as leader and prankster, as the serious questioner and the defender of neighborhoods, as a figure of fashion, and as a friend.
What a Treat to be Introduced by Mary Vernon
What a treat to be introduced by Mary Vernon as the speaker at an SMU Town and Gown Meeting. Mary Vernon is a legend at SMU as a professor and as a splendid artist collected by sophisticated patrons and museums. She is the past President of the SMU Faculty Senate, Chair of the SMU Art Department, and past President of SMU Town and Gown. Most importantly, she is a friend I greatly admire and who can pack much information and insight into a few humorous paragraphs. Thank you, Mary!
Douglas Newby Articles
Douglas Newby Instagram Expressions
You can learn more about how Douglas Newby thinks about homes, interprets real estate, understands the evolution of neighborhoods, and his recommendations for making Dallas the best city in the country by looking at his Instagram or Dallas Architecture Blog.
Instagram Insights
DallasArtFair
April 24, 2023, 5:26 am - National and international art galleries endorsed Dallas by participating in the Dallas Art Fair. Often artists lead the way in discovering and reclaiming neighborhoods making them fashionable. Much the same... See More
Preservation Poetry
April 15, 2023, 8:59 am - This Robert Frost style poem was inspired by my blog article on DouglasNewby.com- Preservation Dallas 50th Anniversary Home Tour Celebrates Neighborhoods and Architecture. In neighborhoods, where history breathes, Preservation Dallas,... See More
Katz Ascends
March 13, 2023, 5:24 am - From graduate student looking work on the first level of the Guggenheim Museum, Alex Katz’ work ascends to the highest level and to the triumphant and concluding piece of the... See More
Real Deal
April 17, 2023, 7:18 am - Real Deal insights were provided earlier this year by Publisher and Founder Amir Korangy of The Real Deal, the largest real estate magazine in the country. It is interesting how... See More
MayaMargarita
April 5, 2023, 10:33 am - Here is how iconic drinks are maybe named at iconic restaurants. Javier’s Gourmet Mexicano is the oldest iconic restaurant in Dallas. It is much loved, known for its professional service,... See More
Reclaim Dallas
February 27, 2023, 6:16 am - Michael Lee, a brilliant designer and a Highland Park native, has reclaimed Dallas as his home and continues to reclaim Dallas architectural components and artifacts from architecturally significant homes and... See More
If you are passionate about architecture, design and real value, then we share an interest.
-Douglas Newby
Featured Douglas Newby Blog Article
Organic Urbanism is the Cure for New Urbanism
New Urbanism is like a virus. For 50 year it keeps coming back in mutated forms. It needs a cure. First, the only thing new in New Urbanism is the new construction that tears down the organic city. A form of New Urbanism has been around for 50 years. Like I said, it is a virus that keeps coming back in mutated forms. But the scheme, of more density, new mixed-use construction, and fixed rail transit, replacing existing homes remains constant. The desire of planners to determine where you live and where you work also remains constant. New Urbanists are increasingly opposed to single family homes. See More
Client – Director of Dallas International Affairs – Expressing Appreciation
A note of thanks for a most civilized experience ... our recent home sale was conducted with such efficiency, discretion, and geniality that we know that our buyers were as pleased with the ease of the sale/purchase process as we. Your marketing of our home with such sensitivity to the particular merits of our property and of our neighborhood led to a surplus of potential buyers at the end --- a very rewarding experience! In our 30 years of buying and selling homes in three states, never have we enjoyed such confidence in our realtor nor worried so little about the eventual successful outcome.
It is an additional satisfaction to know how well you have matched our beloved home with its new owners.- James and Patricia Shinn
Director of Dallas International Affairs
Turtle Creek Park Homeowner
Origins of Douglas Newby's Civic and Real Estate Contributions
Douglas Newby's passion for and success in contributing to Dallas had been propelled academically, vocationally, and professionally through a series of achievements. Every project reflects a keen understanding of people, the environment, and the community.
An innate desire to redirect a neighborhood from disaster to delight spurred the academic genesis of his master's thesis, "Economic Proposals to Reverse Migration in an Inner City Neighborhood." The established economic argument of the thesis won the day when multi-family property owners actually petitioned the city to rezone their apartments to single-family zoning in this redlined area. Douglas's efforts, garnering widespread support from the property owners, lenders, businesses, schools and the developer/pro property rights mayor, resulted in the largest multi-family, zoned area to be rezoned single-family in the country and the first single-family zoned historic district with historic guidelines in Dallas.
In the heart of this rezoned area, Douglas co-founded the revolving fund for the Historic Preservation League. The goal was to secure 23 options on divided up rent houses that could be purchased over a two-year period and resold to homeowners.
There was still a missing ingredient for the neighborhood to be revitalized: a real-estate agent to negotiate these options contracts and to make a market for slum landlords to sell to artists and urban pioneers who could convert these divided up rent houses into single-family homes.
Douglas Newby solved this problem by becoming a real estate agent. The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) solved the redline problem of no home loans here by selecting the rezoned single-family restoration area for their first National Inner City Lending Demonstration Project.
However, the question remained, how does one restore a home to live in? Douglas addressed the problem by founding the Restoration House of the Year Award, the first in the nation. To attract a successful critical mass of homeowners, though, a neighborhood needs to have a sense of place. Understanding this need, Douglas wrote the first book on Dallas neighborhoods. This Dallas best-selling book, A guide to the Older Neighborhoods of Dallas, was published when only few neighborhoods in Dallas were previously recognized. Now Dallas has hundreds of neighborhoods that have a strong identity.
Those passionate about preservation in the restoration area recognized the importance of history and architecture. To entice and educate the rest of Dallas, Douglas initiated and coordinated the first community survey of architect-designed homes in Dallas which, in turn, was the first community-based survey of architect-designed home in the country.
The culmination of successful endeavors in revitalization, rezoning, restoration, real estate, neighborhood and architecturally significant homes have resulted in Douglas Newby's triumphant understanding of homes that makes us happy.
Douglas Newby Nominated to Hinsdale Hall of Fame
Noted biographer, Gordon Imrie, who has written books, produced film and recordings, is a high school classmate of Douglas Newby who nominated Douglas Newby to the Hinsdale Hall of Fame that included this biography with the nomination. This nomination carried additional significance as Gordon Imrie was a Hinsdale High School class president, editor of The Hinsdale Courier high school newspaper, a star athlete, the brother of a Hinsdale Hall of Fame inductee, and a graduate of Stanford and Harvard that launched his multifaceted career.
Biography Section of Hinsdale Hall of Fame Nomination
Biographer Gordon Imrie wrote this biography of Douglas Newby as one of the sections required for a Hinsdale Hall of Fame nomination that reads as follows.
Can Hinsdale ever forgive Doug Newby for moving away?
My own Hinsdale tenure is eighteen years in two blocks separated by twenty-eight years at Stanford, Harvard, and (mostly) Manhattan. Much of my experience after HC (1970) has been in real estate, big city and suburban, and especially Old Stuff—buildings over a century old. Newby’s turf. When I began hearing what he had accomplished in Dallas, I was busy spending years trying unsuccessfully to save the Hinsdale Theater as an arts center in the early 2000s. But it was Hinsdale’s struggle with teardowns where Newby’s magic could have saved many harsh words and lost antiquity. I hope we can forgive him for adopting Dallas, where he managed, as I shall demonstrate, to thread-the-needle of free-market real estate transactions, charm-preservation, and fresh construction in neighborhoods hauntingly similar to Hinsdale’s beleaguered best. I estimate he’s saved a billion dollars of present-valued homes from destruction without onerous (pun intended) regulation. Newby’s success has been by a thousand cuts from skirmishes involving policy, positions, ideas, efforts, and initiatives that changed how people thought about neighborhoods, preservation, architecture, revitalization, and real estate. He, his clients, and his neighborhoods have all prospered. But let’s enjoy how and where this conciliatory and realistic attitude and skill were hatched: Newby is Pure Hinsdale. Continue Reading.
Our Shared Values, Vision and Approach
You will, in this section describing our purpose, discover our shared values, vision and our approach to benefit you. You will see our emphasis on the precision and grace of our transactions. You’ll learn about the origin, background and evolution of this firm, created to benefit you. You’ll find books, articles and op-ed columns written by Douglas Newby, as well as articles in which Douglas Newby was quoted or featured. Other resources that you may find useful are also found in this Web site SignificantHomes.com.
Douglas Newby I could write a novella extolling your virtues but I know you are a humble person at heart. Suffice it to say that you have been nothing short of amazing. Thanks so much for all you’ve done to help with this process!
-Michael Conrady
If You Desire an Architecturally Significant Home You Will Love, Douglas Newby Invites You to Call or Contact Him
Dearest Douglas,
We are so grateful to you for guiding us throughout the exciting process of buying a beautiful Highland Park estate home first and then trying to sell our old Highland Park one in record time. I know you have an eye for distinctive and unique homes given your endless appetite for architecture and cultural comprehension. But your deep understanding of human behavior and the art of negotiation is even more spectacular. You are a rare gem and I am so blessed to count you as a good friend.-Mrs. Scott
Highland Park Homeowner
Our Real Estate Firm Was Created for You
Douglas Newby & Associates, specializing in architecturally significant homes, was developed with you in mind. You’re curious, have a passion for design and an affinity for the aesthetic fabric of a city. You desire to work with a realtor who is a licensed real estate broker, who understands your interest and who will personally represent your interest.
Our clients are making the greatest impact on the architectural landscape.
-Douglas Newby
Discovering, Rediscovering and Reinterpreting
Architecturally Significant Homes
We want to help you discover, rediscover and reinterpret architecturally significant homes. We love hearing your response to interesting homes, and love pointing out their subtle features. This dialogue gives clients an advantage in selecting the finest home or obtaining the best prices. Armed with the knowledge of the real value of the property and home, you’ll make a better purchase.
We Want You to Have the Best Home
You understand that a home with a great design and that is on the best site is going to have the most real value. Articulating the architecture of a home and the potential of the site facilitates your understanding of a home you will enjoy for many years.
When one of my clients acquires an architecturally significant home, I know the home is in good hands and will contribute in a meaningful way to the architectural landscape.
-Douglas Newby
Significant Homes Will Come Into Focus
As we work together, exploring the market, the neighborhoods and specific sites in relationship to your desires and goals, the right architecturally significant home will soon emerge as your best choice.
My business goal is to benefit my clients; my civic goal is to promote good architecture and design. It is exciting and I'm even more passionate when those two are intertwined.
-Douglas Newby
Doug,
Thanks so much for theevening at Mrs. McDermott’s. It’s a rare treat just to be in her house, much less share it with great food, company, conversation and the lady herself. Everyone agreed that the discussion you moderated really gave the evening its unique character, turning the conversation away from the usual social small-talk to much more interesting issues you usually don’t get into with people you’ve just met. It was the perfect topic to open things up, because while even sophisticated civilians are often reluctant to talk about art and architecture if they’re put on the spot, everyone has strong feelings about their community and its culture – I know everyone there welcomed the opportunity to hold forth and listen to other views. Every event you’ve done has been memorable, but I think this format bears repetition in some form – I loved Mrs. McDermott’s characterization of it as a “mixer”, but uniquely you had people exchanging ideas first and foremost, rather than business cards or phone numbers. Needless to say, Ellen and I had a terrific time and are grateful you included us.
All best,
Michael Ennis
Author