Ross Perot with his Strait Lane mansion in Dallas and Tucker’s Town in Bermuda (Credit: Getty Images, Google Maps, and Douglas Newby)
H. Ross Perot, the computer services billionaire and two-time presidential candidate left behind a legacy of quotable quips, entrepreneurship, wealth and extensive property.
Perot, who died on Tuesday at 89, implored Americans during his first presidential run in 1992 ”to look under the hood.” So, we’ll do that with some of his residential property. But unlike his most famous catchphrase, “It’s just that simple,” uncovering all his residential holdings is not so easy.
The Perots of Dallas
In Dallas, the city Perot called home for much of his life, he and his wife, Margot, lived in an 8,200-square-foot mansion on a 16-acre estate worth a reported $21 million.
Their street, Strait Lane, is known as the city’s main drag for trophy properties with many of the palatial abodes described based on their proximity to Perot’s comparatively modest manse.
The Perot family collectively owns nearly $59 million worth of residential property in the Dallas area. Two of his daughters, Nancy Perot and Suzanne McGee, live next door to each other. Nancy Perot lives in a $10 million home and her sister, who is married to the co-founder of private equity firm Brazos Private Equity Partners, lives in a $17 million mansion, according to D Magazine. Perot’s third daughter, Carolyn, lives with her husband in a $9 million mansion. All four homes made the list of the 100 most expensive in the Dallas area, according to the magazine’s ranking last year.
Bermuda, for father and son
A year after Perot sold his computer company, Electronic Data Systems, to General Motors for $2.5 billion in 1984 — a deal in which he became both a billionaire and the automobile giant’s largest shareholder — he bought two vacation homes in Bermuda, according to the Dallas Morning News. One was for himself and the other for his son, H. Ross Perot Jr.
Though the precise addresses are not publicly known, Perot’s vacation homes were located in a wealthy enclave in Tucker’s Town, where his neighbors included former New York City mayor and fellow billionaire Michael Bloomberg, as the New York Times reported.
In 1992, when Perot was running for president, Time magazine documented an incident in which Perot blew up parts of a coral reef in Bermuda’s Castle Harbour area in order to build a dock and boathouse for his 68-foot yacht. That came despite environmental authorities’ rejection of the plan. As local authorities began investigating whether Perot had violated the country’s rules, Perot threatened “to sell my houses and leave.” The investigation was dropped and a permit issued retroactively.
In 2009, Perot sold a second computer services company, Perot Systems, to Michael Dell’s firm and walked away with a reported $800 million from the $3.9 billion deal. Last year, Forbes pegged his net worth at $4.2 billion.
A son in the real estate game
Perot Jr., whose net worth according to Forbes hovers around $2 billion, founded Hillwood, a Dallas-based real estate investment and development firm. The company has residential, retail and industrial projects around the country and abroad.
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