USA Land Sales Archives

Largest Ranch Sales of 2019 Per Land.com

Highlights of an article by Lands of America on Land.com

Lands of America has listed the following properties as the most expensive ranches sold in the US in 2019.

$70,000,000 – Las Veras Ranch, 1,800 acres with 2 miles fronting the coastline in Santa Barbara, CA, nestled between the Pacific Ocean and Los Padres National Forest. Donated to UC Santa Barbara, by Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway.
$54,038,785 – La Bandera Ranch, the southwest Texas ranch in Dimmit County near Carrizo Springs is a high-fenced hunting spread featuring 18,000 acres and a full-service hunting operation to provide world class deer, quail and dove hunting.
$43,250,000 – 60.2 acres, Disney Land, Florida was sold that is a development site uniquely positioned between Disney World, Universal, Sea World, Premium Outlets and the Orange County Convention Center along the Interstate 4 (I-4) corridor.
$43,940,500 was asking price – Sulphur Bluff Ranch features 13,400 acres and was reportedly sold in conjunction with the neighboring Hageman Reserve. The combined asking price was $84,000,000.
$39,950,000 was asking price – Sold with Sulphur Bluff Ranch, the 1,000 acre Hageman Reserve’s crown jewel is the 65,000-square foot European influenced multipurpose lodge.
$39,555,000 was asking price – The Leon County K B Carter Ranch spread includes 14,650 acres with a major cattle ranching operation, 2,000 crop producing acres and 14 miles of Trinity River frontage.
$39,500,000 was asking price – The 32,000 acre Circle Ranch in the Diablo Mountains of far-West Texas has had only three owners since Obadiah Bounds pioneered the ranch in 1879.
$34,027,500 was asking price – Lion Mountain Ranch is just 20 minutes from downtown Fort Davis and features 17,450 acres of big Mule Deer country, with some of the most scenic canyon lands in the Davis Mountains of Far West Texas.
$29,750,000 was asking price – The 7,325 acre Blue Creek Ranch offers a hunters paradise with a combination of deer, trophy bass fishing, and bird and waterfowl hunting that is hard to compare. Located in southern Wharton County, it’s just over an hour from Houston.
$29,547,200 was asking price – The West Powderhorn Ranch encompasses 10,016 acres along the Texas Gulf Coast near Port ‘O Conner and Matagorda Bay. Mainly high-fenced, it is used primarily as a cattle ranch and hunting ranch, with bobwhite quail, native whitetail deer, and turkey hunting. Other large game animals include Impala, Eland, Addax, Sambar Deer, and Axis Deer.

The Largest Land Owners in America

Below are the top land owners in the US based on acreage.

50. Hadley Family: 260,000 acres together with the large Diamond A Ranch. Heirs to the Anheuser-Busch beer empire,

49. Lyda Family: 260,035 acres, together with La Escalera ranch in far West Texas. Cattle ranchers.

48. Galt Family: 262,000 acres in Montana, together with the Martinsdale Ranch. Cattle ranchers.

47. Anne Marion: 275,000 acres in Texas, together with the well-known 6666, or “4 Sixes” cattle ranch within the Southern Panhandle.

46. Lee Family: 275,000 acres in New Mexico. Sheep and cattle ranchers who owe a few of their wealth to the invention of uranium and coal on their property.

45. Babbitt heirs: 275,000 acres in Arizona. Cattle ranchers.

44. Killam Family 277,000 acres, largely in Texas and Oregon. Oil operations in Louisiana, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas.

43. Kokernot heirs: 278,000 acres in West Texas. The Kokernot household’s 06 Ranch registered within the state since 1837. Leoncita Cattle Co.

42. Fasken Family: 279,128 acres in Texas. David Fasken, a Canadian, purchased a ranch in West Texas in 1913. Fasken Oil & Ranch, a significant oil drilling company was born when oil was discovered on the ranch.

41. Collier Family: 280,000 acres, primarily in Collier County, Florida. Baron Collier, who developed land and infrastructure in southern Florida, had been largest landholder in Florida.

40. Bass Family: 285,000 acres in Texas. Business interests have expanded from oil and cattle ranching.

39. Barta Family: 286,000 acres in Nebraska. The Bartas created their wealth from their prescription providers firm, Sav-Rx. Owns one of many largest cattle ranching operations within the state.

38. Llano Companions: 295,000 acres in New Mexico, Texas and Florida. Ranch operators.

37. Mike Smith: 295,980 acres in Texas. His properties embrace the 11,830 Broseco Ranch, which accommodates two lakes which can be 100 acres in dimension.

36. Robinson & Freed households: 300,000 acres in Utah. Includes six cattle ranches.

35. Shannon Kizer: 302,000 acres in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Kizer has farming and ranching operations that produce peanuts, corn, wheat, dairy, and cattle.

34. Collins Family: 311,395 acres in Northern California and western Pennsylvania. Operators of a long-time lumber enterprise.

33. Stefan Soloviev: 325,077 acres in New Mexico, Kansas and Texas. Soloviev makes use of the land to develop crops like wheat, corn, and sorghum.

32. Malone Mitchell III: 336,000 acres in Texas. Malone Mitchell runs Longfellow Ranches, a 500 sq. mile hunting ranch.

31. Zane & Tanya Kiehne: 345,000 acres in New Mexico and Texas. The couple are ranch operators.

30. Hughes Family: 390,000 acres in Texas. Oil enterprise.

29. Holding Family: 395,030 acres in Montana. Descendants from the Sinclair Oil empire.

28. Jeff Bezos: 420,000 acres in Texas. Bezos is cofounder of Amazon.

27. Philip Anschutz: 434,500 acres in Wyoming and Colorado. In Wyoming, he plans to build 1,000 turbines, each of them 262 feet high, along with a 730-mile power line to get electricity to California.

26. Fisher household: 440,000 acres in California. 440,000 acres in California. The property is mainly timberland. Owners Donald and Doris Fisher co-founded the clothing brand Gap.

25. Simplot Family: 443,091 acres in Idaho. Assembled by Jack Simplot, who first provided McDonald’s with french fries.

24. McDonald household: 474,000 acres in Alabama, Florida, and Oklahoma. Land is used for timber, sand and gravel, and oil.

23. D.R. Horton: 503,000 acres in New Mexico and Texas, the place he hosts a kids’s summer season camp. He operates a ranch and kids’s summer season camp.

22. Westervelt heirs: 518,000 acres in Alabama, Mississippi, and Virginia. Focused on renewable power, lumber and wildlife.

21. Holland Ware: 534,900 acres in Florida and Georgia. Most of Ware’s holdings are managed by the Holland M. Ware Charitable Basis, which helps a number of causes, including animal welfare.

20. Stimson Family: 552,000 acres in Montana and Oregon. Lumber enterprise.

19. Martin Family: 570,000 acres in Louisiana. Long-time lumber enterprise.

18. Ford Family: 580,000 acres in Oregon. Timber.

17. Thomas Peterffy: 581,000 acres in Florida. Peterffy, a refugee from Hungary, made his fortunes as an investor.

16. O’Connor heirs: 587,800 acres in Texas. Oil pursuits.

15. Hamer Family: 600,000 acres in West Virginia. The household harvests hardwood timber from the land.

14. Lykes heirs: 615,000 acres in Texas. The household raises cattle and grows citrus in Florida.

13. Briscoe heirs: 640,000 acres in Texas. The mixed landholdings belonged to former Texas governor, the late Dolph Briscoe Jr.

12. Wilks Brothers: 702,367 acres in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas. Brothers Farris and Dan Wilks began off with Frac Tech, a pure gasoline extraction firm in 2002, and bought it for $3.5 billion in 2011. Since then, they’ve been buying land.

11. Pingree heirs: 830,000 acres in Maine. Long-time lumber firm.

10. King Ranch heirs: 911,215 acres in Texas. The property is the biggest ranch in Texas.

9. Peter Buck: 925,000 acres in Maine.

8. Singleton Family: 1.1 million acres in New Mexico and California.

7. Brad Kelley: 1.2 million acres in Kentucky. Kelley’s funding group owns and runs the 762-acre Calumet Farm, which produces Kentucky Derby and Triple Crown winners.

6. Irving Family: 1.2 million acres in Maine. Business interests include lumber, newspapers, and petrochemicals companies.

5. Stan Kroenke: 1.4 million acres in Montana and Wyoming. The actual property mogul can also be proprietor of the Los Angeles Rams and married to Ann Walton Kroenke, an heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune. Owns the Waggoner Ranch.

4. Reed Family: 1.7 million acres Washington, Oregon, and California. Family members own a long-time logging firm, Green Diamond Resource Co.

3. Emmerson Family: 2 million acres in California and Washington. Relations run Sierra Pacific Industries, a log enterprise that depends on lumber from forest fires and sells it to lumber retailers.

2. Ted Turner: 2 million acres in New Mexico, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Georgia. Turner’s land is utilized by greater than 50,000 head of buffalo for grazing – the biggest non-public herd of bison on the earth.

1. John Malone: 2.2 million acres in Maine, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Malone, the biggest non-public landowner in America and who made his fortune within the telecom enterprise, and runs profitable cattle ranches.

National Association of Realtors Land Sales Statistics for 2018

The big takeaways from the US land sales statistics in 2018 were that the Texas / Oklahoma region (Region 8) accounted for 23% of US land sales in 2018. As the Texas / Oklahoma region dominated land sales in 2018, they were reported in the following categories by market share.

40% Ranch Sales
26% Recreational Land
16% Residential Land
10% Agriculture Land
3% Commercial Land
1% Development/Other Land

I would suspect that commercial land and development land sales were under-reported since those categories are most often sold “off-market”, or often don’t have sales prices publicly reported in Texas.

Other takeaways from the NAR Land Report for 2018 are that the average price per acre for all land sales averaged $4,500, declining from $5,500 in the 2017 report.

The categories enjoying the largest price increases included irrigated agricultural land rising from $6,388 and acre to $9,975 per acre – and ranch acreage rising from $2,921 an acre to $4,215 per acre.

Local banks were the leading lenders for land purchases that involved financing in 2018.

The average size of land sold per transaction declined to 53 acres.

If you would like more specific land price statistics in Texas, contact Troy Corman at troy@t2ranches.com.

Attached below are a few slides from the National Association of Realtors Land Report Sales Statistics for 2018.