THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Friday, August 23, 2019 |M7
Tom Bradbury and his sister Lisa
Beauprez have listed their family’s ranch
near Byers, Colo., for $22 million.THE WEST COAST IS CALLING
RESERVE ATOUR| 833-777-1660
1221 OCEAN.COM|SANTA MONICA, CAIRVINE MANAGEMENT COMPANY, A LICENSED REAL ESTATE BROKER DRE LIC. #02041810LUXURY APARTMENT RESIDENCES
Slew of Luxury
Ranches for Sale
rado, said there are more large trophy
ranches for sale now than he can recall in
his almost 30 years in the business. There
are about 20 ranches priced over $20 mil-
lion in the state, according to a Wall Street
Journal analysis of listings.
Some of Colorado’s most prominent list-
ings include a nearly 12,000-acre ranch
near Meeker, owned by retired professional
golfer Greg Norman, which has been for
sale since 2011; it is listed for $50 million.
Henry Kravis, the billionaire co-founder of
private-equity giant KKR, put his ranch,
known as Westlands, on the market for $46
million in January. Discovery Channel
founder John Hendricks relisted his ranch
near the Utah border, plus an adjacent re-
sort, for $279 million in May. (He and his
wife, Maureen Hendricks, first put the
property on the market for $149
million two years ago; that price
didn’t include the resort.)
Despite a strong local econ-
omy, buoyed by tourism and the
aerospace and cannabis indus-
tries, the surge in supply has led
to a lack of urgency from buy-
ers—and is putting downward
pressure on prices. Some have
sat on the market for years.
For the children of ranchers,
the Wild West doesn’t always
have the same draw as it had for
their parents. Ranch operations
are labor intensive, and keeping
up with costs can be a struggle.
And grandchildren would often
rather play videogames and
hang out with their friends than
go fly-fishing in the wilderness.
“If you look back to the ’70s
and ’80s, there were these
guys...raised with this mythology of the
West,” said Ken Mirr, a local ranch broker.
“It was attachment to something Hollywood
produced. Their children aren’t always as
interested in operating the properties.
Sometimes the kids see cows and think
‘What should I do with this?’”
Many of the ranches have expansive
mountainous landscapes, forests, meadows,
rivers, fisheries and big-game-hunting facil-
ities. Mr. Kravis’s has a golf course. Operat-
ing costs vary dramatically, depending on
how much infrastructure ranchers have on
their land and the level of agricultural ac-
tivity but can often be millions a year.
And ranching is an increasingly tough
business. The ever-growing expense of up-
keep and infrastructure, coupled with the
declining price of beef, is squeezing ranch-
ers on both ends, experts said.
“I know a lot of multimillionaires who
run cattle and still lose millions a year,”
said Tony Caligiuri of Colorado Open Lands,
a land-conservancy group. “One guy I talked
to recently in oil and gas said he’s hoping
to get his loss down to $1 million a year.
His ranch hasn’t turned a profit the whole
time he owned it.” In some ways,
wealthy ranchers who can afford
losses are keeping the industry
afloat, Mr. Caligiuri said.
Almost three decades ago,
California real-estate devel-
oper Ronald Boeddeker and
his wife, Kitty Boeddeker,
bought a huge property near
the ski resorts of Steamboat
Springs. “My father grew up as
a rancher in California, and loved
the outdoors and horses,” said Cary Kru-
kowski, Mr. Boeddeker’s daughter and a
Denver-based concert and events promoter.
The Boeddekers relished the ranch for
years, building an 11,000-square-foot log
mansion and a hunting lodge.
Mr. Boeddeker died in 2010. The chil-
dren, who are in their 40s and 50s and
spread around the country, struggled to
keep up with day-to-day cattle and hunting
operations on a property that is larger than
all the boroughs of New York City com-
bined. They decided to sell, listing the
roughly 221,000-acre ranch for $100 million
in 2017. They have since lowered the price
to $70 million.
As a child growing up in Durango, Colo.,
David R. Duncan, a winery owner based in
Napa, remembers his father Ray Duncan’s
Continued from page M1
attraction to the cowboy lifestyle. “He was
always reading a book on cattle science. I
remember it had a red cover and seemed
about 4 inches thick.”
At that time, there was a fascination
with ranching, which had been glamorized
by the likes of business magnates like T.
Boone Pickens and Ted Turner. “I have a
picture of my dad sitting on a horse wear-
ing a V-neck cashmere sweater and a cow-
boy hat,” laughed Mr. Duncan, 53.
Ray Duncan died in 2015; the family
ranch—Diamond Tail Ranch near Jelm,
Colo.—is on the market for $44.9 million.
Most ranchers are secretive about what
they paid for their properties, and public
records are largely opaque, making it hard
to determine the value of these ranches. “In
ranching and farming, you never tell any-
one how many cattle you have or how many
acres you have,” said Tom Bradbury, a Den-
ver real-estate developer whose family is
listing their South Comanche Ranch near
Byers for $22 million.
Hall & Hall agent Brian Smith said he be-
lieves the highest price ever paid for a Col-
orado ranch was $175 million. That record
was set in 2007 when the Forbes fam-
ily sold their more than 170,000-
acre ranch in Southern Colorado
to hedge-fund manager Louis
Bacon, a spokesman for Mr.
Bacon confirmed. More re-
cently, William Bruce Harri-
son, a scion of one of Texas’
largest oil fortunes, paid
roughly $70 million for an
83,000-acre ranch in Colorado’s
San Luis Valley in 2017, according to
people familiar with the deal. While the
price represented a significant discount to
its $105 million asking price, the sale was
still a major transaction for the market.
For many sellers, it is a waiting game.
Ranch broker Christy Belton is listing Big
Creek Ranch, a 4,850-acre property near
Steamboat Springs, for $39.9 million. It was
first listed for $59 million a decade ago,
and has been on and off the market several
times since. Ms. Belton said the initial price
was too high, especially since they were hit
soon after with the financial crisis.
Owner Greg Lamantia, a 62-year-old
Texas beer distributor who bought the
property with his family almost two de-
cades ago, said he can be patient. They
were testing the market initially, he said.
Now, they’re more serious, though he$50
MILLION
The listing price of retired
golfer Greg Norman’s
12,000-acre Colorado
ranch, for sale
since 2011.added, “if it doesn’t hap-
pen, we’ll just take it off
the market and enjoy it
some more.”
Unlike other sectors of the U.S. high-end
real-estate market, ranches can’t fall back
on international purchasers. Broker Tim
Murphy said there is virtually no demand
for ranches from international buyers,
many of whom “don’t get it.”
As the cowboy romance fades, sellers are
also trying a new tack: targeting conserva-
tionists. “Today, it’s more about conserva-
tion. You’re starting to hear more landown-ers talking about wildlife habitat
enhancement and ecological work,” Hall &
Hall’s Mr. Buerger said. Other targeted
groups include wealthy families from the
East Coast or Silicon Valley.
Mr. Buerger said he is ultimately opti-
mistic about the market, provided the econ-
omy is good. “At the end of the day, land is
the one thing that can never be reproduced.
It’s always going to be a great place to park
capital.”FROM TOP: TONI AXELROD FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (3); REBECCA STUMPF FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNALAfter the death of their father in 2010, the four children, who
are spread out across the country, struggled to keep up with
the cattle and hunting operations before deciding to sell, said
Cary Krukowski, one of the daughters, below.CROSS MOUNTAIN RANCH
Near Steamboat Springs, Colo.
List price 2017: $100 million
List price today: $70 millionTotal acreage: 221,000Square footage of house: 11,000MANSION
NY