Wall Street Journal – Ranch Dressing: Brokers Prep Giant Waggoner Farm for Sale

Ranch Dressing: Brokers Prep Giant Waggoner Farm for Sale
Giant Texas Property with Lots of Cattle, Oil Heads to Market After Decades in Limbo

By Kris Hudson
Wall Street Journal

Updated Aug. 12, 2014

The heirs of Texas cattle baron W.T. Waggoner have put his half-million-acre property, one of the largest fenced ranches in the U.S., on the market, potentially ending decades of family squabbling over the property.

The 165-year-old ranch has an asking price of $725 million. The listing comes after a state judge in Vernon, Texas, on Aug. 6 approved plans to market the property.

The ranch spans 510,000 acres across six counties near the Oklahoma border and includes thousands of head of cattle, hundreds of horses and 26,000 farmed acres. However, the ranch’s most valuable asset likely is its mineral rights. The property includes 1,200 wells that pump 675,000 barrels of oil a year, but its reserves haven’t been fully assessed, which bidders likely will want to do.

Any sale will include 42% of the ranch’s mineral rights, with various Waggoner heirs retaining the balance, said Mike Baskerville, the ranch’s court-appointed receiver.

The asking price might appear lofty, but land broker Austin Reilly said it is difficult to find properties comparable to the Waggoner Ranch. “It stands by itself,” said Mr. Reilly, a broker with Land Advisors Organization in Fort Worth. “There are individuals that will be interested in the history and the ranching heritage, and there will be individuals—and likely large energy corporations—interested in the resources. I expect a spirited bidding campaign.”

Lubbock broker Sam Middleton and Dallas broker Bernie Uechtritz, who are listing the property, say they intend to market the ranch to large land owners in the Eagle Ford shale region of southern Texas and elsewhere, and to very wealthy potential U.S. and foreign buyers. “We want to go into this with a strong contract with substantial escrow money so we’re dealing with someone who will perform” as a buyer, Mr. Middleton said.

The ranch has been in receivership since 2004, after Mr. Waggoner’s heirs, now led by Buck Wharton and Helen Biggs Willingham, failed to agree on how to divide it among themselves or sell it, as mandated by the trust governing their ownership of it. “The parties have been unable to agree for decades as to what to do with the property,” said Mr. Baskerville, the receiver.

Since the early 1990s, heirs including Mr. Wharton and the late sculptor Electra Waggoner Biggs have objected to various plans to divide or liquidate the property. The surviving heirs finally agreed last week to market the ranch for sale rather than accept Mr. Baskerville’s proposal to auction it.