Tom Barrack Takes Control of Neverland

Earlier this month, AP reported a development that every real estate professional in Santa Barbara County fully anticipated: Neverland no longer belongs to Michael Jackson. The new owner of the 2,500-acre trophy property? That was even less of a surprise: Sycamore Valley Ranch Co., an affiliate of Tom Barrack’s Colony Capital. Read more

Where the Wild Things Are

This Thanksgiving, I encourage you to take a moment to savor “Where the Wild Things Are,” a spot-on essay by Andrew Beahrs that goes to the heart of what we are about at The Land Report. Yes, initially it does focus on our patron saint, Mark Twain, he of our favorite quotation, “Buy land. They’re not making it any more.” But the writer’s primary focus and in truth his lament is the enormous range of wild foods and their once-vaunted place on the American table. Read more

Behind the Woodshed: Jeff Hawn

The Land Report prides itself on singling out landowners who make a difference, inspire others, and establish a legacy. This will not be one of those instances. The name Jeff Hawn will never be included under the category Good Neighbor. Instead, it has already been listed in Colorado under a much different heading: felon. Read more

Sold! Montana’s 6,462-acre Scott Ranch

A lot of noteworthy closings taking place in and around Yellowstone County, Montana. Last week we reported on the sale of the 15,800-acre Bar Diamond Ranch. This time around it’s the 6,462-acre Scott Ranch on the Crow Reservation southeast of Billings, which James Stinehagen of the Flying S Cattle Co. purchased for $387 per acre, according to the Billings Gazette. Read more

Chesapeake Gets $3+ Billion Injection for Marcellus Shale

So the bottom has fallen out of the energy markets and commodity prices are dropping even lower. Next step? Time to welcome the overseas investors. Remember, folks, we’ve got trillions of dollars of assets tied up in land, and all of it is protected by Old Glory. No matter how bad Wall Street is faring, no matter how low consumer confidence drops, there are plenty of eagle-eyed investors with very deep pockets who look at our timberland, our shorelines, our minerals, and even our water, and what do they see? Read more

Potential for Massive Wildfires Next Summer in the West

The great plague that is the pine beetle infestation has now destroyed millions of acres of timber across the western U.S. and into Canada. The extent of this calamity is so enormous that last month we covered the devastation at this website. This week Jim Robbins at The New York Times picked up the storyline and filed his own excellent report about the disappearing forest. Here are some of his key observations: Read more

Federal Reserve Bullish on Great Plains

Farmland in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and parts of New Mexico jumped 20 percent in the third quarter of 2008, according to a report released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City this week. Here are some of the reasons why. Read more

Timberland Outperforms the S&P 500?

That’s one of the conclusions from this report that ran online at Forbes.com a few weeks ago titled Cut Down Portfolio Risk With Timber. I had fully expected the author, Robert Stammers, to be a shill for an organization tied to the timber industry. Turns out I was wrong. He’s a CFA, a quant, who specializes in providing strategic planning and analysis for business owners and private investors. What does he have to say about investing in timber? It’s quite simple. Read more

Sold! Montana’s 15,800-acre Bar Diamond Ranch

There seems to be no sign of an economic fallout in Montana’s still strong recreational land market. That’s the takeaway from the Billings Gazette, which reports that the 15,800-acre Bar Diamond Ranch has closed. Read more

Sold! $50 Million of Recreational Land at Midwest Auction

These days investing in the stock market is not for the faint of heart, and in markets from coast to coast thousands of developer-owned condos now sit vacant. But when it comes to land, there’s no shortage of motivated buyers. That’s the takeaway from a three-day auction of hunting and recreational tracts that grossed more than $50 million earlier this month. Read more

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