Selling Your Land: Preparing Your Ranch for Show
As you contemplate selling your ranch, it is important to have an understanding of the process ahead of you and to prepare your ranch to be as attractive as possible to potential buyers. This often involves cleaning up the junk. Ideally, this begins prior to putting the ranch on the market. For many ranch owners, there is an accumulation of old, discarded machinery, often loosely organized in a “boneyard.” It is likely the buyer will require the bone yard to be cleaned up as a condition of sale, which can add to the stress of selling. Cleaning up before offering your ranch for sale is beneficial because it will show better.
If you hire a good ranch broker to help you with the sale, one of the first things he or she will determine is the most attractive aspects of your ranch and how to best show these off to a potential buyer. As a landowner, these assets may be different from those you have always felt were the most valuable characteristics of your ranch, but a good broker will have a sense of what buyers are looking for and help you prepare.
If your ranch has a significant agricultural operation that makes money on an annual basis, you’ll need good books because you’ll have to show how you do it. The next owner may change the operation from grain to hay or from a cow/calf operation to yearlings, so your numbers may not be applicable to what they do going forward. However, if you want to market the ranch as an operation that makes money, you’ll have to have understandable books. This is also a good time to fix that loading shoot you’ve been meaning to get to.
Elk can be highly destructive to fences and can eat a tremendous amount of grass that a rancher would prefer to feed to his or her cows. However, if you are selling your ranch, elk can be highly desirable. Love em’ or hate em,’ trophy-size elk drive value. If you have big bull elk on your ranch regularly during hunting season, it makes sense to market your property as an elk hunting ranch. You’ll need to prove the animals are there, and the best way to do that is with photos. Collect photos of big elk that have been harvested on your ranch, and start taking photos of large bulls. A game camera can be a good way to accomplish this.
If you have a trout fishery, this will drive value. If the trout are big, you’ll also need photos of these. Keep a trail cut along the fishery to make it easy for people to walk or drive along it. This is beneficial for showing off a valuable asset and also protects against fire danger. If you hire a good ranch broker to market your ranch, he or she will know how to show off the most valuable characteristics of your ranch, whether it’s the agricultural operation, the views, the big game hunting, the trout fishery, the upland bird hunting, the waterfowl hunting or, ideally, a combination.
Connect with Gregory W. Fay
Greg founded Fay Ranches in April 1992 in his one-bedroom apartment in Bozeman, Montana. As the CEO of Fay Ranches, Greg has guided the company's growth from humble beginnings to today's national land brokerage. Over the years, Greg has transacted hundreds of millions of dollars of working farms, ranches, and sporting properties. He has successfully executed some of the nation's most significant land sales and acquisitions.
Alaskan Gold Mine Acquisition: How to Buy and What to Expect
Owning a gold mine is undeniably alluring. When you add the grandeur of Alaska, the promise of striking it rich, and the influence of reality shows featuring determined gold miners, the prospect becomes even more enticing. Adventurers and dreamers alike are drawn to the wild and untamed corners of Alaska, hoping to uncover treasures buried […]
Archery Elk Hunting: Secrets to Success
As the late summer sun radiates down upon your face with penetrating strength, as if the sun is not yet ready to yield its power to the inevitable autumn, a cool mountain breeze descends from the high country delivering with it a brief moment of reprieve as it rattles the now yellow leaves of the […]
