The Magazine of the American Landowner is an essential guide for investors, landowners, and those interested in buying or selling land. The award-winning quarterly is known for its annual survey of America's largest landowners, The Land Report 100.
Issue link: http://landreport.epubxp.com/i/705552
Who better to prove Taylor right than Malcolm Forbes? In 1968, the publisher of F orbes paid $600,000 for a Montana ranch. The six-figure price worked out to a sky-high valuation of $1,000 per cow unit. Yet just ten years later, that same ranch sold for $ 7 million. The dam was about to break. (Learn more about the Forbes and their legacy in The Land Report, Winter 2014.) In 1989, Bobby Shelton gave Hall and Hall Inc. an exclusive one-person listing to show Ted Turner the 107,000-acre Flying D Ranch. Shelton thought it inconceivable that the cable TV mogul would agree to his terms. He thought wrong. The $21 million purchase price was a game-changer. It not only raised the bar in ranch real estate, but it confirmed what Taylor had divined: investment-quality rural real estate was an asset class unto itself. Decades later, Taylor and his colleagues took this concept one step further when they successfully launched Hall and Hall Auctions. The goal? Greater liquidity for the asset class. The Flying D was not the first ranch Turner bought with Hall and Hall. Nor would it be the last. All told, Turner Ranches relied on Hall and Hall to help acquire a significant part of his portfolio totaling more than 2 million acres in the United States and overseas. In the late 1980s, Doug Hall and Jim Taylor were sole owners of Hall and Hall Inc. Then t he two invited Joel Leadbetter and another broker to buy in as shareholders. The result- ing structure was a unique brokerage model: an employee-owned firm. "As an employee- o wned company, we've assembled a great team of men and women, many of whom are shareholders. Everybody has a seat at the table. We all work together," says Leadbetter, who succeeded Taylor as managing director. "This structure requires a group that's very dedicated to the same principles and work ethic," says Doug Hall, now chairman emeritus. As Hall and Hall Inc. grew, the idea of reuniting with Hall and Hall Mortgage emerged as an obvious move. That took place in 2000, and the results speak for themselves, most recently with the record-breaking sale of the W.T. Waggoner Estate Ranch in February. "It's been a record year, so there's a pretty good feeling around these offices," Doug says. In 1968, when Henry Sr. stepped down, he gave his successors a bit of advice: "Together, we have built a reputation, a modest living, and a way of life that is rewarding to me. Now it is yours. Nurture it. Devote your energies to expansion, diversification, and integrity." Boy, did they. 20 The LandReport | S U M M E R 2 0 1 6 LANDREPORT.COM "Together, we have built a reputation, a modest living, and a way of life that is rewarding to me. Now it is yours. Nurture it. Devote your energies to expansion, diversification, and integrity. " — Henry Hall Sr. (1968)