Waggoner Ranch Sells To LA Billionaire
The story of California businesses and investors coming to Texas has become pretty routine, but this one's got star power. Owner of the LA Rams Stan Kroenke bought the famous Waggoner Ranch. The asking price was as big as all outdoors: $725M. But don't worry, even if it went for full price - not a given - he can afford it. His wife is billionaire Ann Walton Kroenke, a niece of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and heir to the Walton family fortune.
Waggoner Ranch is the largest ranch in the US, with more than 510,000 acres and thousands of cattle, hundreds of horses and oil wells, and 30,000 acres of farmland. It will become part of the US division of Kroenke Ranches. Kroenke was already one of the nation's biggest landowners with ranches throughout the United States and Canada.
A Texas judge had to approve the deal due to legal wrangling between the heirs of cattle and oil baron W.T. Waggoner over whether the ranch should be sold. If the deal closes, it will be the first-ever sale of the ranch, according to the Dallas Business Journal. Several interested parties put up a $15M refundable deposit before their deals fell through.
Biggs Freeman Sotheby International Realty's Bernard Uechtritz brokered with Chas S. Middleton and Son's Sam Middleton. Mike Baskerville of Vernon was the receiver of the ranch.
Kroenke and JV partner Provident Realty Advisors also own some Dallas developments in Midtown Park and Preston Hollow, where this house was recently snapped up by another billionaire. [DBJ]
