- There's a surplus of multimillion-dollar luxury ranches out west, as baby boomers' children don't want to take over their parents' sprawling ranches, Katherine Clarke reported for The Wall Street Journal.
- The ranches held a Hollywood, Wild West allure for previous generations, but millennials find them too labor-intensive and expensive.
- The oversupply of luxury ranches is on trend with the overall luxury-real-estate market in the US, from a surplus of penthouses in New York City to a glut of mansions in Los Angeles.
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Millennials aren't wild about everything in the West.
As baby boomers in western states age, their luxury ranches are going up for sale — but younger generations, namely millennials, view the properties as more labor-intensive and expensive than appealing, Katherine Clarke reported for The Wall Street Journal.
"Their children aren't necessarily always as interested in operating the properties," Ken Mirr, a local ranch broker, told Clarke. "Sometimes the kids just see cows and think 'What should I do with this?'"
It's led to an oversupply of luxury ranches in the real-estate market, mostly in Colorado, the report said. Buyers aren't in a hurry to make a purchase, leading to price cuts — and some ranches have sat on the market for years, Clarke reported.
Most ranchers don't disclose how much they paid for properties, and public records aren't always transparent, making it hard to assess property values, but they've sold for as much as $175 million, an agent told Clarke. Operating costs vary but can be in the millions, Clarke said.
There's the professional golfer Greg Norman's 12,000-acre ranch, listed for $50 million, and the late real-estate developer Ronald Boeddeker's 221,000-acre ranch — his children put it on the market for $100 million in 2017, but it's since received a $30 million price cut, according to Clarke.
And last year, a $180 million lottery winner put his 16,000-square-foot California mountain estate, which comes with a fully operational buffalo ranch, up for sale, Business Insider's Katie Warren reported. Originally listed for $26 million, it was cut by $6.9 million in August.
Read more: NYC has a penthouse problem, LA has a mansion problem, and Miami has a condo problem
There's an abundance of luxury real estate across the US
The surplus of luxury ranches is indicative of the state of the US luxury market.
In New York City, penthouses have been sitting on the market for months to years. Many of those properties eventually receive drastic price cuts or get carved into two smaller apartments, Warren previously reported.
"Like any commodity, when the market is saturated with them, their value declines," Jason Haber, an agent at Warburg Realty in Manhattan, told Warren. "If under every rock you found a diamond, diamonds would decline in value. That's what is happening right now."
Meanwhile, Los Angeles has a glut of empty mega-mansions, as Clarke reported in a separate article for The Journal. Real-estate agents and developers are employing extreme measures to get those mansions off the market, from themed parties and gimmicky amenities to $100 million price cuts.
And in Miami, luxury condos are sitting on the market a hair too long — some are taking four to six years to sell, Jerry Iannelli reported for the Miami New Times last year.