$115 million New Mexico ranch owned by D.R. Horton family finds a buyer

One of America’s largest ranches — a New Mexico property spanning more land than the city of Houston — has officially changed hands after almost a year on the market.

Great Western Ranch, a roughly 504,000-acre property situated in western New Mexico, has been sold to an unknown buyer for an undisclosed price, according to the real estate firm Hall and Hall.

The sprawling Great Western Ranch hit the market with a $142 million price tag roughly a year ago and was most recently listed at $115 million before it was sold in a deal that closed on July 30, said Jeff Buerger, the ranch’s listing agent and a partner with Hall and Hall, a national brokerage specializing in land and ranch sales. Buerger represented the seller, the Horton family, who run the Texas-based homebuilding empire D.R. Horton.

“It’s very difficult to find a ranch that size in the western United States, so its value is tethered to its rarity and its inability to be replicated,” Buerger said in an interview.

The Great Western Ranch was much smaller when the family purchased it a little over a decade ago, but it grew as the family combined it with two nearby ranches they acquired over the years, according to Buerger.

The family, who have other land holdings in Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, decided to “consolidate their agricultural operations” after the death of the family company’s founder, Donald Ray Horton, in 2024, Buerger said. The family declined to comment for this story.

Buerger said the family stewarded the ranch “very well” and left behind “more than just land.”

“It’s a living testament to generations of thoughtful management,” Buerger said.

For Hayden Outdoors Managing Partner Dax Hayden, the sale of the Great Western Ranch represents “a significant event in the world of large land holdings,” he said in a statement.

The Colorado-based real estate brokerage, which also specializes in land sales, represented the buyer, who, along with the sales price, is unknown due to a nondisclosure agreement, a spokesperson said.

Existing conservation efforts and the ranch’s “rich biodiversity” were major draws for the buyer, Hayden said in a statement. The buyer, Hayden continued, is committed to building upon the ranch’s legacy of “natural integrity and ecological health” by continuing to preserve it.

The sale comes months after another massive western New Mexico ranch hit the market. In March, the Yates family — based in Artesia and known for their long oil and gas legacy in New Mexico — listed their roughly 109,000-acre property known as Atarque Ranch for $68.5 million. The ranch is currently under contract, Buerger said.

The Great Western Ranch is nearly four times the size of the Atarque Ranch. Covering nearly 790 square miles of land, the ranch is estimated to be greater than three-quarters the size of the state of Rhode Island, according to the listing.

The property — about 150 miles west of Albuquerque and 80 miles southwest of Grants — is north of Quemado, south of Fence Lake and just a mile east of the Arizona state line.

Spanning Catron and Cibola counties, the property is made up of roughly 225,000 deeded acres and roughly 276,000 leased acres, which the ranch owner leases from the state of New Mexico, the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The ranch’s lands carry great historical significance, as it’s home to numerous Native American sites, dwellings, petroglyphs and pottery shards, the listing said. In 2004, state archaeologists found two Anasazi home sites on the ranch dating from 1000 to 1150 A.D., according to the listing.

With a thriving wildlife population consisting of elk, mule deer and antelope, the ranch is leased out for hunting to Black Mountain Outfitters through early 2027. Buerger said the property’s big game population draws in hunters from across the globe.

“You’re talking about an area where the genetics of wildlife are in the top three in the Western United States,” Buerger said. “Western New Mexico is historic and notable for quality, genetics and size of bull elk and mule deer. Anyone who takes hunting seriously understands the value of the area.”

The ranch also has ongoing livestock operations, with roughly 900 cattle included in the recent sale. But with about 134 pastures, the property can support a much larger operation, the listing said.

In addition to eight residences, the property comes complete with agricultural outbuildings, equipment and storage shops, barns, offices, corrals and livestock facilities, the listing said. With 86 wells and several ponds, small lakes and stock tanks, the ranch also comes with water rights.

It is unknown exactly what the new owner’s plans for the ranch are, but Buerger said he believes they will “continue the same pattern” as the previous owners.

Before the sale, the ranch received “a massive level of interest,” with six different billionaires making offers over the past year, Buerger said.

“Land is one of those things that I think a lot of people have confidence in placing capital in, especially when there’s uncertainty,” Buerger said, adding the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a frenzy of new clients into the ranch real estate market.

While the size of the ranch posed a challenge, it also posed an opportunity that Hayden said doesn’t come around often.

“It’s very rare to get to work on such a large, beautiful piece of property,” Hayden told the Journal. “It is a generational type size of ranch and they don’t happen very often so I feel really lucky (I got) to work on it.”