As ranch brokers, our main business goal is representing properties and sellers, and marketing the ranches for sale to bring buyers to our properties. In many scenarios, we will get buyers that contact us, interested in a property that we have listed for sale, that want to schedule a showing and see the property. As you may well know, not every buyer that comes to see a property is the perfect fit, and some properties can have multiple showings before the right buyer comes along. Some properties we’ve even had over 70 showings on. That’s lots of different buyers.
Now before I continue, I’m going to explain brokerage in Colorado real estate. As realtors, we can represent clients in three capacities:
Seller Agency
Buyer Agency
Transaction Broker Agency
As you may guess, when we represent a seller and a property, we are acting in Seller agency. If we bring a buyer from our marketing efforts, we may transition to Transaction Brokerage, where we play a role similar to a referee between two football teams, the buyer and seller. If we’re representing a buyer pursuing a property, we are working as Buyer Agents to represent the buyers in their pursuit on a property.
In the case when a property we have listed doesn’t fit perfectly for what a buyer is looking for, many times we will consult with the buyer and offer that we can help them with their search in finding the right property, and transition from seller agency on one of our listings, to working as a buyer agent.
This is why it’s critically important to know your market as a ranch broker. In this most recent scenario, I had clients contact me to tour a listing we had, the Lone Cabin Ranch, 383 acres with a beautiful log home just outside of Paonia. It turned out the ranch wasn’t the right fit for them, so I consulted with the buyers, discussed some other ranch properties I knew in the Cedaredge, Collbran, and Mesa areas, and over the course of a couple weeks we had three more days touring properties, where I was now acting as their buyer’s agent to represent them touring other broker’s listings.
Nothing we saw in Colorado fit the bill for what they were looking for. Large acreage, horse property, ability to graze cattle and hold over the winter, and a modest home, under $5 million dollars. It didn’t exist in the early summer of 2023 in Western Colorado.
So I got online, and started looking in other states. While searching, I got an email blast from my associates at Mason Morse Ranch Company. Blackhall Mountain ranch in Encampment, Wyoming had just reduced its list price from $4.5 million to $3.95 million. I sent it to the buyers, and they were immediately interested in the property with the new price.
We toured the ranch with the listing broker, and the listing broker acted as an intermediary in Wyoming to facilitate the contracts between the buyers and the seller in Wyoming. After a fairly quick due diligence period, we explore the water rights, grazing permit, property inspection, and more. The deal closed in less than 45 days.
The punchline to this post? Know your inventory. If you’ve got a property, odds are it won’t be perfect for every buyer you find. So stay on top of similar listings that may work better for your clients, and represent them accordingly. And don’t be afraid to hop in the truck and drive 6 hours for showings in other states!
Jake Hubbell, ALC
970-250-9396
