After conservations torpedoed a plan to build 2,700 homes on 3,000 acres 30 minutes from downtown Austin, Texas, the city bought half the property and created a conservation easement on the other half, restricting construction to 15 home sites.
The result is O Bar Ranch, 100-acre ranches priced at $1.75 million to $3 million, “an unusual Austin real estate opportunity … for fledgling urban cowboys and cowgirls,” Austin Business Journal’s Jan Buchholtz reports.
One hundred acres “is tiny by Texas ranch standards,” Buchholtz notes, but broker Tim Riley of Land Advisors Organization says he expects the sites to be snatched up by high-level executives in Austin’s burgeoning tech scene. Two of the 15 sites have already sold.
Tech titans who want to ride the range on the weekends will even be able to own some animals, Riley said, but “this isn’t a productive agricultural opportunity.” Source: bizjournals.com.
