Exploring Texas Land and Ranches with Grant Bohls

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Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE:
Welcome back. And thanks for listening to the Team Lally real estate show home of the guaranteed sold program. We’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne and I’m Attilio. And if you have any questions, just give us a call at 7999596 or check us out online at Team lally.com. All

ATTILIO:
Our guest today is a fifth generation Texan from Dripping Springs where their family excels in custom home building. He earned degrees in energy management and finance from the University of Tulsa, leading to a career as a land man in Midland, Texas

ADRIENNE:
combining land management knowledge and homebuilding expertise. Our guest found his niche in real estate specializing in land and ranch properties. He spends time on custom home projects, remodels and land transactions. Please welcome our guest, Grant Bohls.

ATTILIO:
Hey, Grant, Hey,

GRANT: 
how are you? Good,

ATTILIO: 
good. Good. You know,

ADRIENNE: 
welcome to the show.

ATTILIO: 
I was reading your intro and I was thinking about a song from Bing Crosby cue up that song Here we go. Oh, give me land lots of land starry skies above. Don’t fence me and that’s actually a real song. She’s singing in scouts at campfire it’s really cool. I think it came about because correct me if I’m wrong back in the day, everything was wide open and then it was like what do they call it? The barbed wire fence wars going up and that’s what we got today. These these ranches out there. Like, do you ever come across anybody named Haas on the Ponderosa? No. And Little Joe. Anyway, I’m dating myself that’s Bonanza thing get it in get an indie, we should have all of that music for grant to come on the show. No.

ADRIENNE: 
Well, we have you gorgeous, you know, it really for me shoot,

ATTILIO: 
man, I got all the sound effects. But so Grant a couple questions tell us about the family history and how how it led to for you to be in this business.

GRANT: 
Yeah. Like you mentioned, I’m fifth generation. So my family settled out here in the 1850s. Yes. And we’ve been kind of all around here. All of our lives, my dad started his own custom homebuilding business about 37 years ago. And so grew up around that, you know, gives me kind of an edge on what it’s like to build a house and what it takes and what to look for. And so after leaving the oil and gas industry, where I was a land man, basically buying and selling mineral rights, it was kind of a easy transition into buying and selling branches, you know, the surface instead of subsurface and combining those two things, has really been a fun experience and kind of given me an edge in landing ranch real estate world.

ADRIENNE: 
So So Grant earlier on in the show, I know you probably you weren’t listening at that point. But we were talking about focus and why it’s so important to focus I and you know, I know that you’re got your team, and then you in particular, you have this focus on selling Texas ranches. What like what is it like to sell these these big parcels? Tell us about it? Yeah, yeah.

GRANT: 
I mean, we, we do all kinds of land from an acre to 1000s. And I mean, that’s, that’s what drove me to this side of the industry is I like being outside. I like being outdoors, seeing animals and rivers and lakes, and just, you know, being out there seeing all of what Texas has to offer. And being part of these transactions is, I mean, they’re so different than residential, and there’s so many nuances, but there’s so many cool things you get to see. And yeah, I mean, I’ve driven around this state my entire life, and now getting to do what I do. I get to go on pieces of property that I’ve passed 100 times, or I would have never gotten to see before, so it’s really really cool. I

ATTILIO: 
can’t imagine what showings must be like you ever did a showing and a helicopter?

GRANT: 
I have not yet, but we use the UTVs or like ATVs to ride around a lot.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, you’re like, air quotes. I’m showing a property.

GRANT: 
Exactly. I mean, my showing might take three hours though.

ADRIENNE:
And we actually we had a client that sold their other beach cookie cutter house to buy ranch and to go buy a ranch in Texas. Unfortunately, it wasn’t your part of Texas otherwise we would have made that Texas

ATTILIO: 
or was it Arizona? I thought it was Arizona. It was Arizona. I think it was Arizona. They just wanted to be able to cook their bacon and eggs on the hood of their car. Say they’re buying desert. Yeah. So you know, it’s funny. I was in Tucson, Arizona going to school there. And live there from 1985 to 2000 moved back to Hawaii. But I said I want to own a piece of some land in Arizona. So I actually bought 36 acres. So I have I have my little ranch out there. Yeah, I bought it for $8,000 it’s all paid off. And today it’s worth nine that no I don’t know how much worth it’s worth today probably. But I get the I get the i It’s funny because I get the postcards in the letters all the time, hey, we want to buy your property.

ADRIENNE: 
So like So speaking of the pricing that you’re mentioning, and that was a long time ago, but 24 years ago, like you know, we’re here in Hawaii, where the average or the median price of homes on Oahu was about a million dollars. You’re not getting very much land with that. What? What kind of range? Yeah, what kind of range? Are you seeing as far as the price ranges for these wrenches?

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, $2 million. What what what size wrench is that looking like?

GRANT: 
Well, you know, it’s, it’s kind of like what you’re talking about, you know, you’re you’re on island, so you’re landlocked, you’re kind of limited. And you know what they say? No, they’re not making any more land. So it’s definitely got its value. And it also depends where you’re at. Yeah, so kind of where I’m at in the surrounding Austin area. Our prices are higher. I mean, I’d say now we’re back to around 40,000 an acre, which is pretty good. Yeah. COVID COVID pricing went crazy out here. But, you know, the further out you go in between the metropolitan areas, you can see stuff from 5000 an acre and 15 to 20. Those are pretty good prices. Nice.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah. And the Todd, tell us about things too. I think there were things to look at, for things like restrictions, easements, rights, ag exemptions, all that tell us about like, yeah, what are those things people need to keep an eye out for? And by the way, this doesn’t mean you go on Google and go find something and go write an offer, you need a pro like, like, that’s because he’s only giving you the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole bunch of other things you need to be doing on your due diligence, but give us give us some funny, give us some main nuggets.

GRANT:
Yeah, I mean, though, those things you mentioned are some of the biggest things that can get, you know, get you caught up, can cost you money, and, you know, have legal issues. So, you know, easements are a big one, you know, who has a right to enter your property, there may be other people. What about a pipeline? What about a water line? You know, there’s going to be someone who has to maintain those. Are you okay with having that on there, you know, leases with that. Wind Farm leases, solar farm leases, grazing leases? I mean, there’s a variety of different things. Depending where you’re at minerals are a big part of it, you know, the land conflict minerals, how much do you get? So stuff like that, that if you don’t know what to look for, it can bite you. And ag exemptions are a big thing in Texas. It’s not so much a quote unquote exemption is really it’s a way to lower the appraised value of your land. So in here in Texas, we have property taxes, so there’s a way to, in essence, lower your property taxes, if you have livestock or wildlife management and, you know, do the right things. There’s a

ATTILIO: 
you have a whole bunch of fighting chickens.

GRANT: 
Yeah, no.

ADRIENNE: 
Chicken, you have to be regular chickens like laying,

ATTILIO: 
you know, these chickens. They might be people who are like, oh, let’s bring my chickens from Waianae and then I get the Ag exemption? No, yeah. Well, you

ADRIENNE: 
know, you know, it was funny, actually, this morning, I got a call from someone from city and county about one of our listings that is considered AG. So she’s reminding me Oh, your client needs to file and explain what her business is. Otherwise, she’s gonna lose her ag exemption? I don’t know. I was like, wow, like, that is really nice. Thank you for calling to remind us and help her to, you know, keep that exemption? Yes. We got to do it. Every year. Yeah, yeah.

GRANT: 
Yeah, we have to do a filing every year. And I don’t know if it’s like that over there. But if you miss it, and you mess up, there’s rollback taxes for the previous three years, which can cost you, you know, 1000

ATTILIO: 
Whoa,

GRANT: 
gotta look into that. So gotta be on top

ATTILIO: 
of it. Stay on top of your timeline alarm on your phone calendar reminders.

So yeah, that’s the important thing to know. And talk about like, water. Where does water how important? Is it? water? No water on land and its value?

GRANT: 
Well, are you talking like surface water? Like utility water?

ATTILIO: 
Yeah. Like drinking water? Yeah. It’s

GRANT: 
very important. I mean, even if you’re just having a recreational piece, you know, you’re gonna go out there, you’re probably gonna stay out there. Yeah. So you need something that gets real hot around here. Yes. And wells, a lot of people drill wells. That’s a very common practice out here. Rainwater is very common. If you, you know, if you’re lucky enough, you might get some city utility water. But that’s pretty rare point of view between you.

ADRIENNE: 
So, so great. We did touch on the small acreage, being a bit of a big part of your business, but what is considered small acreage

ATTILIO: 
and what kind of price points are you looking at? Yeah,

GRANT: 
I mean, small acreage is, I considered pretty much anything one acre at 20 acres. Yeah. And you know, that that kind of price point to mean, I’m sold six acres that was $800,000. And so five acres that was 180. So, you know, it just vary. So like, again, varies on that location, location, location, location.

ATTILIO: 
You know what in Hawaii, it’s hard for us for people to visualize one acre, but I know like, Y’all to visualize it. I still remember this from my realtor course. It’s there to remember the square footage. It’s 711 43,650 square feet. So forth is seven and six and five is 11. So 70 Levin like so I remember Slurpee. So and you figure basic lots about 5000 square feet, you got about eight of those, right about eight of those. So you fit about eight homes. I looked at it, my entire subdivision has 300 homes in it. It’s 11 acres and I own 36 Why don’t have three subdivisions in the middle of nowhere in Arizona, but you know, and people cannot just they can’t buy these things and then build like a subdivision. Right, you got all these zoning rules?

GRANT: 
Well, that’s, that’s a big part of it. We work with a lot of developers and yeah, just if it’s possible, you gotta look into that restrictions are a big thing. Yeah. You know, most of the time when you’re buying something, you’re not really too worried about zoning, because it’s usually out of the city limits, you know, what we deal with? There’s nothing big left in the city.

ATTILIO: 
So if I wanted to build like a underground bunker, like in last 10 stories down, then I can do that. And I can live in an underground home other than the law. No. Yeah.

GRANT: 
I mean, that’s, that’s all you are, depending where you are, you’re gonna need a lot of Jack cameras and dynamite. Yeah, Rocky. So it was the reason we don’t have basements in Texas. Gotcha.

ADRIENNE: 
So on that note, Grant in here in Hawaii, we have quite a bit of restrictions on like, permits, and there’s just a lot of rules on building. It sounds like things are a little different. Over there in Texas as far as the restriction? Yeah. Right.

GRANT: 
Yeah. Outside outside the city. I’m going to put my builder hat on. Yeah. It’s, it’s pretty, I’d say relaxed, you typically only have to really deal with a county permit counting building permit. Yeah. And that’s for the build side. Now. It’s got restrictions on it, like seller imposed restrictions or deed restrictions, you know, you just have to take those into consideration. But, you know, most of that, basically, to preserve the land, you know, we we try to preserve that as much as we can, like you mentioned, until, you know, maybe there’s some restrictions and say you can’t develop it, or you can’t have commercial commercial business on it, or you can’t subdivide it any further. And most of those are, you know, just to really preserve the land as best you can, and maybe their neighboring property, and they don’t want to be looking at a dump pile or something, you know, yeah,

ATTILIO:
I know. And watch those. I forgot. I don’t have. I have like streaming TV, so to have the live TV, but I found where I was watching it, what it was like in Wyoming, it’s like a modern day. And they’re talking about all the conservation easements that they have out there. They want to preserve all their just the open space and, and we had, yeah, we had 16 acres, and the neighboring lot of the purple cap on the North Shore was conservation easement. And they had, it was pretty cool. They put a sign that explain what it was and it was screwed to the telephone pole, right outside the property and it just to preserve the way it is they can, they can do like they have a barn there and some horses but nothing’s gonna change. They do event like weddings and stuff like that. But they’re not going to be building a subdivision up there. That’s for sure. servation Yeah, in perpetuity, which means forever. Forever.

GRANT: 
We have never once seen one come out of conservation. So

ATTILIO: 
we got to because we can’t develop every square inch right? I know you guys are a builder and custom home builder, but I’m saying even your family wouldn’t want every square inch of Texas developed. No. Yeah,

GRANT: 
absolutely. No, we have. We have we still have a lot of land in Texas, though. Yeah. So

ADRIENNE: 
also Grant. I have a question. There’s been some big topics like a big deal with short term rentals here in Hawaii. We’ve got a lot of we’ve got a lot of rules around that also. Yes. Can I

ATTILIO: 
build a yurt in the middle of nowhere and new daily vacation rental?

GRANT: 
Yeah, people do that all the time.

ATTILIO: 
Come stay in the middle of nowhere.

ADRIENNE: 
Does it matter? If it’s like, does it matter if it’s within the city limit or outside the city limit? Like what’s this? What’s the short term rental rules like?

GRANT: 
Well, the city of Austin has cracked down on term rentals. Okay, so there are specific areas within Austin that do that. Then you then you get into subdivision HOAs. Did HOAs allow you to do short term rentals. Once you get outside of that, back to the deed restrictions, are there any restrictions on short term rentals? And then once you get you know, past a certain point, most bland is unrestricted in candy which was awesome.

ATTILIO: 
Nice. I would have I would have like a haunted RV and then at three in the morning, we just come scare the hell out of you.

ADRIENNE:
For that to be scared. Yeah.

GRANT:
It’s sold. We sold some properties that had you know, like nine yurts on it. Airbnb business. Yoga

ATTILIO: 
was happening. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, he was like No I must say this is not my state was the word namaste used in the purchase contract.

GRANT: 
You know, I can’t believe it.

ATTILIO: 
But you know what some fun stories or some fun things that you’ve seen because, you know, we go and show properties to and we’re like this is why we you know we’re doing we’re showing like a $80 million property with 23 acres, backed up by preservation up up ridge on a wall who there you can’t get to because all the front facing part of it is private property is late. This is why we do real estate. You have any stories of things that you like, wow, I didn’t know that was out here.

GRANT: 
Oh, yeah. I mean, I’ve, you know, come across, you know, historic building old settlements, we definitely have a lot of fun stories with animals we’re always coming across. Whether it be cows doing something funny, or, you know, seeing I saw an otter one time in a river, and that was pretty cool. And turkeys running around deer all the time. You know, we deal a lot with exotic animals too. So you always get to see some really cool stuff.

ATTILIO: 
What about that time he was doing that Ayahuasca experience, and you saw that otter smoking a cigar and he’s looked at you and he’s like, Hey, what’s up?

ADRIENNE: 
That wasn’t Grant. Oh, no way. That

ATTILIO: 
was a different one. Someone else that wasn’t Grant. Yeah, no, that wasn’t me. Yeah.

ADRIENNE: 
So So Grant speaking about animals. When people are selling ranches? Do they normally like, include animals? Or is it negotiable? How does that work? Yeah.

ATTILIO: 
livestock?

ADRIENNE: 
Do you guys help them with that? Yes,

GRANT: 
absolutely. A lot of it is negotiable. If they’re exotic animals, you know, that’s usually a income producing type of thing. Someone might want to keep those and then you can remove them or if the person is willing to pay for them, then they can have them themselves. cows, cows are pretty common. And those are usually hit and miss whether someone wants it or doesn’t want it. They’re ready to take care of them or not. A lot of times, you’ll have cows that are leased. So they’re just grazing on someone’s property. It’s real easy to just move them off. But yeah, it’s a negotiable item.

ATTILIO: 
Would they have like, Alamo or hertz as the brand the enterprise but oh, I had this. This came up question popped up on my head. Had you ever come across anybody that had a cow as an emotional pet?

GRANT: 
I have not. I’ve had some people who have had white tailed deer as pet.

ATTILIO: 
Oh, wow. And they bring them into the airport.

ADRIENNE: 
The miniature ponies?

GRANT: 
Yeah. Yeah. Miniature donkeys

ATTILIO: 
all this stuff. Yeah, so all kinds of animals. Now. We got a little while ago we were what did we fly into to drive to Stephens ranch.

ADRIENNE:
We flew into Dallas and then we drove to Caddo, Oklahoma,

ATTILIO: 
Caddo, Oklahoma. And he so he’s got this 7700 acre hunting ranch. It was formerly owned by

ADRIENNE: 
Donald Trump, Donald Trump.

ATTILIO: 
That is a former owner that was the former owner who he bought it from. And I just wanted to come around here. Yeah. And I just thought I just want to let you know that we have verified that our friend with your 700 acre ranch in Oklahoma is not the Lion King. Have you come across any lion kings in Texas? Anybody raising lions?

ADRIENNE: 
No, not when the tiger King Tiger King.

ATTILIO: 
Sorry. The Lion King. Oh, that’s a different than

GRANT: 
the monkeys before? Oh,

ATTILIO: 
monkeys. Wow. I mean, you’re doing you’re doing your kind of work. It must be like it sounds so interesting. Jumanji or something? Yes, that’s

ADRIENNE: 
my that’s why he always has his hat and his boots. Yep.

ATTILIO: 
Oh, by the way, Grant, this has been a verified fact this has been scientifically proven. Do you know why cowboys have pointy cowboy boots? No. Why? So you can kill the cockroach in the corner of the room?

GRANT: 
That’s it right?

ATTILIO: 
It’s a fact. Yeah, roach killers. But yeah, so agency should give me the signal here.

ADRIENNE: 
Yeah. So grant, we’ve got just a few minutes left. So if there’s anything that we did not get to touch on with you that you want to touch on? Let’s, let’s get to it now. Yeah, we can wrap it

ATTILIO: 
up any last thing, anything you want to share with us before we wrap it up?

GRANT: 
I mean, if you guys have anybody interested in Texas, ranch real estate, we’re based kind of out of Central Texas and we drive a lot. So we’re all over the place. And if anybody has questions or needs information or just wants to know more about it, give me a holler. Yeah,

ATTILIO:
and and then with your family being custom home builders. You

ADRIENNE: 
got like, all in one. Right?

GRANT: 
Yeah, the full service. Yeah, I can answer questions on that too. We’ve, we’re building all the time. So You

ATTILIO: 
need an underground man cave? Grand Street. Yeah, man in his families, your people. You want your your your pondo oil. So ranch house. What else you can you know, let me just

ADRIENNE: 
well, you could do a 1031 exchange out of your property here in Hawaii and purchase something much larger. Yeah, with Grant and his team. Yeah.

ATTILIO:
Because you know if you want more like everything’s bigger in Texas, I went to we went to Waffle House, the pancakes were the size of wagon wheels. I couldn’t even finish it. But in grad seven and a half feet tall, he’s a big guy. He’s bigger in Texas. But

ADRIENNE: 
think thank you Grant for for being our guest and sharing with us a little bit about this. You know, this, the ranches in Texas is very different from the things that you know, Attilio and I experience here in selling real estate here in Hawaii.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, over here we were, we’re all hanging out so close to each other. You can hear your neighbor change their mind. It’s true. At least you guys get to spread out up there. And it’s nice. Yeah. And then it’d be like, you know, you know, everybody, right? And if it’s weird vehicles or weird people or unusual people, you notice them because you’re all spread out. It’s very true. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being on the show. Thank you, grant. And we’re gonna have you again. have you on again, probably in the future for ranch update.

ADRIENNE: 
That’s right. Yeah. Thanks.

ATTILIO: 
Thank you, Grant. All righty.

GRANT: 
Y’all have a good one. Thank you. Alright,

ADRIENNE: 
so if anyone is interested to learn about ranch lands, give us a call. We will put you in contact with grant our ranch our Texas ranch expert. Yeah.

ATTILIO: 
That’s pretty interesting. If you go outside the city limits you just like whatever you want to do. You want to build this ferris wheel or you know, whatever your own personal ferris wheel or tree house or Mankey. Underground Man Cave. Grant, I’m sure it can help you find the right property location to help you with all the due diligence, make sure you don’t get tripped up by any badgers smoking cigars that talk. Yeah, he’ll help you out with that.

ADRIENNE: 
He will. Yep. All right.

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