REAL ESTATE LISTINGS - LANE COULSTON, BROKER
Marketing Properties of Conservation Value
Some of our clients are "Conservation Sellers." In brief, a conservation seller is a person or family whose interest in selling land extends beyond the bottom line. The way the land will be managed under new ownership is usually as important as price. As a steward of the native range, riparian, or timber habitat, a conservation seller has lived with the land, understands its agricultural and ecological values, and wants to protect them.
Conservation Buyer Brokerage
A number of buyers, especially those with specific conservation
interests, prefer to have a knowledgeable broker working on their
behalf. American Conservation Real Estate pioneered conservation
buyer brokerage to meet this need. The listing agent of a property
works for the seller.
Our work with buyers begins with their personal history of involvement in the West. Some live here already. Others know the West only through vacation experiences. We explore the ideals and memories and hopes for the future that grows out of these experiences.
We investigate the suitability of particular landscapes, properties, and forms of ownership; covering land use, ecology, climate, history, conservation easement issues, the protection status of nearby private and public lands, and the character of nearby communities.
We help clients establish an ownership interest in land and to discover a role in the regional environmental context.
We have access to discreet and unlisted properties to assist our clients in their search. We work closely with nonprofit land trusts, and because of our commitment to conservation, we are trusted with information about unlisted properties targeted by land trusts for protection. Once we have identified an appropriate property, we negotiate on behalf of our buyer clients for the best purchase opportunity.
"The most creative ranch transaction"
The "Small Homestead" approach to acquiring an interest in land works like this:
The rancher grants a conservation easement, which limits development to one or two secluded homesites.
The buyer purchases the reserved homesite, along with a parcel of deeded land and recreation rights to the entire protected ranch. Recreation rights typically include hiking, horseback riding, fishing, hunting, and skiing.
The rancher retains agricultural use rights to the buyer's deeded parcel, except for a building envelope of several acres.
Ranchers use the cash to buy out family members, alleviate debt, and otherwise position themselves to weather the vagaries of livestock markets. Moreover, their conservation easements are statements of personal commitment to a future for traditional ranch families, creating a climate in which other ranchers are more likely to grant easements.
"Small Homestead" transactions reverse the set of advantages and disadvantages associated with the fee-simple purchase of a working ranch. The "Small Homestead" buyer has no management responsibilities, and leverages his or her purchase dollars into the protection and enjoyment of a working ranch worth several times the purchase price. Usually the rancher retains the right to let members of the community hunt on the property, and both the rancher and the buyer agree to restrictions on commercial recreation.
At some point, most anglers begin to wonder why they fish. Over the years the reasons pile up into a beaver dam of arguments, tangled this way and that, some more reasonable than others. I've come to a point in my fishing life where I simply like walking down the drainage - seeing where the streambed goes, where the tributaries enter, where the view rises from. Standing in the low spots is a good way to see the world. Nearly everything comes down to the water sooner or later.
And along the river, the landscape shrinks. All that's left is the rim of the benches and the mountains beyond them. After a day on the river, the world seems to be reduced to it's essentials: light, along the peaks, and motion, in the stream itself. Then daylight begins to tail off and, after hours of hard fishing, you start to see motion wherever you look, as if the river had gone still and a current were now flowing through the sagebrush and the rocks beyond. The only way to stop that illusory flow is to go back up onto the bench, where nothing seems to move, except the sandhill cranes flirting in the distance.
Where the Wide Benches of Southwestern Montana Spill Into the Rivers.
April 21, 2004 By Verlyn Klinkenborg
Augusta
Crowding the Big Open
by Don Snow, Sarah van de Wetering
