In this episode of In Our Expert Opinion Podcast, Tyler Davis is joined by Kasey Mock, Owner and CEO of Mock Ranches in Texas. Their conversation shares valuable insights into the Texas land market, breaking down the state’s diverse regions and economy, evolving buyer profiles, and the fragmentation and development trends along the I-35 corridor. They also dive into market trend comparisons between Texas and Florida, the realities of rural land ownership in a fast-growing market, and what defines a trusted and professional land advisor today.
This episode was recorded prior to the devastating floods that began on July 4 in Kerr County, Texas, and surrounding areas. Our deepest condolences and continued prayers go out to all those affected by this tragedy.
Below is an excerpt from the interview. Listen above for the full podcast.
Kasey Mock, Owner and CEO of Mock Ranches
Land market regions in Texas. We've got nearly every ecoregion that you can find here in Texas. In East Texas, we've got the Piney Woods; it's been very good for timber production, much like North Florida. Of course, the Coastal Bend is coastal prairies and very productive farm ground.
If you look at a map, you can see a brown line. As you move from east to west, about halfway through the state, things turn brown and the trees get shorter, and you can track the rainfall there, too. Up in the panhandle, it's much like the Rolling Plains. Then, as you move far west into those Davis Mountains in the Trans-Pecos area, there’s Guadalupe Peak. It's a big, 12,000-foot mountain with pine trees on it above the timberline. So, we literally got every ecoregion that you could find here in the state of Texas.
Who are the typical buyers of Texas land? Depending on the year, 30-50% of what we do will go to investors, so it's pre-development stuff. Our state is getting fragmented at a rapid rate.
Up in the [Rocky Mountains], it's very realistic that they get to sell the same place every five years in the same configuration. That’s pretty rare for us. We sell a large ranch, and it's very, very rare that you'll get to see that ranch in that same configuration again. So, because of that, along with where prices have been and the growth patterns here in Texas, much like Central Florida, most of what we're selling, at some point, the exit strategy is probably development, as much as I don't always like that.
In this episode of In Our Expert Opinion Podcast, Kasey Mock of Mock Ranches joins Tyler Davis of Saunders Real Estate for a conversation about the Texas land market and its various land use trends across different regions.
We sell a lot of stuff up and down the I-35 corridor to the big production builders. East of that is Blackland Prairie, and the West gets into Hill Country and a little rockier soil. The Blackland Prairie is very conducive to high-density tract home subdivisions, but as you get development there, it really squeezes agriculture. The co-ops start to shut down, and the cotton gins and the cell barns start to shut down.
We have a bunch of sellers every year that say, “We can no longer do agriculture here, unfortunately, but we'd like to stay in agriculture.” We're able to take that landowner, position their property for development, and then help them move to another part of the state where they can be in agriculture through the next generation or utilize 1031 exchanges.
As you move west of the corridor, most of it will become hunting-focused or recreational buyers. They don't always have a subdivision plan; they like to hunt. It's a place to bug out and a place to get away. White-tailed deer is king in Texas, so we have an ample amount of deer hunters.
What conservation programs are in Texas? Texas is so “property rights center.” We're 95% privately owned and have always been very, very much pro-property owners and pro-property rights. There's no state funding for conservation, though. There's a good bit of conservation work that’s been done by The Nature Conservancy out in the Trans-Pecos region, and then we work really closely with the Hill Country Conservancy, which is a land trust around the Austin area.
San Antonio has one–SAWS, the San Antonio Water Supply–where they're pursuing easements out through the Edwards Plateau and the recharge areas of the Edwards Aquifer. Everything conservation in Texas, unless it's the one-offs that are legacy-minded, the majority of it's all around groundwater.