100 Largest Landowners in America | Hacker News Reader

100 Largest Landowners in America

landreport.com

48 pointsnceqs366 comments

The actual details on those names can be found in the digital edition here:

https://editions.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?m=611...

It's an interesting magazine. Ads for private jets, helicopters and huge ranches and horses. I'm certainly not in their target income bracket!

About 30+ years ago I was working as a busboy / dishwasher in a hospital cafeteria, some Doctor left a real estate magazine lying around, all sorts of 200+ secluded acres in rolling Virginia countryside with equestrian racing attached and Luxurious one of a kind ranches formerly owned by country music legends and so forth.

I wonder if the Doctor was in the target bracket, or just dreaming big. I mean there were a few smaller colonial manors in vermont with your own stream and mill affairs as well, it was not all turned up to 11 but there was nothing turned lower than 8 that's for sure.

Depends what kind of doctor. A neurosurgeon is probably in their target bracket. An internist or family physician probably not.

The leader of a volunteer project I was in, was a 75 year old British man who had settled in Brooklyn. My jaw dropped when he told me he had visited some 140 countries, mostly on someone else's dime. Apparently when he was a young man, his job was to scout interesting locations for ultra wealthy people to visit. So he'd go check out the places, draw up an itinerary and also arrange private planes/logistics etc for his clients. And most of the time also go with them (weeks or months later), so he got to visit the some places more than once.

This was pre-internet (some 40 years ago, I guess), I don't know if such jobs exist today. I don't even know what they are called (concierge travel agent?).

The ultra rich truly live on another level.

I met a guy recently who did this. Much of the time was spent on a yacht, but he did exactly this. Lots of Russian oligarchs, a few big names in tech. Take the vacation himself, and then report back. He'd do like a handful of these vacations and then one of them would be chosen and they'd take the owner on the vacation.

That must be a fun gig, especially if you’re young!

the internet equivalent is probably a travel content creator

These massive land holdings are the best possible use for a "Harberger Tax", also known as the Weyl-Posner " Common Ownership Self-Assessed Tax (COST)."

The idea for these taxes is that one self-assesses the value of a good (in this case, land), and the tax is levied on that self assessed value...but one must sell if somebody offers to buy the good at that value.

The problem with these taxes is that, in general, we want people to be able to enjoy a consumer surplus from owning or improving land.

There's an alternative where the value at which sale is compulsory is a multiple of the self-assessed value, and the multiple decreases with time, so that after some number of years the multiple is 1, ie a pure Harberger tax.

Looking at this list, it's incredible that most of this land is owned by a "____ Family" or "_____ Heirs" (the Kennedy's are on the list!)

A Harberger tax would make these families pay much higher taxes for the privilege of owning it generationally.

> but one must sell if somebody offers to buy the good at that value.

Maybe for ultra rich people. For normal people that's all fun and games until a bunch of haters crowdfund taking your home from you.

It’s crazy that you can own land. I bought a several acres, and it has a creek that runs through it. How nuts is that to own your own creek!?

True ownership of land is allodial title[1] and that’s basically impossible to acquire in the modern world. I believe however a bunch of Brazil is actually privately owned[2] and home owners, in the commonly used sense, pay taxes to the private owner and not the government.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/08/25/434360144/...

there's lots of different kinds of "rights".

You may not own any of the water running through the creek, for example you may not be able to divert it or damn it or mess with it in anyway. Same goes for minerals. If you discover oil on your several acres it may not belong to you.

it gets really confusing

You most likely do not own that creek. Typically running surface water is not owned, you can't dam it, you can't disturb it and you can't add anything to it or subtract anything from it. You may not even be allowed to fish in it even on your own property.

Depends on the state - water rights are more restricted the drier the area from what I understand

> 25. Jeff Bezos

> 49. Bill & Melinda Gates [NEW TO LR100]

I knew Bill Gates had a lot of land, but that information about Jeff Bezos is new to me. Too bad the report doesn't say how much land they own.

From a link posted by someone else, he owns 420,000 acres in Texas used by Blue Origin. https://editions.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?m=611...

And Bill Gates bought a bunch of farmland. See here for the full details of his purchases: https://editions.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?m=611...

Don't know about the US, but in the UK ownership of farmland is used as an inheritance tax dodge. Because of land rich but money poor farmers as a voting constituency, farmland is not counted for inheritance tax. The predictable result of this is people like Dyson owning most of the farmland in Lincolnshire (https://whoownsengland.org/2017/09/19/why-is-james-dyson-hoo...)

Me: Really, really stoked about my new 10 acre farm.

Reed family: Up 291,000 acres

This list does not include private organizations.

It seems that The Mormon Church is the biggest private landowner in Florida. 670,000 Acres (about 2 percent of the state's land mass). https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-florida-mormons-idUSL2N0... and 228,000 acres of Nebraska https://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/business/ci_242420...

The Catholic Church seems to be the biggest private landowner in the world.

Does this include foreign investors? I think that should matter too. I'm not saying this for a racist reason, but it seems we allow rich people from other countries to buy up land/real estate, which drives up costs, and de-stabilizes our ability to support our poorest.

Personally, I think land should be considered owned by all and have a land-value tax, which would pay for universal basic income and healthcare.

A real surprise was seeing the Ellison family at the bottom of the list at number 100. He clearly likes his movies, fighter jets and sailing more than the others.

The Kennedys have managed to maintain their land holdings despite not being in the super zillionaire category.

Larry Ellison does own almost 98% of the Island of Lanai in Hawaii. It may not be that big of an island, but that's impressive in it's own right.

Ellison Ranching Company is at 100, no relation to Larry.

Also the Kennedy Family is at 67 is not the political dynasty, they founded Dominick and Dominick in 1899.

This looks like individuals. Institutions would hold much more land.

Yeah I wonder how the Pope and the leader of the Mormon church would rank on this list.

I think the churches own the land, not the current leaders. I'm guessing the Catholics would be on the top 100 list, but I doubt the Mormons would.

The Mormons own a lot of land in Florida, and I would guess also Utah.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jan/30/from-book-to-...

The pope doesn't own all this land. I believe in the US, ownership is diocesan.

The Pope can remove Bishops and replace them with persons of his choosing so it’s probably fair to say he ultimately controls diocesan resources. However, there is a great deal of custom and tradition keeping that from being abused.

> I believe in the US, ownership is diocesan.

It’s much more complicated than that. US Dioceses vary in the their legal corporate structure which, even with the canon law, greatly effects both legal and practical control. One common model has most parishes, schools, etc. within the diocese as separate charitable trusts, with separate immediate authorities. Some dioceses (especially older ones that have not had cause to reorganize) are still organized as corporations sole, which makes the effectively personally controlled by the bishop.

And, of course, aside from the varieties of diocesan organization, much Church land is held by religious orders which are a separate heirarchy than the episcopal one and each of whichay (as a whole and in various subdivisions) have different secular legal structures.

From what I know in India Churches owns more land that Indian Army.

Yeah, I loaded the page expecting to see:

1. The US Government with X million acres

If they included governmental owners, it'd dwarf these private holdings. For example, the largest landowner is really the United States Federal government: 640 million acres.

While true, I feel like government owned land doesn't really count.

Why?

Not who you're replying to, but the US Govt does own a lot of land that wouldn't be useful to anyone else. Some rural and desert plots sell for less than $1000/acre.

While that may be true in some cases, the US Govt also owns a huge amount of productive land that are today used under lease for grazing and other purposes, or could be used by others for purposes that the US Government forbids.

I am not sure what the exact break down of useful vs non-useful is, but I know most of the land in my state that is owned by the government could be used for other things.

Keep in mind to we are not just talking Bureau of Land Management, but also Park Service, All Federal Agencies many of which have abandoned, or under used facilities in many towns and cities through out the US, Military who owns large sections of land that are non-active bases, etc etc etc

Several states have even attempted various law suits because the federal government is preventing economic development of the land

Primarily because it seems logical that the government would own the largest amount of land in a country like the United States. No individual or institution would ever come close to the sheer amount of land the Federal Government obtained by treaty or by conquest.

Sadly voters cannot yet influence how non-governmental owners choose to use the significant land holdings. And increasingly voters cannot even overcome the outsized influence of rich individuals and companies and their lobbies on how government owned land gets used.

Voters shouldn't be able to influence private landowning anyways since it violates private property rights. The whole point of owning land is so you can decide what to do with the land. If you want to decide what to do with someone's private property then work a deal with them instead.

Of course government can decide private property law. Slaves used to be private property. And you can't do whatever you want once you own a piece of land, see environmental laws etc.

Sure they can - all land is controlled by land use regulations, zoning regulations and other laws and regs. Your local elected officials are in charge of changes to such things. By all means, vote for the people getting into those offices, and get engaged with local governance. Especially in the more rural areas, where the large land holdings tend to fall, there will be a smaller electorate, and the local community can have a significant impact on local decisions.

For federal land, significant projects are open for public comments, and they absolutely respond to the people who live in the area. I've seen numerous development projects proposed by the rich get shot down after the community got involved through the comment process.

Hopefully, voters can NEVER influence how private land owners choose to use their land holdings.

Do we live in the same country? Do you actually want other people to tell you what you have to do with your private property? I suspect that if you were a land holder being told what you had to do with your land you would be rather miffed.

I just don't understand how a citizen of the US living under the US Constitution comes to the conclusion that they should have authority to tell other people what they can do with their property.

For starters, I don't think you should be allowed to dump toxic chemicals on your "private" property, because it could poison the natural environment and/or groundwater sources that others share.

People dump toxic chemicals on their property every day. Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilizers are all toxic. Hell, we even pay farmers to do this.

There are other ways to mitigate this problem than giving voters the authority to dictate how a property owner uses their land.

> People dump toxic chemicals on their property every day. Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilizers are all toxic. Hell, we even pay farmers to do this.

It seems obvious that ForHackernews wasn't talking about things like the chemicals you've described.

The point I so coarsely was trying to make is, the impact is the same whether it is nondescript industrial sludge or sanctioned chemicals. Permitting one while demonizing the other for the sake of some control over property owners is asinine at best and a power grab at worst. We already have laws and penalties specific to the dumping of some chemicals that are effective regardless of who the property owner is. We would not need additional laws that apply specifically to property owners.

> Sadly voters cannot yet influence how non-governmental owners choose to use the significant land holdings.

What exactly do you mean by this? Private land is for private use.

Sorry, I should've clarified my thinking. Mostly I'm concerned with things like waste from fracking, water misuse or pollution, and soil depletion.

On the government side it amazes me we can't get / keep lead, mercury, and other toxins out of land and resources we collectively own. Dilution also looks like a very expensive and increasingly ineffective answer to the pollution problem.

Yeah, in some states, the majority of land is owned by the Federal Government. (Nevada and Idaho for example)

Pretty crazy to think about individuals owning this much land. For context, the entire city of Orlando, Fl is ~71k acres and a quarter of a million people live there.

There is no context provided as to what type of land it is, and what use it is for.

Just because 250,000 people can live on 71,000 acres of land in Orlando, does not mean 71,000 acres of dessert land with no water, no food, no easy infrastructure could

saved in bookmarks folder: cultural revolution

lots of the acreage is divided up into multiple parcels. I wonder what the top 100 largest contiguous parcels are.

i've been on a couple 10-15k acre ranches West of Austin TX, certainly large enough to get completely lost on which seems to be my speciality...

Waggoner Ranch, near Vernon, TX, is 535k contiguous acres. Makes it roughly half the size of Rhode Island: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggoner_Ranch

The owner is Stan Kroenke, number 5 on this list. He owns a bunch of major league sports teams. His wife is the daughter of one of the WalMart founders, which appears to be where all the money initially came from.

It's doesn't list how much each one has... Not very useful.

Power law distributions suggest that if you can get a few datapoints much of the rest is roughly estimable.

Rankings are less utterly useless than first appears.

The digital edition does, but as was correctly pointed out, it's not particularly useful information.

Where is Nestlé?

The latest generations dont seem overly interested in land, partly because they 've been deconditioned from real estate ownership by necessity, at least in europe. It's this thing that boomers+co value a lot that will die with them (and be passed down).

Would be interesting to see who are the 100 largest virtual land (online property) owners in the world.

What exactly is a "virtual land owner?"

someone who owns land inside of a game environment most likely?

It is very natural. Land can be used for multiple purposes. 100 years ago agriculture was very important activity and it made sense to own more rural land. Today the amount of money I spent on buying a tiny house in Palo Alto would buy me 50acre ranch in Texas. But I am not interested that as that 50 acre ranch is unlikely to be a valuable asset 20 years down the line.

many people buy land in the exurbs, wait for the growth, and then sell to developers. I have a friend who's grandfather gave her 40 acres in Prosper TX. When we were in HS it was basically worthless/pointless, but now, she could retire on it if she wanted.

In my experience it not that the latest generations aren't interested, it is that there isn't much available, and what is available is not in an interesting location or is too expensive.

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