Auctions aren’t just for distressed real estate anymore. They’ve become a growing national trend, one that’s particularly appealing to young, wealthy buyers, who have grown up doing everything online, so why not buying real estate, too?
Wyoming, with its robust real estate market, typically hasn’t sold many of its high-end properties through online auctions, but it’s about to sell a decidedly luxurious one in Daniel, Wyoming, that way.
Solitude Ranch at Aspen Ride on Ryegrass Road in Sublette County will be sold through an online auction with Concierge Auctions. The sale will start Oct. 16 and continue through Oct. 30. Those wanting to participate in the sale can sign up with Concierge. They’ll have to agree that all sales are as is and final, as well as providing proof that they can complete the sale once the auction closes.
Starting bids are in the $4.5 to $6 million range for the property, which boasts 11,337 square feet of living space, nine bedrooms and 12.5 bathrooms.
The main residence, built in 2019, is 7,881 finished square feet with a 1,280-square-foot attached garage. There’s a guest home that’s 3,456 square feet, which features an indoor pool on one level and living space on the other.
And there’s a 2,952-square-foot custom workshop with five bays — bigger than many people’s homes all by itself. Overhead, there’s an additional 720 square feet of storage space.
Tours of the home will be available before the auction, so buyers can get a look at the property and its homes, both inside and out.
The interior of both homes features a number of expensive, handcrafted furniture pieces, along with things like expensive artwork and antler chandeliers. The main residence includes a custom rock river fireplace, in-floor hydronic heat and more. There’s a gourmet kitchen, a 12-seat home movie theater and an exercise room.
As an example of the furnishings, the dining room is filled with custom chairs made from rough-hewn wood with a printed fabric that shows a cowboy riding a bucking horse. These pieces come with the home, as does the life-size bronze buffalo statue outside, and many other unique pieces of art.
But it’s not just stunning interiors here. Both the main home and the guest house have a wall of windows that offers occupants a stunning panoramic view of the mountains.
The property itself is surrounded by federal BLM land, making it a rare inholding, which will keep the view stunning for as long as the surrounding land remains in federal hands. There are also conservation easements that further help protect the amazing views.
Far from being one of those distressed properties people typically think of when it comes to a real estate auction, this is a particularly stunning property in Wyoming. It’s just taking advantage of a different approach to selling, according to Carolyn Wright, vice president of Concierge Auctions’ Business Development.
“Some properties need different tools to get the sale done,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “Think about it like this, Picasso’s priceless painting, jewelry, art and cars are sold at auction. It’s just like selling any other luxury item at auction where the value is determined by competition. It’s an elite way to sell your property by really getting it on a global stage to as many eyes on the property as possible, and as many luxury buyers to compete for it as possible.”
Particularly Popular In The Midwest
Real estate sales through online auctions have become a big thing in the Midwest, according to Kyle Ward, who specializes in hunting and off-grid properties in both Montana and Wyoming for Midwest Land Group.
It’s not big in Wyoming yet, but Ward expects it to “spread this way.”
“It’s pretty big in South Dakota, honestly,” he said. “And so, we just have to pay attention to those trends, so that we’re on top of our game.”
How an auction sale is approached, however, makes a big difference in driving top dollar for a seller, Ward added. There are some tricks to the online auction trade, though methodologies also depend on the style of property, as well.
“What has become popular in the Midwest is to break up and sell options,” he said. “There, the big deal is tillable acreage. The timber area that’s around a tillage farm isn’t worth as much as the actual tillable dirt.”
On a 640-acre farm auction, for example, the methodology for getting the best price would likely involve breaking the property up into sections of tillable land and timber, giving people multiple options.
Buyers could bid for all or just some of the tillable acres or all or just some of the timber acres. Or they could bid for some combination of the two. There would also be an option to purchase the entire property.
“You don’t actually close the auction until you’ve got top dollar on all of the different parcels,” Ward said. “So, there’s software, a couple of different software (programs) that people use in that industry to accomplish that.”
Court Merrigan, with luxury real estate company LandVest, also believes online auctions have some strengths and are likely to get more popular in the Cowboy State.
“It’s an opportunity for properties that you know have buyers,” he said. “And because of some of the changes in the buyer-broker laws that happened last year, you have more buyers who aren’t necessarily using brokers because they don’t have to.”
That’s making online auctions more and more attractive as well, Merrigan said. But having someone who knows how to manage an online auction is key. In his experience, this approach works best with a property that already has a pool of interested buyers.
“I am selling some properties, a big one in particular on the East Coast, using an online auction, which is fairly common there,” he said. “So I think in areas where there’s high demand, you may see that. But you’d only want to go to market with a property on an auction if you’re very confident you have a good pool of buyers.”
Wyoming’s Luxury Real Estate Market Is Robust
One reason auction sales haven’t really taken off in Wyoming is the robustness of the Cowboy State’s luxury real estate market, according to Engle and Volkers Jackson Hole advisors Devon and David Viehman. The couple prepares quarterly and annual reports on Jackson Hole’s real estate market and say most of the time when they’ve seen auctions in Wyoming it’s for properties that have been on the market for a long time without selling.
That’s not likely to change any time soon, they told Cowboy State Daily.
“We are seeing a boom in both listing and sales above $10 million,” David Viehman said. “As our Q3 report will reflect, which will be out later this week sales over $10M are up 82% from last year, and tie the all-time record back in 2021 during COVID, for the first nine months of the year. We’ve had 40 overall sales with 24 of those being single-family homes.”
Homes over $10 million are in record-breaking territory as well, David Viehman added, and are sitting at 47 so far.
“We’re not sure what is driving the upper end, but we’re not complaining either,” he said.
Scott Williams, with Swan Land Company, said he’s experienced much the same in other areas of Wyoming. Williams has a number of properties in northeast Wyoming in the Black Hills area.
“When it comes to auctions of luxury real estate in Wyoming, I haven’t come across a luxury property where an auction was deemed appropriate for my seller client,” he said. “But I have seen these auctions work successfully on farmland properties in the Midwest.”
Adding Speed To Sale Without Sacrificing Price
For sellers, one benefit to an online auction is speed, and that’s the case for the unusual approach for the Solitude Ranch in Daniel.
“In this case, our sellers have a goal where they want to get control of the timing of the sale,” Wright said. “And so, this allows us to bring the market and get the sale done in a time-bound way.”
Concierge does sell a number of luxury properties like this across the United States though, Wright added. So, even though it might seem unusual in Wyoming, it’s actually quite common in markets across the nation and around the world.
Concierge’s online auction lists U.S. sales in Florida, Montana, Maryland, Hawaii, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and many other locations. Globally, they list in Costa Rica, France, Dubai and Switzerland.
“We do anywhere between 10 to 15 auctions a month,” Wright said. “We’re the biggest in the world and have been doing this about 18 years.”
Wright said online auctions have been growing year over year as more and more people learn about the process, and she believes it will become more and more popular.
“Especially in this kind of changing and uncertain market,” she said. “You’re getting global exposure and urgency in the market, at no cost to the seller.”
More Than Beauty
Solitude Ranch isn’t just beautiful, though. It also offers the ability to graze cattle as well, if an owner is interested in that, as well as being an ideal jumping off point for any outdoor adventure imaginable, with a vacation home that can easily support as many as 28 guests at one time, Keller Williams Jackson Hole Broker Katie Robertson told Cowboy State Daily.
“(There’s) Horseback riding or ATVs,” she said. “You’re near Horse Creek Trailhead, which is some of the best snowmobiling in the area. And from there, it’s pretty easy to continue on to get to McDougal Gap, which will actually take you over the mountains, over the Wyoming Range, and drop you off at Star Valley.”
The location is also near Green River and Horse Creek, which are world-class trout streams that attract people from all over the world for fishing adventures, Robertson said.
The current owner has a hobby farm of around 50 head of cattle right now, but some of the neighbors who are ranchers have suggested that a person could probably graze a few more than that if they wished, Robertson said.
Sorting pens are already constructed on the ranch, along with three ponds that collect snowmelt and provide water.
And the very large, detached shop includes a 150-kilowatt generator, which can power the entire ranch, if need be, making the remote location highly self-sufficient.
Luxury properties like this one can take a long time to sell, and that’s the main reason that the auction process was appealing to this particular seller, Robertson said.
“This is a very unique property, and often, in the luxury world, the sales cycle on a unique luxury property can be like two or three years,” she said. “That can be very common. So, in this instance, when the seller has a more focused time that they want to sell in, this is a great option. It creates a specific date that we’re trying to get all the buyers assembled to compete.
Buyers, meanwhile, tend to favor auctions for price transparency. Everyone can see who is bidding what for the property. That gives the buyer the sense they’re seeing the true market value of a property, by what people are actually willing to pay.
Which method brings the better price is difficult to gauge, Robertson said.
“But really, it’s all about bringing the market today,” she said. “And getting the highest possible price for today.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
