Land for Sale in West Texas
For anyone interested in acquiring a large tract of low-priced acreage, land for sale in West Texas can provide some spectacular opportunities. West Texas is to cheap land what Hollywood is to movies.
However, the supply of available land for sale is declining and prices are increasing substantially. One of the largest landowners in West Texas, the Texas Pacific Land Trust, has basically suspended land sales in the belief that future prices will continue to escalate. Land prices over the last seven or eight years have steadily increased from around $75 per acre to $400 per acre.
The Texas and Pacific Land Trust was created in 1888 as a result of the bankruptcy of the Texas and Pacific Railway Company. Holders of the Texas and Pacific Railway Company bonds received 3.5 million acres of land in Texas which had been earned by the railroad and pledged as security against bonds. The bondholders created the Trust and exchanged the bonds for an interest in the Trust. The Trust was formed to manage and sell the land. Today the Trust continues to own around 900,000 acres of land, most of it in West Texas.
If a person acquired some of the cheapest land for sale in West Texas today and hung on to it for the long haul, a substantial profit in future years would almost be guaranteed. There is no tract of land in West Texas today that sells for less than it would have sold for 20 years ago. Inevitable inflation alone insures that land always goes up in value through the years.