$260 Million Ranch for Sale in Hawaii

 Buying the Molokai Ranch could make you one of the five largest land owners in Hawaii.

Photo by Onyebuchi Emodi

The 55,575 acre Molokai Ranch on the Hawaiian island of Molokai is for sale with an asking price of $260 million.

The ranch is home to a 1,200 head cattle operation and spans 35% of the island of Molokai. Carvill Sotheby's International Realty has listed the ranch for sale with 48,398 acres of land dedicated to agriculture.

Not only is it a cattle ranch, the property is also home to 20 miles of coastline, two golf courses and a resort.

Molokai Ranch was started in 1897 by a group of businessmen and was once 100,000 acres total counting leased land from the government. From 1923 to 1985 portions of the ranch were leased for pineapple plantations.

Operations at the ranch closed in 2008 and resulted in 120 employees being laid off. A new leadership team was brought on in 2012 helping restart operations.

In 2013, the ranch ventured into a Wagyu breeding program through an embryo transfer. A year later the ranch started a branded beef program marketing 100% grass-fed Angus beef under the Molokai Ranch Beef label.

Buying the ranch would make the new owner one of the top five private landowners in Hawaii. A number of billionaires have been buying land in Hawaii including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who considered buying the ranch a few years ago before buying 700 acres on Kauai.

Hawaii has a total cow herd of 76,000 head based on the January 2017 Cattle Inventory Report from USDA. The Big Island of Hawaii is home two of the largest cow-calf operations in the U.S. including the ninth largest operation, Parker Ranch, and the 24th largest, Ponoholo Ranch, Ltd.

Carvill Sotheby's International Realty