Don Horton acquired the P5 Ranch, the largest contiguous ranch in Kansas, following a hush-hush marketing campaign and a remarkably quick close. Adam Hann and Mitch Keeley at Whitetail Properties served as the matchmakers for the 2023 Ranchland Deal of the Year. Financial details were not disclosed.

The selling partners’ insistence on a low profile prevented Whitetail Properties from ­promoting the listing of the P5 Ranch. Instead, Hann and Keeley worked behind the scenes, canvasing their network and running down leads. An existing client referred them to Horton. They had found their buyer — on the Q.T.

And what a buyer he was. If there was one thing Don Horton (1950–2024) knew, it was how to identify — and enhance — value associated with land. Beginning in 1972 in his hometown of Marshall, Arkansas, the fledgling ­entrepreneur forged a career in the real estate industry building homes. He moved his young family to Fort Worth, Texas, ­and founded D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI). The nation’s largest homebuilder is now traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Horton also assembled a half-million-acre ranching empire across much of the Southwest and ranked No. 26 on the 2023 Land Report 100.

The sprawling P5 Ranch was his first foray into Kansas. Horton spent ­several days in ­Hamilton and Kearny Counties ­touring the operation, exploring the farmland, and gaining insight into the ranch’s substantial recreational ­component. Waterfowl and upland birds thrive on the P5 thanks to 17 miles of the Arkansas River and a 36-acre lake.

Agricultural land values in the ­Sunflower State have proven to be ­particularly robust. From 2022 to 2023, irrigated land in Southwest ­Kansas surged 28.4 ­percent, according to Kansas Agricultural Land Values and Trends, which is published annually by the Kansas Society of ­Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers and the Kansas State University Agricultural Economics Department.

Published in The Land Report Spring 2024.