Episode 60: Sites to See at NLC26 in San Antonio | Guest Dan Hatfield, ALC
[music]
Welcome to the REALTORS® Land Institute Podcast, the Voice of land, the industry's leading land real estate organization.
Justin Osborn: This is Justin Osborn, accredited land consultant with the Wells Group in Durango, Colorado. We're getting close to coming back together for one of our favorite events of the year, the National Land Conference. This year we're celebrating the 20th anniversary of NLC, and we're returning to the city where the first NLC was held, San Antonio, Texas. On today's episode of the Voices of Land podcast, we're talking to RLI member, accredited land consultant Dan Hatfield. Welcome to the podcast, Dan.
Dan Hatfield: Thank you, sir. It's great to have everybody headed back to San Antonio. That's where we started this thing, and I'm glad to see everybody coming back and it's going to be a great time.
JO: Yeah. If I remember correctly, somebody told me you were actually part of the very first NLC that happened 20 years ago down there.
DH: Yeah. That's correct. There were a bunch of us that got a little inebriated one night and started making notes and talking about putting together a National Land Conference. Six months to a year later, I actually found all those notes stuffed in a briefcase somewhere and pulled them out and then tried to decipher them, and boy, they were really difficult to decipher. That was not a string of consciousness. It was something else, I don't know. But we got it put together and decided to do it. The closer we got to the day of execution, we didn't have enough people registered. And so we were all talking about canceling it and just saying, "Well, we'll try to do it next year." And I told everybody, "If we cancel this thing now, we'll never do it." And so on a leap of faith, we jumped out there, did it, and created the National Land Conference. It's been a fantastic thing ever since.
JO: Man, well, thank you for sticking with it. It's cool to see that 20 years later, we're going from the first one in San Antonio, we're coming back down there to San Antonio, and we're going to have probably around 550 people register for this event. And it's cool to think that that's all because of the seeds y'all planted 20 years ago. I'm a firm believer you reap what you sow, and we're getting to benefit from what y'all sowed. So, thank you so much, man.
DH: Well, it's hard to believe we're going to have that many people. We started out with just a couple of dozen.
JO: Well, I don't know that much has changed as far as when it comes to sitting around coming up with ideas from good old boys and girls with a little bit of whiskey in the room. Not much has changed in those 20 years, man. That's awesome. Well, tell our listeners a little bit about what they can expect down in San Antonio. Are we going to be down by the hub of everything? Are we going to be out in a suburb somewhere, or what can we expect?
DH: We are going to be right smack downtown, right on the River Walk. The River Walk's a great place, has lots of interesting restaurants and bars and museums and all kinds of stuff along there. There's plenty to do and see when you get down there. So, yeah. We're going to be right downtown in the middle of everything. Almost everything that you're going to want to do in San Antonio is going to be maybe a short drive, Uber ride, et cetera, unless you want to go out and play golf or do the Missions Trails tour or something like that. Other than that, the weather that time of the year normally is very nice. As hot as it has been in Texas over the last 10 years of this drought, I would say make sure and bring a bathing suit or something because it could be that hot. Right now it's cold, but by that time it could be hot.
JO: All right. Excellent. Well, you kind of spoke a little bit of love to me there talking about golf. So, why don't you tell me a little bit about that? Do we have one or two courses close by, or do we have multiple courses where we'll have our pick of the litter?
DH: You've got multiple courses. If you go to the web and look up San Antonio golf courses, you'll see that there's a ton of them. There's one down at Brackenridge Park that's just down the river a little ways. There's one right there. Then once you get a little further out, you can go out to the Old Quarry and there's a big golf course there. There's a lot of them within a 20-minute drive.
JO: Okay.
DH: So, yeah, easy Uber ride to get to a bunch of golf courses.
JO: All right. Excellent. And you might have mentioned, is there a trail system that you were just talking about? A lot of our RLI folks love the outdoors. So, where should we be going if we wanted to get some exercise?
DH: Well, there's a cool Missions Trail. The old Missions Trail starts at the Alamo, of course, which is the northernmost mission. Those missions were put about four miles apart or so. It's about a 15-mile trek to make all the missions. But you can easily do it on a bicycle. You can rent a car or take an Uber or whatever. The Missions Trail are interesting because those missions were established back in the 1500s. It's an old Spanish... Most people don't realize how old San Antonio is, but San Antonio goes all the way back to the 1400s, late 1400s, early 1500s. A lot of the old missions and things are still there. The old acequias and the aqueducts that were built in the 1600s are still there and still working today.
JO: Really? So, they're moving irrigation water still through those same aqueducts, huh?
DH: Same aqueducts.
JO: That's impressive.
DH: Yeah. I went down there one time just to look at the rock work, the stonework and everything. It was kind of fun, if you are interested in that kind of stuff, just to look at all the old stonework and think, God, this stuff was built back in the late 1600s. Just amazing.
JO: That's awesome. Yeah. There's not a lot of places in the US that go back that far. You go over to Europe and you can definitely see that kind of stuff, but that's pretty cool that that's going to be right there where we're going to be staying.
DH: Yeah. It really is. There's a lot of old history. There's old churches, there's all kinds of stuff that you can look at downtown that date back to the 1700s, 1800s. One of those interesting things that most people don't realize is the fact that you had the Indians there, then the Spanish came and settled all that. It was much, much later before the Germans and Czechs and everybody else made it to San Antonio. It wasn't until the... You had the Texas type of thing where they had the Old 300, which was the first 300 families that got moved into Texas. From there... But you think about it as far as any kind of real population, you didn't have any real population of people that were White or from somewhere else other than Mexico or Spain until the early to mid-1800s.
JO: Okay.
DH: And so, it was kind of interesting because of course you had the big Battle of the Alamo and all that kind of stuff, and all that history's there. Matter of fact, the Alamo is only one block away from the hotel.
JO: Oh, that's awesome. So, we'll get a chance to go check it out.
DH: You walk across the street, walk across the plaza, and there's the Alamo. The thing that kills me is everybody comes to Texas and they go look at the Alamo and they go, "That's it?" because it is right in the middle of downtown. All of the old battlefield and everything else is now covered in buildings.
JO: Yep.
DH: The Alamo itself was not a huge structure. It was a very small structure. But they are doing a complete redo of Alamo Plaza. They've ripped everything out of Alamo Plaza and they've gone back in and tried to rebuild the battlefield as it was drawn in the Mexican books and in the early American books of what went on in that battle. They have everything set up. Inside the Alamo, they have a fantastic... Well, it's not inside the Alamo, but out back in the add-on, they have a fantastic diorama that will show you exactly how it was set up and it'll tell you how the battle ensued and what happened. Fantastic history. If you like history, the Alamo and the annex to the Alamo has all of the old, you know, as much as they could get Bowie and Crockett and everybody's actual swords, guns, all that kind of stuff. It's pretty phenomenal what the collection they have from that time period.
JO: Well, that'll be cool to see. If I'm not mistaken, aren't we having an event actually at the Alamo?
DH: Yes, we are.
JO: That'll be fun. Is that the reception Sunday night?
DH: That's the reception Sunday night.
JO: Okay. Excellent. Well, yeah, folks, what a great opportunity to come in San Antonio, see a part of American history. I gotta tell you, Dan, growing up in Texas myself and then moving to southwest Colorado, I miss the Tex-Mex food, man. We're so close to New Mexico that I've really learned a lot about green chilies and red chilies, but, man, I'm really looking forward to getting some of the Tex-Mex food that I grew up with. So, where should I go check out if I want to really enjoy that?
DH: For anybody that's coming from up north or out west, Tex-Mex food is different than anybody else's food. It is not like New Mexico food or Mexican, "Mexican food from Mexico". But there's a number of cool places you can go. One, of course, is an old one that's just down the street from the hotel. It's called Casa Rio. And Casa Rio has been sitting there on the riverbank since 1920s, I guess. It's been there forever. And so that's an old Tex-Mex place. But you could go up to the Pearl, and the old Pearl Brewery has been converted into an arts district and food and everything else. But they've got some, they got like La Gloria is up there. There's a number of different Mexican food places right there. I mean, you can find plenty of good Tex-Mex right there close by.
JO: Awesome. Now, is the Pearl Brewery still in business? Is it still active?
DH: No.
JO: Okay.
DH: But they've, like I say, they went in and just completely redid the area into an arts district and everything else. They got food, tons of food. There's a place up there called Southerleigh's, which is really good. Bakery Lorraine, really good if you like sweets, et cetera. As far as places to eat close to the hotel, there's tons of good restaurants right there. One of my favorite places is the Little Rhein Steak House. And the Little Rhein Steak House is just like a block or two down the river. But that's an old steakhouse, been there right on the edge of the river forever. You've also got, I was trying to think, down there in that area, you've got Bohanan's Steakhouse, which I highly recommend Bohanan's. Great old dark wood, great lounge bar. Bar is fantastic.
JO: How do the two compare? Like, how does Little Rhein compare to Bohanan's?
DH: Depends on what you're wanting to eat and the kind of atmosphere that you're wanting.
JO: Well, I'm not going to come to San Antonio and order trout, I can tell you that.
[laughter]
DH: Well, now, there's the Little Rhein, I would eat trout at the Little Rhein. Yeah. That's really good. But you think about it, it's kind of two different things. One's an old, older kind of looking, dark wood, big wood bar, smoking kind of a cigar kind of a place. When you think about it, you look at it, you go, "Oh, yeah, that's pretty cool." But that's a great place. I love Bohanan's. They have The Palm and Ruth's Chris and all that kind of stuff down there, too, those are chain restaurants, but I like the ones that are not chains. If you're looking right there, and you know, we're talking about seafood and you're talking about not wanting to eat trout down here, but there's Boudro's, which is really good, which is just down the river about a block or two.
JO: It sounds like that might have a little Cajun influence to it.
DH: A little Cajun influence. Right next to the hotel, right on the corner of the hotel, is Landry's Seafood House. And Landry's is pretty decent. It's not bad. If you want something German, something that you wouldn't find anywhere else, there's an old, old, old restaurant just back behind Casa Rio, okay? Right behind Casa Rio, you have Mexican food there, and then you have this place called Schilo's. And Schilo's is an old German food place. And Schilo's has been there, I don't know, probably 100 years or close to it, but it's pretty cool. It's a neat place.
JO: Okay. Man, you're making me hungry right off the bat here talking about all this, but you're making me miss the roots. Talk about German food, we're going to have to find some kolaches when I'm down there.
DH: I'm telling you, I'm telling you. One place that's really cool, like on a Sunday morning, is to go down to Pioneer Flour Mills, and that's down at the Guenther House. Old man Guenther was the one that created Pioneer Flour Mills. And it's this old, old house that was the actual mill that used to sit right on the edge of the water, and they converted it into this restaurant. Fantastic place to eat brunch. Just a great, great place. And of course, they use all the recipes and everything out of Pioneer Flour Mills. The actual mill is just across the street from it. And so Pioneer Flour Mills is still there. They make White Wings flour, Pioneer flour, cornmeal, et cetera, et cetera. Cool place. Yeah. That's a pretty neat place.
JO: We'll have to check that out. And what else is going on down there that time of year? I guess, are the Spurs playing any home games? Have you looked into that?
DH: I didn't look to see if they're playing while we're there. But the Spurs will, if you want to look at tickets for the Spurs, see what their schedule is and see if they're going to be around. There's a ton of other things like museums and stuff. Man, there's a whole museum walk where you can just do from museum to museum to museum and see all the old museums and all. One that I would tell you to go look at because, being Texan, I'm always proud of Texas, but the Dolph Briscoe Western Art Museum is right there close to us. It's about two blocks from us.
DH: Dolph Briscoe used to be the governor of Texas. And Dolph was great. He also was the largest single landowner in the state of Texas, and at one time was probably the largest single landowner in the United States. He had nearly a million acres of land under his name. Not corporate, not anything else, just as a landowner. And that's what you don't find in anything else is you don't find those people that still... They still have 860,000 or so acres, and it's still owned by the Briscoes, the son and daughter. That's a pretty cool museum. They've got all kinds of interesting stuff in there. You'll find stuff from the Alamo in there, you'll find all kinds of great artwork, history. It's a fantastic museum, and they've got outdoor artwork, sculptures, et cetera, that are very nice. It's a great little place to go spend an afternoon just walking around right close to the hotel.
JO: Okay. I look forward to checking that out as well. Well, Dan, I can't be talking to a fellow realtor and not bring up real estate, man. So, I'm curious, what are you seeing in the Texas land market right now? Is it still kind of a little bit of a buyer's market, or has it started shifting back to a seller's market?
DH: It's interesting because we've fluctuated a lot. What I see in farm and ranch, and I'm not talking about residential stuff right now, I'm just talking about farm and ranch. We came up close to the end of the year, and we were expecting to see a bunch of 1031 exchanges and other things where people were trying to get out of the stock market, et cetera, and get into hard assets. And so it was like, okay, they ought to be doing some 1031 exchanges, doing some stuff, right now is the time to do it. Did not see it. Didn't happen. But we've seen an uptick since the 1st of the year.
DH: So, since the 1st of the year, more people are coming out looking at ranches, wanting to buy stuff. There've been a number of ranches that have sold. I think that's exactly the issue. I think people are trying, they don't know where the market's going, they're worried about their money, and they're starting to look for some hard assets to put their money into. That's one of those things that you never know exactly what you're going to hit with and what you're going to miss with when you're listing property. But good ranches right now, that's where you want to be. You don't want to be in the small, low end of the farm and ranch market. You want to be in that ultra-high end of the ranch market right now. That's what's selling. That's what people are coming out and buying right now, something that's 5, 10, 15, 25, $30 million.
JO: Well, that makes sense. I was just talking to a client this morning before you and I got on this call, and he was saying last year his portfolio did 18% in stock market, mutual funds. Year before that, it was over 30%. Year before that, it was almost the same. And he's saying, "Look, this has been such a good run, but I know it can't continue forever." And so we were talking about how to diversify that into some farm ground down here in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. I think we're just going to continue seeing that as people get a little bit more nervous, a little bit more hesitant on what the US economy is going to look like in the future, that owning land is just a great hedge against inflation and a good place to park cash for appreciation.
DH: Yeah. It seems like what we saw, of course last year, at the end of last year was it slowed down tremendously simply because people didn't know what to do. Everybody was sitting watching the market, trying to figure out where it's headed. And it did not change much other than the fact that you see a lot of people, a lot of wealth that are saying, "Okay. We can't keep kicking this can down the road. Sooner or later, you gotta pay the piper." and they are now looking to figure out a way to just hold on to what they have so that it just doesn't disappear. Of course, land's one of the best ways to do that. You still have an asset, it appreciates, it's a great opportunity for people to be able to store cash for a while.
JO: Well, and I think you're right with what you just said there as they were watching, trying to figure out where it was going to go. We had such a run-up in 2020, '21, '22, and then things started slowing down and interest rates went higher. And then this past year, we've finally gotten a little bit more balanced, and I'm seeing a lot of buyers that are saying, "Okay. We're back to a normal market. I can handle this 6% residential interest rate, this 6 3/4 interest rate on land. I can handle the financing." I think people are realizing that all the hype and the uncertainty is gone from the past few years and we're getting back to what I'll call a balanced, normal, healthy market, where it might take four to six months to move a property but that's pretty normal if you look back over history. I think it's healthy as well.
DH: That's exactly right. That was last year for us. We looked at it, I looked at it. A lot of people probably wouldn't agree with me, but I looked at it and said, "Okay, this is a normal market," and told my clients that, "Hey, we're just back to a normal market. This is nothing. It's not bad, it's not good. It's just a normal market." And It's going to take a while to sell pieces of property. It's not like they're going to just disappear overnight like they did back during the COVID hype. Now then you're actually going to have to work. I'm telling brokers, realtors, get off your butts and go back to work. This is not a low-hanging fruit situation. This is a get to work, get down on your knees and root around and find you a deal, put it together, make sure you can hold it together and get it closed. It's going to take some work right now.
JO: Yeah.
DH: But there's a lot of cash out there. There is just a ton of cash out there. And people that are sitting there holding that cash, they watch it just disappear every day. You look at our inflation rate, you look at what's going on as far as that's concerned, people are losing money every day holding on to cash. It's like, if you put it in the stock market, it went up, like you said, 12, 14, 15, 20, 30% on some of those things. But you're right, that can't continue. That has to correct. So, people are really starting to hunt now, I think, for good quality properties. Now, if you have cruddy properties, I don't think that follows through. But if you talk about quality properties and they're good ones, then yeah, there are people out there with money that will buy something like that.
DH: In the past, I've seen people want to go out and spend money on a place, buy, clean it up, fix it up, put a bunch of improvements on it, et cetera, et cetera. Right now what I see is people wanting to go out, buy something turnkey. They can park their cash there, they can go enjoy it and play with it if they want, but it's not going to take a ton of work for them to be able to have to be there and take care of it.
JO: Yeah. I think you're totally right. The cruddy properties, as you call them, is what I call kind of those class C properties. During COVID they were still selling, and now I can still sell them, but they've gotta be priced right. It takes so much effort and energy to really educate my sellers to say, yeah, what you thought your property was worth three years ago, it's not the case now. The buyers don't want to come in and have to spend a lot of cash putting in roads, repairing fences, repairing corrals. They want stuff that's turnkey. And so the class A properties are still in high demand. Class B and C properties will sell, but you've gotta sell them at a discount so that the buyer can have a little bit of skin left on the table to come in and make those repairs and not be upside down so that they've got some equity still in the place.
DH: And that's the hard part. All these sellers out here have heard for so long, "Oh, yeah, I can get $20,000 an acre for this piece of property." And they hear that and they don't realize that you gotta compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. And they've got a piece of property that hasn't been taken care of in the last 20 years, it's just been sitting there, or 30 years or longer. Their parents had it and maybe they've inherited it and they think it's worth $25,000, $30,000 an acre and you gotta look at them and say, "Guys, in this condition, it's only worth this much." And they just have a hard time believing or understanding that their properties are not worth what those properties that you talked about, those really class A, good pieces of property are worth. And they hear those numbers when those things sell, and then getting them to believe that those B and C class properties are... That's not what you have. You have a B or a C class property, not an A class property. And so those numbers are so much different. It's really hard to get those sellers to understand that.
JO: Well, Dan, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm excited to see you at NLC in March. Is there anything else that you'd like to throw out here as we're wrapping up for our listeners?
DH: March is always interesting in Texas. It can be cold, it can be hot. Check the weather before you come and just make sure you know what the forecast is going to look like. You could be in shorts or you could be in a jacket. That's how strange Texas weather is that time of the year. So, just do that. Also, just know that there's a couple of places around there that you might want to go see. There's the San Antonio Zoo, the Witte Museum, some of those other things like that if you have kids and all, great places to go, things to see. It's just going to be fun. We're going to have a blast. You will love coming. If you've never been to one, this is the one to come to right here.
JO: All right. Well, folks, as you've learned, beyond education and being face-to-face with top professionals in land real estate, there's lots to do in San Antonio during the National Land Conference. If you haven't registered yet, be sure to do that on the RLI website at rliland.com/nlc. We'll see you on the River Walk on March 15th.
DH: Viva Las San Antonio!
[music]