Preserving the value of land

Jan. 31--Nancy Garner knows the value of land.

She sat on property off Zac Lentz Parkway from 1997 until 2013, when the Reserve Apartments were developed there.

She owns property off the Guadalupe River near Cuero that she hopes to hand down to her children.

Her ranch near Goliad is for hunting with her family and friends, while her office on the Houston Highway is all about location

"Land is all about intended use, whether it's secluded or for retail," Garner said. "Everybody's looking for something different in land."

Garner is a real estate agent and president of Woolson Real Estate Company, as well as a property manager for rental houses, apartments and Falcon Point Ranch hunting lodge in Seadrift. She's seen the importance of liability of land owners, knowledge of mineral rights and estate planning firsthand and through her clients.

She was one of about 110 people, mostly landowners, who attended a Value of Land Issues conference that focused on issues affecting land ownership such as estate planning, water lawn, family legacy and landowner liability.

Texas Agrilife Extension- Victoria County, De-Go-La Resource Conservation and Development and University of Houston-Victoria Small Business Development Center hosted the conference.

Liability

Garner's ranch is specifically for hunting with her family. They bought the ranch because land to hunt on is becoming harder to come by and leases can be expensive, Garner said.

Part of the reason they don't lease their land is because of safety, she said.

On the ranch she manages in Seadritft, hunters and fishermen are required to sign a waiver so the lodge can't get sued if they are injured.

There are five requirements to make a waiver of that nature binding on a public lodge or private land, said Judon Fambrough, a lawyer with the Texas A&M Real Estate Center. Fambrough spoke at the Value of Land conference on Jan. 15 at the University of Houston-Victoria.

The person signing the waiver must have a fair bargaining position, Fambrough said at the conference.

"If you're going to get a waiver, you get them to sign that waiver and tell them about that waiver when you enter your contract, not when they arrive the night before the hunt," Fambrough said.

Signers must also get something in return, which is the ability to hunt on the land.

The waiver must explicitly say the signer is holding the land owner harmless from negligence of dangers on the land. Those presented with the waiver must know what they're signing, and it can not be in the fine print.

Estate planning

The hunting ranch along with her river property is land that Garner hopes she can leave to her children.

She said she hopes she is teaching her children and grandchildren to build on what she has rather than using it all up.

If her children were to inherit the land, they would have to pay an estate tax on it.

Depending on how land is given away, it is subject to different taxes, said James Henry, founder of Crossroads Wealth management at the conference.

"Land going to one person, that's just a gift or an inheritance," Henry said. "A retirement plan going to another one, when they receive it, it's subject to income tax. So you have to take into consideration those kinds of issues."

Garner hopes her family will realize the value of the land, she said.

"It is all about the future generation," Garner said. "If I can have something for them to build on, I'd love that because it's hard to start with nothing."

Mineral rights

Many landowners, Garner included, can get lost when it comes to the mineral rights of their land and the possibilities of fracking on their land.

Natalie Thunderbolt, a research assistant with Texas A&M's Institute of Renewable Natural Resources spoke to land owners at the conference about what rights they have and the environmental impact the oil business could have on their land.

When Garner sells any land with mineral rights, she consults a lawyer, she said.

"That's out of my area of expertise and especially recently," Garner said. "For years it was very simple; it's not simple anymore."

Whoever has mineral rights to a tract of land can lease those rights to a company so they can explore for oil and gas. Mineral rights owners have rights to use the surface to drill wells, build roads to access the wells and other activities.

Surface rights owners would have to negotiate an agreement with mineral rights owners to restrict the use of the land to access minerals.

Garner's home, which falls within DeWitt County, sits on land where she owns the surface rights but not the mineral rights.

"The mineral rights on this have already been preserved by like two or three buyers ago, so we have surface rights," Garner said.

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