NEW MEYER, Ariz.
— Real estate agents in the Navajo Nation are scrambling to find buyers after Navajo authorities announced the discovery of a $1.8 billion real estate fortune in the nation’s sixth largest city.
Navajo real estate agent Steve Hahn said his office has received hundreds of calls since Friday afternoon about prospective buyers who are “extremely interested” in buying the former Caddo homestead in the northern Navajo reservation, a community of more than 40,000.
Hahn said he has received phone calls from people from as far away as Australia, Spain, France, Britain and even the U.S. “We are on the verge of a real estate market crash,” Hahn told the Associated Press by phone.
But with no shortage of opportunities to sell, Hahn has offered a “totally non-negotiable” $1,800,000 (U.S.) offer to anyone willing to come forward with a good deed deed to the property.
This is a real-estate market crash.
People are bidding up to $1 million (U) to see what the market can offer, Hahns owner-operator Gary Hahn Jr. said in a statement to The Associated Press.
We have been in the business for 30 years and I am very, very confident that if the price goes up, the buyer will come.
The land, which was once home to the Native American Apache tribe, was purchased by the Navajo nation in 1967 for $1 per acre.
With the exception of a few smaller parcels, the majority of the land is privately owned.
It was originally planned to be developed into residential and commercial property, but in 1995, the tribe voted to sell the land to a group of investors who sold it to the U-Haul trucking company.
A few years later, the Navajo leaders sold the land again, and the group, the Pueblo of Pueblos, later took over the property and sold it for $100 million to the Pecos National Bank in 2006.
Despite the sale, the property is now owned by the PECO, a federally recognized Indian tribe that operates casinos in the state of New Mexico and is the largest U.N. landholder in the U, according to its website.
On Tuesday, Navajo officials announced the largest sale in history of the Caddoo Homestead property.
It includes an area totaling more than 1.8 million acres.
Under the terms of the sale agreement, the purchase price is $1 billion, but there is a $100,000 option for $300 million.
In addition to the $1B offer, the land’s current owner, PECOs subsidiary, the Cascades Ranch Inc., is selling for $450 million to a buyer that will get an exclusive right to the land.
According to Hahn, the group will also take possession of the remaining properties, which were bought by the UHaul consortium in the early 1990s, for use as housing and a wildlife sanctuary.
