Ranch Luxury 2026 – Realtor.com Economic Research

For decades, ranch living sat squarely in the American blue-collar tradition, a life romanticized in old Western films and TV but rarely aspirational for buyers outside that world. That’s changed. Shows like Yellowstone, 1923, and most recently, The Madison, introduced ranch culture to a much broader audience, drawing in viewers who fell for the sweeping landscapes and rugged lifestyle long before they ever considered owning a piece of it themselves.

The surge in cultural appeal also correlates with some of the trends seen in the data. Homes listed as ranches had a median listing price of $361,680 in June 2016. As of June 2026, that figure has climbed to $769,000, an increase of just over 112%. For comparison, the national median listing price rose about 66% over the same ten-year stretch. Ranch properties aren’t just riding the broader housing market up: they’re outpacing it by a significant margin.

There were 19,486 ranch properties listed in June 2026 nationally, down from 30,464 in June 2019. Inventory contracted sharply between 2020 and 2021 (falling from 28,868 to 16,540 listings) and has only partially recovered since. Fewer ranches are hitting the market, but the ones that do are commanding significantly higher prices.

Texas Ranch Life

Texas metros lead the country by a wide margin when it comes to ranch listing volume:

Rank	Metro	Ranch Listings	Median Listing Price	Median Listing Price YoY
1	Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX	727	$1,400,000	-6.7%
2	Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX	640	$1,100,000	0.0%
3	San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX	564	$968,000	-2.7%
4	Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN	315	$1,250,000	26.4%
5	Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX	274	$1,399,475	0.0%

(Number of ranch listings within the entire metro as of June 2026)

 

Four of the top five metros nationally are in Texas. Zooming into the county-level data underneath these metros makes the story even more specific: it’s not just that Texas metros show up with strong ranch inventory, it’s that a cluster of individual counties around Austin are doing most of the heavy lifting.

Rank	County	Ranch Listings	Median Listing Price
1	Burnet, TX	237	$990,000
2	Fayette, TX	232	$895,000
3	Williamson, TX	189	$1,900,000
4	Kerr, TX	188	$747,500
5	Marion, FL	171	$1,500,000
6	Gillespie, TX	171	$1,150,000
7	Bastrop, TX	158	$822,500
8	Blanco, TX	149	$1,454,996
9	Washington, TX	144	$995,000
10	Hays, TX	137	$2,000,102

 

Seven of these top 10 counties sit inside or just outside the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro with Burnet, Williamson, Bastrop, Blanco, Hays, Fayette and Washington within or sitting in the corridor between Austin and Houston. Ranches in these areas are spread across a ring of counties in the Hill Country and rural fringe where there is abundant acreage. Kerr County (Kerrville) and Gillespie County (Fredericksburg) round out the Hill Country’s other well-known ranch markets, both with their own dedicated metro identities. Marion County, Florida is the lone non-Texas entry in the top 10, anchoring the Ocala metro’s well-established horse-and-ranch country.

Premium Prices

Flip to median price, and an entirely different set of metros takes over:

(Due to the small number of listings in these markets, median price figures may be volatile and sensitive to individual high-value listings)

None of the volume leaders from the Texas section come anywhere close to this list, and none of these price leaders crack the volume top five. Jackson, Wyoming-Idaho sits in a class of its own, at nearly $3 million above second-place Bozeman, while Idaho shows up twice more (Idaho Falls, Hailey), suggesting the state is home to some of the country’s priciest luxury ranch markets. Notably, every metro/micro here except Durango sits within the Greater Yellowstone region, the same Wyoming-Montana-Idaho stretch the shows are actually set in. The price premium isn’t just a “ranch” premium; it’s a premium on this particular landscape. 

Zooming into the counties underneath these metros, and expanding to any county with at least 10 listings in June 2026:

(Due to the small number of listings in these markets, median price figures may be volatile and sensitive to individual high-value listings)

Blaine County, Idaho, home to Sun Valley and Hailey, takes the top spot and overlaps with much of the Hailey, ID micropolitan area. Gallatin County, Montana anchors the Bozeman metro, and La Plata County, Colorado is the core of the Durango metro, both consistent with the metro-level numbers. Teton County, Idaho is worth calling out specifically: it sits just over the border from Jackson, Wyoming, so its $3.7 million median reflects serious spillover demand from the Jackson Hole luxury market into the more accessible (but still pricey) Idaho side of the Tetons. If the range were widened to include areas with fewer than 10 listings, Teton, WY would jump to the top of the list with a median price just over $25 million, but it currently has only 8 listings. 

Williamson County, Tennessee, an affluent suburb of the Nashville metro, lands at #10 with a $2.97 million median across 48 listings, the highest listing count of any county in this top 10. That’s a meaningfully different story from the rest of the list: it’s suburban wealth buying up large-acreage properties near a major metro, not the classic remote-luxury-ranch model driving the Mountain West entries. Baltimore County, Maryland is a similar case, showing that “ranch” luxury pricing isn’t confined to the West at all.

The Bottom Line

Ranch real estate prices have surged nationwide, but that growth looks different depending on where you’re standing. In Texas, it’s concentrated in a dense ring of Hill Country counties feeding the Austin, Houston, and San Antonio metros, where listings remain plentiful and comparatively accessible. In the Mountain West, and in pockets like suburban Nashville and Maryland, ranch listings are scarce and priced like trophy assets, with medians running into the millions on just a handful of properties. 

Methodology:

All data in this article is sourced from Realtor.com® listing data, reflecting active inventory of for-sale ranch and farm properties as of June 2026. Listings reflect only those provided by MLS platforms to Realtor.com® via a listing feed, and new-construction listings are excluded unless actively listed on participating MLSs. All calculations are based on listing prices, not final sales prices, and are shown as medians to limit the influence of outliers.

Metropolitan, micropolitan, and county-level geographies are defined using the Office of Management and Budget’s OMB delineations.