By which I mean owned by an individual or family (not a corporation or land trust) and contiguous property. Who has the largest swath of front yard in the world and how large is it?
The King ranch in Texas is the biggest private property in the U.S. At about 825,000 acres (1300 square miles) it is bigger than the state of Rhode Island.
I don’t think it is the biggest. That is just a comparison point.
How about Anna Creek Station in Australia? I think the Kidmans still own it, but I don’t know if that means they privately actually own it privately or just the grazing rights. As I recall, it’s about the size of Belgium–5.5 M acres maybe?
Anna Creek Station in South Australia has an area of approximately 34,000 km[sup]2[/sup].
I think it’s family owned (by the famous Kidman pastoralists) although title could well be held through some sort of corporate or trust vehicle.
Anna Creek Station is owned by S Kidman & Co Ltd, so it is not privately owned. S. Kidman himself is long dead. Alexandria Station is the next biggest but I think it’s owned by the North Australian Pastoral Company, so again not in private hands.
Both of these properties are pastoral leases, so they don’t own the freehold. Almost all Australia’s big pastoral properties are leasehold. Even if that were not so, I don’t know how you’d find out which of them is the largest owned by individuals. Many are, because at least in Queensland it is harder to get the govt to agree to a lease to a company than individuals.
I suspect some cattle stations in South America would be pretty huge.
Is S Kidman publicly traded? I thought it was fairly closely held w/ some family ties even still to the old guy. I guess the OP would still rule it out as a corporation but under that definition most any big chunk of property would be in some type of “corporate” hands even if one person controlled it all.
How long is the leasehold? Does anyone get to come onto the land, or is it the functional equivalent of what we consider private property here in the States?
Reminds me of a joke.an is being shown around a large English estate by the owner. At the end the Texan says that it is very nice, but he has ranch that is so large he can drive his car all day and not go from one end to another. The Englishman says: “I used to have a car like that too”.
Slight hijack, but a bit more than a hundred years ago the answer would have probably been the Congo Free State, owned in its entirety by Leopold, King of the Belgians.
Actually when I said Anna Creek Station is owned by S Kidman & Co Ltd so wasn’t privately owned, that was a poor choice of words. I should really have said it wasn’t owned by an individual. I don’t know if the company is publically traded. I doubt it. I suspect it’s still closely held by the family.
For reasons stated in my last post, large leasehold grazing properties in Australia are actually quite often held by individuals, despite what you’d think.
The lease length would vary, although would generally be measured in decades and many are perpetual. The topic of who gets to come onto the land is a highly “interesting” one, particularly due to Native Title issues. Typically, the lease will be restricted to grazing entitlements and other rights (mining in particular) are reserved to the Crown. Also, each state has its own rules, and usually several different types of lease, and there are various wordings that have been used over time. So it’s not possible to give a simple answer. However, broadly I think the answer is that at law in Australia grazing leases are usually not equivalent to outright private property, but in practice the leaseholder usually wouldn’t notice much difference.
The Benetton family owns Compania de Tierras del Sud Argentino which is 900,000 hectares. I believe this to be 9000 square km.
Don’t remember if this was the same place, but I had a poli sci professor who specialized in Latin America who frequently made mention of a family in Argentina who owned a chunk of land “larger than some small european countries”.
