Hall and Hall Partner Jim Taylor Quoted in Fortune Magazine

Hall and Hall Partner Jim Taylor was quoted in an excellent featured story in the October 2012 issue of Fortune Magazine profiling America's largest landowner, John Malone.  The full story can be found here: "Meet America's Largest Landowner."An excerpt from the story reads:Even less lucrative ranch land has become highly coveted. Jim Taylor, recently retired as the managing director of Hall & Hall, one of the country's largest ranch-land brokers and managers, says that despite economic hardships in residential real estate, ranch land has been a solid investment. Hall & Hall recently had its best run in the company's 70-year history. From the last quarter of 2010 through 2011, the brokerage sold about $460 million worth of ranch land."The buyers are people with a very large net worth who don't need a lot of cash return," Taylor says. "I think these purchasers are worried about inflation, and they're willing to accept an investment that doesn't get you a great return. You put a certain amount of value in land today and you come back a thousand years from now, it's still going to have value -- whether you're measuring it in dollars or rubies or rubles."Taylor, who attended Yale but didn't know Malone, has been watching Malone's acquisitions with interest. "When there's any kind of uncertainty in the national or international economy, everybody sits on their money," Taylor says. "You don't invest in long-term assets when the world may be coming apart. On the other hand, if you're really smart and really rich, that's when you do invest in long-term assets because that's when everybody is trying to get rid of them. That's where I think Malone fits into it."