$5 Million Ski Resort for Sale in Wyoming Reviewed

0:00Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous. Today's episode was a super fun one. It involves property in Wyoming and some outhouses. So me, Bill, and Heather went through it. I'm Michael and really enjoyed it. See what you think. You'll be, I think, surprised where we ended up at the end. Here you go. We'll start Acquisitions Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100 % beers anymore. And thumbs down on just the plus inventory. Big thanks to High Level for sponsoring this video and helping us pay for our editors. High Level is the all-in-one CRM that handles your emails, texts, funnels, and more all in one place.

0:38Think of it like the Swiss Army knife for small businesses, and you can try it for free for 30 days at gohighlevel.com slash michaelgirdley. All right, guys. Guess what? It's the middle of the winter. Ski season. Heather, how much skiing do you do? You know, I don't do as much anymore. In fact, if I go on a ski trip, I do a few runs, and then I don't. That's it. You enjoy the op-ray lifestyle? Yeah. Right. The apree is much better for me these days. Yeah. It's just, uh, I, I, I don't want to fall and hurt myself. So I take it super easy. How, how do horses do in snow? What is the, what is the typical for a horse in snow?

1:16I used to have horses in Virginia when I was young. And so we would get a little bit of snow and, you know, you have to be careful. I see, I see ground is too hard on their legs. You don't ride around in the snow. Actually, it's kind of nuts to do that because there could be rocks under there. It's really kind of unsafe footing. So you don't do a lot of riding in the snow. And usually you let the horse's hair grow out, you know, have a full winter coat. And often you have to blanket them to keep them in a barn. Yeah. If you're ever really interested in that, check out the horses, the Icelandic ponies in Iceland.

1:51They keep them in barns all year, all winter. and then in the spring they let them out and they're just out grazing. And then there's a roundup once a year where everybody rides around and gets them back into the barns. Oh, cool. I want to do it. Do you have to fly to Iceland to do that? Yeah, you do. Fascinating. Well, speaking of snow, it is ski season for all of us since we're recording this in January and I brought a ski deal. Yes. I'm so surprised. it's tradition i know you're i know you're shocked um have we done a ski resort before is this is our first ski resort i think on the show uh mills and i did one and i was there like we did oh yeah you were there too mills and i mills and i bill were trying so hard to make the deal work i've never tried so hard to make the deal work it just didn't work well this is my first resort so i'm excited on the on the other one we did and heather you can correct this but on the other one we did I think the conclusion was, okay, here's how to make this deal work.

2:58First thing you do is you get a billion dollars. You get a billionaire friend. You sell your other company for a billion dollars, and then you buy this one. Pretty much. That's correct. So this deal, I sent it out in the group chat. I did not write emergency pod next to it, but it was pretty close. So it's in Washakie County, Wyoming. It's$5 million on 230 acres. And this is the call for the best and final offers. and the name of the place is the Meadowlark Ski Lodge and Meadowlark Lake Lodge located in the Big Horde Mountains and they have a beautiful picture here it looks like Heather this looks like a giant lodge right like a 20 ,000 square foot lodge very picturesque yeah it looks amazing yeah the seller is inviting qualified buyers to submit best and final offers for the seasoned and profitable mountain business opportunity this is not a formal auction it is a structured request for competitive offers to be submitted by the deadline below.

3:55How is that? This is not an auction, I swear, but you need to submit your offers that are competitive by this deadline. Then we're going to go back to everybody. We're going to ask them for another round of offers. Which is not an auction. Not an auction, though. The good news about business in America is people just lie. It's crazy. Say whatever you want. Business broker. That's why you get licensed because when you have a business broker license, then you you can say whatever you want. It's like a get out of jail free card. Business brokering 301 is lying. That's what it is. It's not lying. If you have a license, you can say whatever you want, remember.

4:30Oh, it's like being a lawyer. Okay. It's an established profitable operation, approximately 8 ,500 foot base elevation, two lodges, 15 cabins, four duplexes, and a six room motel. It has a bathhouse, a restaurant, a bar, two full service kitchens, and it's in the Bighorn Mountains near Buffalo and 10 Sleep. 10 asleep. The pricing has been reduced recently from what looks like$5.7 million to$4.9 million. And they're asking for offers by March 1st, 2026. And they have a picture here, it looks like, of the ski area itself. So there's a bunch of runs that they have going on. And then in the summer, they have a picture of what looks like kind of the most beautiful place on the planet.

5:16Is that how you kind of see that, Bill? Yeah, it's gorgeous. Yeah, mountains in the background, if you're with us on YouTube, you know, beautiful lush forest in the foreground. I mean, this is one of those areas that's as beautiful, really overlooked in the summer. I mean, obviously it's awesome and, you know, snowy and everything in the winter. But when I moved out West, everybody that doesn't live out West really underestimates the summer. The summers are gorgeous. They're like three weeks long, but they're great. It's a mess three weeks. So Heather, it looks like this is, I'm zooming out trying to find a nearby city.

5:49Wow. Michael's zooming. He's scrolling like four or five times. It's the middle of nowhere. Yeah. For those of you not watching on YouTube, I basically had to scroll out to Starlink level to basically see the next town over. And what is the next major town here? How do you get to this thing if you don't have a private jet? It's tough. So this is due east of Yellowstone National Park is where it is. But at least a couple hours, right? Yeah. So your airport's nearby. You can fly to Jackson Hole, which is on the left of your screen, which is not close. Or you can fly to Bozeman, which is north of Yellowstone.

6:24So if you're going to Yellowstone, those are typically the two places people fly, Jackson or Bozeman. You access it from directly in the north or directly in the south. This is directly to the east. I would imagine Jackson Hole is likely the closest airport. You would have to map this. I bet it's two hours easy. Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah. wow this is this is out there um there's anything to the to the east that was closer but it's out there but this is i mean gorgeous this is like if you ever watch that tv show yellowstone like it looks like that it's awesome holy cow i'm playing the video of it here hopefully we can edit this into the thing on youtube but they have a drone flying in they're going down the ski runs And as you go down the ski runs, you basically look into a beautiful mountain lake and then you go to the lodge.

7:18And it looks like they have one lift doing the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is not like Vail level skiing, but I think what the pitch here is it has skiing. It has, you know, the lodge. It has stuff to do in the summer. Like it's beautiful. Like it's like a bit of more of a retreat. like you probably don't go here just to ski because to get here you drove past jackson hole and like all of this other skiing right you're here because you know it's probably less expensive you know maybe you're from the area i bet there's a decent size local draw to this place yeah it's probably more of a locals vibe i had to guess oh now here's a lake this thing's incredible huge lake massive lake uh and they do have a ski lift one lift servicing the whole hill but it looks it It feels kind of like an East Coast ski area for sure, except way better because it's not on the East Coast.

8:09It's got West Coast weather.

8:14This is dubbed, okay, so they have more here texts about it. This resort boasts over an 800-foot vertical drop. That is very East Coast skiing. That's kind of Michigan-level skiing. That's not even Vermont. That's Michigan-level. Yeah, except for the rest. It differentiates from East Coast pretty quick, and the rest is paragraph. Yeah. Dubbed the Little Jackson Hole of the Bighorns, Metal Ark Ski Area has over 230 acres and 35 trails of ski terrain for beginner and expert seers in very challenging shoots in an area of Wyoming that averaged over 300 inches of snowfall. At the end of the day, one could join friends in the Metal Ark Lodge, which has over 20 ,000 square foot space and provides food, beverages, and all the rentals and ski shopping downstairs needed to support any skier.

8:54They gave us the directions, and then there's a property website, so I'll click on this, but I think it's just more of the same. Oh, wow. Look at this thing. You go to their website and it says on the homepage that it's for sale. Yeah. They're not messing around. Michael skips immediately to the Wyoming tax benefits section of the pitch. Yeah. So what is this? It says, here are 10 great reasons offered by Brian Jones, a senior vice president at Bank of Jackson Hole, why it's good to own a home in Wyoming. So obviously they're mean you to live here as well, right? No state income tax. Dynasty trusts in Wyoming can shield your real estate from federal estate taxes for a thousand years through a dynasty trust.

9:38No inheritance tax or estate tax for Wyoming. No state gift tax, no tax on out-of-state retirement income, low property taxes, no excise taxes, meaning on gas or buy a bag of groceries. I guess that would be a sales tax. You had no state sales tax. How do they make any money in Wyoming? Yeah, the state doesn't have any money. No tax on mineral ownership, no intangible taxes on financial assets, no tax on the sale of real estate. It's a really good question. I mean, like here in Texas, we get so much of our state revenue because we charge taxes on all the oil coming out of the ground. I'm really curious how Wyoming affords their, state, given they have no people.

10:20Because I think Wyoming is like the... They have like 5 ,000 people. Yeah, they don't have to provide anything. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, if you want to fast track to be a senator, like go become a Republican, and then go make a couple thousand friends in Wyoming, and then that's your way to become a U.S. Senator. A couple thousand? A couple hundred? I think. Well, it's one of the... This is one of the things I always keep trying to tweet whenever people are like, oh, you know, our country is going the wrong direction. They're usually people from California. No offense, Heather, but there's just a lot of people in California and they're not very happy about the direction of the country.

10:57And I'm like, look, if you guys just got a couple of 10 ,000 of your friends and moved to Wyoming, it would solve so much in this country. The whole Senate would be blue for the rest of the future. Anyway, I keep trying to tweet that and nobody likes it. I guess it's too practical. Somehow it's not working. Well, that would require people to want to do something rather than just complain. So that's the flaw in your argument here, Michael. Sorry. Yeah. So Heather, when you see something like this on a business listing, what does this tell you about who they think should buy this thing? I mean, they want someone who's going to move there, who's going to relocate there and live on site and kind of consider this their home with a little bit of business income and it's going to work financially because you're not going to pay any taxes.

11:43And probably it's a hint to me that you're not going to make much money at the ski resort, but you're going to shelter your other assets and other income from state taxes. And you're going to have this great, you know, you're going to get all these tax benefits, but you're really not going to make money. That's what it's hinting at because I don't see what we usually see, which is EBITDA or something. Yeah, I don't I don't see any financials here. Or any hint of that. Income? Yeah. So, Michael, go back to the original listing. Was there any financials at all on this thing? Yes, the price. The price.

12:20That's all we got. Okay. All right. So, it's 250 acres, middle of nowhere, beautiful Wyoming. Five million bucks. It's got a ski resort on it. I'm ready to submit a bid. You guys want to know what it is? One dollar. I bid$1 because I'll bet you anything the operating expenses exceed the income of the place. Ski lifts, very expensive to operate. The insurance, all that stuff, just to keep it going, the maintenance. Keeping that going, you guys have been skiing. Think about the maintenance capex here. All those cats, the grooming, the safety, the insurance, the ski patrol staff, I mean, the snow blowing, maybe they don't have snow blowing because they don't need to in this place, but there is a lot of sneaky CapEx to keep a ski hill going.

13:12But think of all the tax benefits. Yeah. You can lose money. When you lose money, you're going to save even more in taxes. Isn't that great? Or you can do all of your stuff here and break even, which I think is kind of the goal, and get your Wyoming outdoor lifestyle paid for, which would be great. You know, this is like a break-even second home instead of a money pit second home, perhaps. But I mean, I would be interested to see kind of the fully burned-in cost of owning this. I know, you know, they say property taxes are not big, but it seems like they're not zero. So between the property taxes, I mean, when you're out here, 250 acres in the middle of nowhere, you got to think about like maintaining the power line that comes to your property.

13:57You know, the sewer, the water, the infrastructure is your problem on a large plot like this. So the cost to keep that running, to repair it when it breaks, I mean, you could be sitting on, boom, half a million dollars of CapEx when a route goes through your water pipe or something, you know, or a big snow store comes through. I would want to really understand what it costs to own this place on a kind of 10-year window, not just last year. Because there are, you know, we had a big blizzard five years ago and there's a million dollars of CapEx. I need to know that, right? So I got to look at the last 10 years or so and understand also what is my insurance cost?

14:38What is my liability insurance cost? What is my property insurance cost? What is the insurance on the sewer lines cost? You know, there's, I would be fascinated to see sort of the P &L and the upkeep cost of this thing. who's buying this? It's just got to be, there's nobody's buying this to run it as a real business. Yeah. You're either, I think there's only two folks. You're either a billionaire or you're somebody who's running a really, really successful cult. Like those are your two options. You could relocate your cult to this property would be pretty, would be a very nice home for a cult.

15:09I mean, I would join that cult. You probably would too, Michael. I know you love skiing. There's a cult that involves skiing? Yeah. It's got to, I mean, So hang on. I think this might not be as bad. It's got an RV park there and a highway. It looks like it's right off of a highway that kind of cuts through like in between two mountains. So you might have, you know, some traffic going by. Is this, if you're going to buy this, you got to ask yourself the question, how do I further monetize it? Right? Like, are we doing weddings in the summer? Are we trying to, do we have a restaurant, more of like a roadside restaurant so I can capture people that drive down this highway?

15:48Are we really doing summer retreats? Are we doing mountain biking on my ski hills? There's a lot. This playbook, you don't have to come up with from scratch. Look at the big successful ski hills and the way they monetize in the summer and just copy it because you've got to find a way to make money year round on this thing. Hi, Heather here. When I'm not breaking down deals with these guys, I'm helping people get the right SBA loans for their business acquisitions. Because when you're buying a business, the best financing isn't one size fits all. There's the best rate, fastest to close, the specific loan structure that you need, or a little of all of those things.

16:22That's why my company, Viso Business Capital, works with over 30 different lenders to find you the best funding in less time and with less friction so you can focus on the deal. Sign up for a free live Q &A session on SBA loans at visocap.net, then click Zoom Sign Up in the top right corner. That's V-I-S-O-C-A-P.net and click Zoom Sign Up. Didn't say anything about accommodations. did it you know there's not like it did i thought it was uh oh they have a bunch of pictures oh yeah it's beautiful they've got so they have a six they had a six room motel they've got several cabins um it looks like they do there's a wedding venue okay yeah so i mean i don't mean to imply that this thing is losing money hand over fist but i can't imagine it's making a ton of money the value is probably here in the land but my question though is how much is the land really worth i mean in rural wyoming can you imagine trying to staff something like this right right well maybe michael or maybe you're the only game in town and like maybe it's the best job in an hour drive right because it's not manual labor it's not you know cutting down trees it's not you know, intense, hard physical labor, be a ski bum, work in the restaurant.

17:44You know, this might be the cushiest gig for miles around. You know, you don't need skilled labor. It's not like I need a hundred plumbers or something. Holy cow. Look where you can have, you can ride the ski lift up and then you can have your ceremony with that view. And if you can't see that, um, you know, if you're, if you're listening to this on audio, like it, imagine you're, imagine the scene from the end of madman you remember a madman when he's like you know i wish they all could see coca-cola and it's like he looks out over the paradise it's the exact same thing like off of a cliff like this beautiful picture you take the ski lift to this i'm sure and they've got like wooden benches that overlook the valley and the mountains like it's a gorgeous gorgeous piece of property i mean to some degree and this is why my bid is a dollar because a some degree i can't believe it's only five million dollars which tells me that i mean it seems like it should be three times that for 250 acres improved with a pond with this all the ski capex already done you know i would bet this is not a money printer no and then it is interesting you look at the other listings that compass has here and some of these ranges are incredible It's like 500 acres for like$10 million.

18:59Yes. Mike, I've talked to a couple folks that own ranches. This is mostly Texas talking here. But the cost of the ranch is nothing compared to running the ranch. Yeah. These are their other listings. 407 acres for$5.7 million in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming. and you got to have a staff with two or three people just to keep up with all this fences coming down animals doing crazy stuff yeah and this one just has little cabins on it yeah and the uh the pro i mean these are beautiful pieces of property in a gorgeous area of the country and it's so easy to fantasize right about this lifestyle right you know i'll buy a three million dollar 200 acres in wyoming and live this wonderful yellowstone lifestyle but it is tough I mean, there's a lot of manual labor here.

19:52There's a lot of snow. The pictures are always in the summer. You'll notice the three weeks of summer. And the huge gotcha out here is property taxes because they can change. That is, talk about stroke of the pen risk, right? You lose an election and somebody comes in and they need to fund the state. There's a giant bullseye on the huge property owners. and they can do it to you and you can't fight back. They just raise your property tax. So that is the scary thing that you need to, and you need to cashflow the property enough to cover the property tax. And that is what's going on in so many of these ranches.

20:32They are just trying to make enough money to cover the property taxes for another year. So there are all kinds of schemes now where people are doing these tax credits and stuff like that for wildlife tax credits and stuff. I've started to get hints of these people here in Texas, like different types of, it's not just exempting you for property taxes, but it's like these weird incentives. And look, I'm not somebody who wants to buy a big ranch or even play any of those games. They're not the games I'm good at, but I'm starting to see more of that stuff. I wonder how many times people are doing that stuff.

21:03But I did find this picture here, Heather. It's not of our listing, but it's one of the other listings at$6 million. You and the horses could use the same outhouse right here. The latrine. Yeah. Yeah. it's rustic. And I think to Bill's point, if you haven't been on a farm before or spent some time, you have no idea how much work it is. You know, it is beautiful. But if you're not used to that, if you're a city folk type of person, this might be a tough one. So Michael, what you kind of mentioned about the taxes. So if you own a huge ranch, your saving grace is what's called the ag exemption. Are you familiar with this?

21:45yeah so our listeners may not be and add some context here oh i'm sorry i did the i did the wrong thing as a coast no tell me about it i just did the wrong thing i answered the question the way it's all right i'll give you a pass for today i was like so uh so the ag exemption i didn't know about this you know at some point we all don't know about things uh at one point i didn't too but i find it really interesting is that if you and then there's a wildlife exemption michael which you mentioned. In many states, Texas among them, I would assume Wyoming, there is an agricultural or wildlife exemption.

22:20And this exists because if they charge property taxes at 2025 rates on the people who bought these huge plots of lands or inherited them in the 1900s, everybody would be losing their property left, right, and center. And so because landowners are an influential constituency in a lot of these places, they have codified these things called agriculture exemptions. And the idea on its face is to make sure you don't lose the family farm to property taxes, right? So if you are using, and Michael, add some color here if you know, but if you are using a certain fraction of the property for agricultural purposes, or you can get it designated as like a wildlife preserve, which I think is the loophole that you drive trucks through, that most people do.

23:10They functionally exempt you from property taxes. You get to enjoy an almost zero property tax. So I have a friend who owns a ranch sort of in this area, and he is like desperate to lease out a corner of it to a farmer like every year. And what the farmer doesn't realize is he totally has my friend over a barrel because it has to be actively farmed. So he charges this farmer like absolute pennies, like nothing. But if this farmer were to just walk, my friend would get smashed with six figures in property taxes annually. So this guy should be being paid by my friend to farm his land. So it's a very interesting power dynamic to keep the ag exemption going.

23:53in texas you can also do it with bees if you put bees in if you put a certain number of bees it's considered you get a wildlife exemption uh yeah so that totally works but there's a it's different by state but the texas laws are like most of states which is this stuff that was designed to protect farmers too often gets just leveraged by billionaires as a way for them to save money so if you go look around like here around san antonio or in a lot of texas cities you'll go and you'd be like, why is there this giant farm in the middle of all of this valuable part of the state? You go look at who owns it.

24:29It's some billionaire. Are they paying any property taxes on it? Absolutely not. And the reason they're not is because they have a wildlife exemption that was designed to protect the farmer. Well, the farmer sold out a long time ago to the billionaire. The billionaire just let the farmer keep using it. So that happens over and over again. But the other scam that rich people do all the time is you go buy worthless land. You get it appraised really high, or you put a conservation exemption on it and then you go donate it and then you get a bunch of tax credits for that. That's one of my favorites.

24:57We can also talk about the art scam at some point, donated art scam. Those are all good ways to get stuff off your taxes. I don't do any of those things because I'm not hanging out with those people, but I know enough to see that they do it, which is whatever. Rich people got to be rich people. Do you think you could buy this ski resort and carve out a portion of your 200-some acres, conserve it because it's basically forest anyway and take a big tax write-off of part of your$5 million? Theoretically, yeah. I would want to talk with tax. The tax laws change all the time, so I want to make sure I have a really good attorney to talk through about that.

25:30But that seems like a good first place to start. Yeah, I think if you are looking at buying this, kind of one A is tax diligence, tax and legal. I mean, it's functionally the whole thing. Like, what are the tax benefits here? If I pay$5 million for this, how much can I get as a write-off? Can I conserve some of it? I mean, there could be a... you got to kind of want to own a place in rural Wyoming, right? But if you do, there are lots of ways to buy one in a tax advantaged way. And I would have, I have a sense the broker here might be able to guide you on or off the record, being that there's a section in the menu called Wyoming tax benefits.

26:09So they're acutely aware that this is an important selling point. I guarantee whatever Casper, the biggest town is, I guarantee there's three or four attorneys that all they do is, hey, you're a billionaire. I'm going to help you use Wyoming tax law and Wyoming law and work with your tax advisors to help you save big time on taxes and use this as a tax dodge. I guess that's it. I think I read, and Heather, I don't know if you've ever seen this stat, but per capita, Wyoming has more billionaires than any other state. There's something weird like that. I got to look it up, but I read that one time.

26:39I was like, oh, that's what's going on out there. A whole lot of rich people sitting around around their money. yeah leave it all right well let's wrap it up there uh so bill's putting an offer for one dollar heather you're offering you're offering four horseshoes yeah pretty much yeah there's no no cash flow so i'm out uh if i had five million dollars i would spend it on a place on the mountain in an awesome ski resort with a town nearby and a lot less hassle or or i would just put it all in the bank and I would just get$500 ,000 a year on 10 % return and just not worry about it. And then rent whatever I wanted.

27:17So I think I'm a pass. But man, that's so cool. So cool. All right. Well, we'll wrap it up there. Great job, guys. If you, dear listener, enjoyed this episode and have a ski friend, I encourage you to send this episode to them and tell them they should check out Acquisitions Anonymous. Oh, and I have a story for you guys. So this morning, I'm working from home today. This morning, I go down to the kitchen and my wife's like, did you hear the doorbell? I was like, yeah. She's like, there was a guy here. And I was like, okay, then what happened? Not a guy. I was like, somebody knocked on the door.