$30M Off-the-Grid Property Comes With a Herd of Yak

'If all hell breaks loose, you can come here and you’ll be OK'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 30, 2022 4:15 PM CDT
$30M Survivalist Ranch Comes With a Herd of Yak
Mintz describes yaks as "smarter than cows, way less dangerous than buffalo."   (Getty Images/Dejchai Kulawong)

If you have very deep pockets and a belief that America's in for an extremely bumpy ride, a 312-acre property in New Mexico could be for you. The ranch in wilderness near Taos has its own water supply, tanks that can hold a year's worth of propane, a solar energy system, and a herd of around 85 yak, the Wall Street Journal reports. "If all hell breaks loose, you can come here and you’ll be OK," says Howard Mintz, a retired real estate developer who has been working on the property for more than 20 years.

Mintz, who built homes in New York's suburbs before running a San Francisco construction company that designed buildings to withstand earthquakes, says he has an interest in living off-grid but he' s not a "psycho" survivalist. "I’m not building an underground bunker with bunk beds and eating cans of beans and oatmeal for the rest of my life," he tells the Journal. The property's reinforced-concrete main home, with 4,000 square feet of living space and a koi pond that doubles as a moat, is still only 85% complete. Mintz, who stepped up work on the home after retiring in 2019, has been living in a small guesthouse on the property.

With an asking price of $30 million, the ranch is the most expensive property for sale in New Mexico. Mintz says he's "grown out of the idea of being there" and wants to live by the ocean and go fishing. He says the important thing to him was the journey of building the home, which included taking classes at the nearby off-the-grid Earthship Community. (In Silicon Valley, some of the wealthiest Americans have long been preparing for doomsday.)

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