$725 Million Texas Wonder Ranch on Verge of Selling?

Some numbers just seem to defy explanation. Joe DiMaggio‘s 56-game hitting streak. A German diver holding his breath under water for 22 minutes and 22 seconds. The amount of time Lindsay Lohan has managed to stay in the spotlight.

The $725 million listing price of a Texas ranch belongs right up there with any awe-producing numbers. Nearly three quarters of a billion dollars for one piece of remote Lone Star State property?

It’s an unfathomable figure — until one considers what this “ranch” really is. It’s a 510,527-acre estate with 58 houses, three lakes and 1,000 working oil wells. It also spans six counties in North Texas, boasting a total size that makes it larger than New York City and Los Angeles combined.

Its history dates back 166 years as the W.T. Waggoner Estate Ranch — there are even tombstones of some famous cowboys on the spread. A judge ordered that the ranch be sold last year after warring factions of the Waggoner family couldn’t agree on what to do with the property after two decades of legal battles.

When the listing came out at $725 million, many thought it had to be a publicity stunt (a highly successful one, considering how many publications and national TV networks have done stories on it). But its Dallas-based broker, Bernard Uechtritz, now says he has a dozen serious would-be buyers and expects to sell the $725 million behemoth by the end of the year. “There’s both foreign and domestic interest,” Uechtritz tells real estate blog The Scoop. “Names that are recognizable in Texas and beyond.”

The ultra-rich buyer (really, if you’re not a billionaire, why bother inquiring) will inherit plenty of responsibility. It’s a working cattle ranch, and Uechtritz says that only buyers committed to keeping the ranch going have made the final cut.

Then again, who doesn’t want 14,000 cows included in their $725 million ranch buy?