Winter 2016

ox
a banner and billion dollar year
2016 will go down as a banner year for Bernard
“Bernie” Uechtritz. First, there was the historic
and recording breaking sale of the Waggoner
Ranch and a slew of industry awards. Second,
Icon Global launched and has already almost
single-handedly set a transactional bench mark
of a billion dollars (and counting) of production
in real estate.
SOTHEBY'S INTERNATIONAL
–Highest Sale In The History Of Sotheby's
International W. T. Waggoner Estate, 2016
DALLAS BUSINESS JOURNAL
–Top Land Deal Of The Year, 2015
–Top Land Broker Of The Year, 2015
FORT WORTH BUSINESS & CEO
–Top Real Estate Industry Winner, 2016
LAND MAGAZINES
–Land Star Award-Special Recognition
W. T. Waggoner Estate, 2016
THE LAND REPORT
–Deal of the Century
W. T. Waggoner Estate, 2016
–Deal of the Year Camp
Cooley Ranch, 2011
TEXAS LAND / Profile
Bernard “Bernie” Uechtritz, founder of International
Icon Properties Group (www.ICON.GLOBAL) based in Dallas, refuses to be boxed in by
convention. “I’ve always been an out of the box kind of guy,” said Uechtritz, who is also
an International Real Estate advisor for Sotheby’s. “I’m really just a mongrel-bred kid
from a colorful family, who had a wild, adventuresome youth in the jungles and kunai
grass plains of Papua New Guinea (PNG). I was never a good scholar or a rule follower
because I’ve never been good at sitting still or staying in the lines.”
His innate willingness to stray outside the accepted boundaries and confines of
traditional real estate marketing is, in Uechtritz’s opinion, part of the key to his 30-
year career as one of the real estate industry’s “go-to fixers”. A partial list of his more
publicly, known successful deals in Texas includes: selling Camp Cooley Ranch, in the
midst of multilayered bankruptcy proceedings, which in 2011 was the largest sale by
price in Texas history; and recently spearheading the Global marketing strategy of the
535,000-acre Waggoner Ranch, which at $725 million is the largest ranch sale to date
in U.S. history.
Another Texas deal that looms large in his memory is the former HTC Ranch in east
Texas. Uechtritz successfully outmaneuvered a repeatedly resistant and remorseful
seller who had for years stonewalled and thwarted several prior buyers’ attempts to
close, including one buyer, who was so determined to prevail he took the seller all the
way to the Texas Supreme Court on a specific performance suit, only to lose.
Years later, in 2006, in a deal to sell to Uechtritz’s client, the seller got up to his
old tricks again and tried to wiggle. However, as real estate attorney Robinson stated,
“When the seller started playing checkers, Uechtritz played chess and closed the deal.”
Uechtritz professes to love thinking outside of the box, whether it’s on the buy or
sell side of complicated deals.
“Handling complicated deals—those with high public profiles as well as those that
by design and confidentiality agreement are
conducted behind closed doors and whose
details will never see the light of day—is a
niche that I fill,” Uechtritz said.
As a serial entrepreneur, Uechtritz launched
Icon Global to formalize and expand on what
he has been doing globally for years, which
is running a highly specialized practice in the
world of complex real estate of all kinds.
A part of Icon Global’s model is aligning
with and providing other brokers an
international face and brand, global marketing
reach, savvy and network resources, which
a local broker may not have. The goal? To
lead and co-list bigger or out-of-scope deals
delivering to a seller a can do global strategy
with good boots on the ground local knowledge. A case in point was his partnering with
West Texas broker Sam Middleton on the Waggoner Ranch.
Bernie and I had vastly different styles and backgrounds, leading some to call us
the “Odd Couple.” However; he is a team player, thoughtful, organized, creative and
forward thinking, with a positive take charge attitude, and he was always focused on
one goal, consummating the sale of the Waggoner Ranch.
—Chas. S. Middelton’s Sam Middleton, Uechtritz’s sale team partner