“Anyone can buy land in Hawaii and put a house on it. Peter Holt chose to put cattle on it, and that tells you everything about who he is.”
— Paul Stukin, Deep Blue HI
Originally featured in New York Post
Peter J. Holt, principal owner of the San Antonio Spurs, has grown his Hawaiʻi Island holdings through an $8 million off-market purchase that adds 100 acres to his Big Island cattle ranch, bringing the operation to roughly 900 acres. The parcel sits on the slopes above the Waipiʻo Valley corridor — a region long tied to the island’s ranching heritage — and was once part of Parker Ranch. The deal closed neighbor-to-neighbor and never reached the open market. Away from basketball, Holt chairs HoltCAT, the family-controlled San Antonio firm that operates the largest Caterpillar dealership in the United States.
Rather than developing the property, Holt intends to run a working cattle operation on the land, continuing its agricultural use instead of building a private estate or compound. That approach sets him apart from other ultra-wealthy buyers reshaping ownership across the islands — among them Mark Zuckerberg on Kauaʻi, Larry Ellison on Lānaʻi, and Marc Benioff near Waimea — who have assembled large residential holdings. According to the listing side, the Big Island’s volcanic soil, elevation, and steady rainfall above Waimea support year-round grazing, and its paniolo ranching culture dates back more than two centuries.
Paul Stukin, founder of Deep Blue HI at Christie’s International Realty, represented the seller in the transaction. He framed the sale as a marker of a shifting pattern in Hawaiʻi land ownership — a move away from trophy compounds toward long-term stewardship of working land. Stukin called it one of the most significant Big Island land deals of the year despite it never being publicly listed, pointing to the island’s rare combination of active volcanic landscape, world-class ranching conditions, and multiple climate zones as the draw for a new kind of buyer he expects to follow.