# Who Buys Mineral Rights? The Five Kinds of Buyer, Compared > Who actually buys mineral rights and oil and gas royalties: direct buyers, funds, brokers, marketplaces and mailer operations. How each one makes money, what each will and will not buy, and how to check any of them. Written by a buyer. Source: https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/ Publisher: Berlin Royalties, a veteran-owned oil and gas mineral and royalty buyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, buying for its own account since 2014. Call or text 918-984-1645. License: free to quote and cite with attribution to Berlin Royalties and a link to the source URL. Who Buys ## Who buys mineral rights? Five different kinds of company will offer to buy your minerals, and they are not the same business. One of them is us. Here is how each one makes its money, what each will and will not touch, and how to check any of them before you answer a letter. [Get a Free Valuation](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/free-valuation/) [See the Buyer Directory](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mineral-buyers/) Short answer: mineral rights are bought by direct buyers who take title and hold, by private equity backed funds and public mineral companies, by brokers who market your interest to others rather than buying it, by online marketplaces and auctions, and by high volume mailer operations working from purchased lists. Berlin Royalties is the first kind. The rest of this page explains why the difference matters more than the letterhead. ## The five kinds of buyer ### 1. Direct buyers who take title and hold A company buying for its own account, recording the deed in its own name, and keeping the interest. The return comes from the royalty stream over years, so the incentive is to be right about the rock rather than to close a large number of files. Practical consequences for you: the offer is usually explainable, because somebody had to build it before the money moved. The company is usually smaller. And there is a paper trail, because a company that holds what it buys shows up in the grantee index of the counties it has bought in. This is what we are. **Berlin Resources LLC**, trading as Berlin Royalties, buys for its own account and holds. That is a verifiable claim rather than a marketing one, and the verification takes about five minutes at your county clerk. ### 2. Funds and institutional aggregators Private equity backed vehicles, public mineral and royalty companies, and family offices assembling a large position. Their return can come from the royalty, from a later sale of the whole assembled package, or from supporting a distribution to their own investors. They can pay very well for scale in a core area. They are frequently uninterested below a size threshold, and that threshold is rarely published. If your interest is small, or sits outside a fairway, silence is a common outcome and it is not a judgment about your minerals. ### 3. Brokers A broker does not buy. A broker markets your interest to buyers and is paid out of the transaction, usually as a commission and occasionally as an upfront fee. That can genuinely raise your price by creating competition where there was none. It can also add cost, add time, and put your interest in front of every buyer in the market whether you wanted that or not. None of it is hidden if you ask. The question, in writing, is one sentence: *are you buying this yourself, or finding someone else to buy it?* More on the tradeoff: [broker, marketplace, or direct sale](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/broker-or-direct/). ### 4. Marketplaces and auctions Platforms that list your interest for competitive bidding, funded by a listing fee, a commission, or both. They work best on a well documented producing interest large enough that real bidders show up. They work least well on small or complicated interests, where a listing can sit unsold. That matters more than it sounds: an interest that has been publicly shopped and did not sell is a data point that follows it, and the next buyer will know. ### 5. Mailer operations The volume business. Buy a list of owners from public records, mail thousands of letters with a number already printed on them, close whoever accepts. The number comes from a formula applied to purchased data, not from anyone looking at your section. Some of these are legitimate companies and some of those offers are fair. The economics do not depend on the offer being fair, though. They depend on a predictable proportion of owners accepting the first number they are shown. That is the whole model, and it is why the gap between the first offer and the best offer is widest exactly where the mail is heaviest. If one of these arrived this week: [got an offer letter](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/got-an-offer/), and the [offer checker](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/offer-checker/). ## How to tell which one is writing to you | What you see | What it usually means | | A specific dollar figure, before anyone asked what you own | A list driven mailer. The number came from a formula. || A per acre number with no well names in the letter | Same. Per acre pricing without production detail is a screen, not a valuation. || "We have a buyer interested in your interest" | A broker or an intermediary. Ask who the buyer is. || A request for your check stubs and division orders first | Someone actually valuing it. This is the good sign. || A deadline of a few days | A pressure tactic. Nothing about mineral value expires on a Friday. || An offer that rises sharply when you hesitate | The first number was not their real number. Ask what changed. | ## How to check any of them, including us - **Search the county grantee index.** A buyer that holds records deeds in its own name. If a company claims years of activity in your area and leaves no paper trail there, ask why. This one test sorts the categories faster than anything else. - **Ask whether they are buying for their own account.** In writing. Both answers are legitimate businesses. Only one of them is what most owners assume is happening. - **Ask them to show the arithmetic.** Which wells, what decline rate, how many undrilled locations and at what probability, which price deck. A buyer who did the work can answer that in a paragraph. - **Ask whether the offer number and the closing number are the same.** Ask what happens if they find a title problem. Most real complaints in this industry live in the gap between those two numbers. - **Ask them when you should not sell.** A buyer who cannot name a single circumstance in which holding beats selling is telling you something. - **Check the state.** Look them up with the Secretary of State where they claim to be organized, and search the state regulator's records if they claim to operate. Our [mineral buyer directory](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mineral-buyers/) profiles named companies from public sources, in the same format for each, and includes our own entry on the same terms. We do not review our competitors and we say why on that page. ## Who buys what you actually own "Mineral rights" covers several different assets, and the buyer pool is different for each one. - **Producing royalty.** The deepest buyer pool. Everyone in the five categories wants this, which is why competition is worth using. See [how it is valued](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mineral-rights-value/). - **Non-producing or unleased minerals.** A much thinner pool, and priced on the chance of future development rather than on cash flow. See [who buys non-producing minerals](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-non-producing-mineral-rights/). - **Overriding royalty interest.** Buyable, but it lives and dies with the lease. See [ORRI, explained](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/overriding-royalty-interest/). - **Non-participating royalty interest.** Buyable, and the fixed versus floating question changes the value materially. See [NPRI](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/non-participating-royalty-interest/) and [fixed versus floating](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/fixed-vs-floating-npri/). - **Working interest.** A different asset with cost obligations attached. See [non-operated working interest](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/non-operated-working-interest/). - **Small interests.** Frequently ignored by the funds, which is exactly why the first offer on one deserves scrutiny. See [small interests](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/small-mineral-interests/). - **Surface, wind, solar, pore space, and aggregate.** Separate buyer pools again: [surface](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/sell-surface/), [wind and solar](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/wind-solar-royalties/), [pore space](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/pore-space-carbon-storage/), [sand and gravel](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/aggregate-royalties/). - **An entity that holds minerals.** Sometimes the cleanest sale is of the LLC rather than the assets. See [entity buyouts](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/entity-buyouts/). ## Who buys minerals in your state Activity, the operators actually running wells, and what the state's royalty payment law already guarantees you, for each of the twenty states we work in. [Oklahoma](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/oklahoma/) [Texas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/texas/) [New Mexico](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/new-mexico/) [Kansas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/kansas/) [North Dakota](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/north-dakota/) [Montana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/montana/) [Wyoming](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/wyoming/) [Colorado](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/colorado/) [Utah](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/utah/) [California](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/california/) [Louisiana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/louisiana/) [Arkansas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/arkansas/) [Ohio](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/ohio/) [Pennsylvania](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/pennsylvania/) [West Virginia](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/west-virginia/) [Alabama](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/alabama/) [Alaska](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/alaska/) [Kentucky](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/kentucky/) [Michigan](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/michigan/) [Mississippi](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-mineral-rights/mississippi/) ### Want a second number before you answer anyone? Send whatever you have: an offer letter, a check stub, a deed, or just a county and a family name. We will tell you what you own, what we think it is worth and how we got there, and whether we think you should sell at all. If someone else's offer beats ours we will tell you that too. Free, and no obligation. [Get a Free Valuation](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/free-valuation/) [Ask a Landman](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/ask-a-landman/) ## Related - [Who buys oil and gas royalties](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-oil-and-gas-royalties/) - [Who buys non-producing minerals](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/who-buys-non-producing-mineral-rights/) - [How to find out if you own mineral rights](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/find-out-if-you-own-mineral-rights/) - [The mineral buyer directory](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mineral-buyers/) - [Compare your selling options](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/compare-selling-options/) and [broker or direct](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/broker-or-direct/) - [Questions to ask a buyer](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/questions-to-ask/) and [before you sign](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/before-you-sign/) - [When not to sell](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/when-not-to-sell/) - [Complaints and disputes](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mineral-complaints/) - [The complete selling guide](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/selling-guide/) Berlin Royalties is the trade name of Berlin Resources LLC, a mineral buyer and a landman shop in Tulsa. We are a potential counterparty to any sale you make, which is exactly why we would rather you checked our reasoning than took our word for it. Nothing here is legal, tax or investment advice.