Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney has shifted his NC land buying approach — and shares how
Last September, sisters Donna Matis and Caroline Steele of Edison, New Jersey, purchased land in the Western North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains.
They paid $80,000 for roughly 10 acres near the town of Spruce Pine, a plot their great-grandfather had once owned. There, the siblings in their 60s plan to build separate homes and eventually live year-round.
“We were stoked when we were able to get it,” Steele, 64, said. “Try to keep it in the family.”
The man who sold them this property was not a typical landowner. Nor was it his typical land deal.
Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney is North Carolina’s second-wealthiest person, with a net worth of $5.7 billion, according to Forbes. Since the Great Recession of 2008, he has accumulated thousands of acres statewide — concentrated around Chatham County and the state’s western peaks — making him one of the largest individual landowners, if not the largest, in North Carolina.
Sweeney strives to protect large swaths of land with high conservation value before developers get possession. In 2016, he donated 7,000 acres of forest east of Asheville to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In 2021, he gifted 7,500 acres near the Avery-Mitchell county border to the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy. That year, he also teamed with conservation groups to preserve a two-mile coastal barrier south of Topsail Island.
He buys most of his land through an entity called 130 of Chatham, which has 11 protection agreements with the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program. And in August, Sweeney partnered with The Conservation Fund, a nonprofit, to sell 238 acres of high-evaluation spruce-fir forest to the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation for $3.59 million in a deal to expand Mount Mitchell State Park.
“What is unique about working with Tim Sweeney is he could purchase a tract and possibly wait two or three years for the state to buy it,” said George Norris of the NC parks division. “He has enabled us to purchase things that we would not have had the money for in the short-term, which most sellers demand.”
Sweeney today owns around 54,000 acres across 15 counties, property records show, through five limited liability companies. He controls 16,000 acres in fast-growing Chatham alone; only the U.S. government has more in the central North Carolina county.
But after years of adding parcels, Sweeney says he has shifted his approach.
“Most of my big conservation land purchasing breakthroughs came when the economy was in poor shape and land was prudently priced,” he told The News & Observer in an email. “Since 2021, the economy has been stronger, land has become more expensive, and my focus has moved to getting large blocks of contiguous conservation lands I’ve acquired since 2009 into permanent conservation.”
Local deeds reflect Sweeney’s strategy shift. He has replaced rapid land purchases with a trickle of sales and land swaps. For example, in July, he and a group of lumber companies bought and sold land between themselves in Western North Carolina’s Mitchell County.
“Essentially what we did is worked out an exchange with him,” said Richard Crouse, vice president at Bryant & Young Lumber Company. “We got a tract that was more strategic for us, near (U.S. Route 19E), and he got properties that met his conservation goals.”
Connecting protected areas is essential to preserving wildlife, conservationists say, allowing animals to migrate and complete full life cycles. In eastern Chatham County, Sweeney’s land along the Rocky River is home to the endangered Cape Fear shiner, triangle floater, eastern creekshell, panhandle pebblesnail and rare dragonflies. The 11,200 acres he owns around Hickory Mountain in McDowell County feature rare plant species like thick-pod white wild indigo, Greenland sandwort and Appalachian goldenbanner.
Sweeney said he is partnering with The Conservation Fund and the Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina on three current initiatives: expanding protected land around Mount Mitchell State Park, linking South Mountains State Park to Pisgah National Forest and Chimney Rock Park; and preserving areas along the Rocky River.
These areas can be popular for development, said Misty Franklin, director of the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, as the Triangle’s population stretches eastward and others seek to settle in scenic communities outside Asheville.
As founder of Epic Games — the Cary video game developer behind Unreal Engine, Gears of War and the lucrative Fortnite franchise — Sweeney has the resources to snatch private land quickly and hold it until the state or large conservancy groups are ready.
“Tim operates as a private citizen, but thinks as a park planner or a landscape planner,” said Jay Leutze of the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy. “He thinks the way we do, using conservation science and our goal to have ecosystems function at their highest level.”
Sweeney says he sells land at a discount and uses proceeds to further conservation efforts. A few of his recent buyers have been private individuals.
“In some places, long-time local families wanted land adjoining theirs for expansion and I’ve accommodated that wherever it was compatible with conserving key natural habitat,” he said. “And in a few places, conservation plans didn’t work out and I sold stranded tracts of land to local folks.”
Speaking by phone from central New Jersey, Caroline Steele described how her sister Donna had written Sweeney about purchasing their family’s former Blue Ridge Mountain parcel. He agreed to sell it for the same $80,000 price he had paid for the land in 2018.
The siblings hope to move down by the end of the year. Steele said she knew the previous owner was a conservationist, but asked whether she knew Sweeney was a multibillionaire, she said she wasn’t and quipped, “Oh, that’s always nice.”
This story was originally published May 5, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney has shifted his NC land buying approach — and shares how."
