Land Values Blogs

As harvest across the Midwest is wrapping up, the seasonal auction sales are officially in full swing. In Iowa, our appraisal team was able to track over 7,800 acres sold in 89 tracts. The average dollar per acre was $13,043, average dollar per tillable acre was $14,423 with an average dollar per CSR2 point of $178. This is down 2% from the Q3 average. Illinois had a rally, too, with 1,830 acres selling in 24 tracts at an average dollar per acre of $15,281.

November is historically the busiest time of year for public auctions, and 2023 is no exception. The week of November 5, 61 tracts were auctioned in Iowa, 20 in Illinois, 15 in Minnesota, and 10 in Nebraska.

The appraisal team at Peoples Company was able to track 57 tracts or 5,552 acres sold at public auction in Iowa during October 2023. The average dollar per acre was $12,456, the average dollar per tillable acre was $13,820, and the average dollar per CSR2 was $171.

Peoples Company unveils the 2023 National Land Values report featuring data-driven research on current farmland values across the nation, trends that may impact future values, and practical stories from around the country. This exclusive webinar explores the impact of renewable energy, foreign ownership, inflation, higher interest rates, and continued geo-political pressures on farmland values.

My brother and I own land that has been in our direct family lineage for 150 years, and I am proud of this legacy. There is a general admiration for farm operations that have been in a family for several generations. However, there can be surprises in the event of a death or marriage dissolution that a family may be unaware of when there are multiple owners with varying fractions of ownership, resulting in minority ownership.

Throughout my 20-year career at Peoples Company, I have been involved in billions of dollars of real estate transactions and have witnessed firsthand the financial performance of U.S. farmland through numerous economic shocks including the great financial crisis, Ben Bernanke’s quantitative easing experiment, Trump’s trade wars, the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and now the nation’s battle with persistent inflation. On a pure return basis, farmland has outperformed most traditional equity and fixed income strategies, and has done so with incredibly low volatility compared to other asset classes over that time period.