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Some farmland sales eclipsing $20K per acre this spring

A farm real estate specialist says there have been some milestone farmland sales popping up across parts of the Midwest.

Jim Rothermich with Iowa Appraisal says a 160-acre farm in northwestern Iowa recently sold for more than $21,000 per acre. “That’s one way to gauge how good the Iowa land market is doing is how many farms are selling north of $20,000 per acre. We’ve had several of them. That’s typically in the northwest part of the state where it’s heavy in livestock.”

Rothermich says he’s seeing big sales in other states as well. “I look at sales in Illinois and down in Missouri and I’m seeing very strong results in those states, as well as in Minnesota. I even saw a sale up in South Dakota that was like $26,500 per acre just this past fall.”

He tells Brownfield, “That is just crazy high for South Dakota. That was not development land. It was bought to raise corn and soybeans.”

Rothermich says many farmers have a lot of cash on-hand to make significant land purchases and he expects higher prices to stick around.