Land Report January 2012 Newsletter

Here’s a great way to start your year: the January edition of The Land Report newsletter.

This issue is chock full of stories and links to essential resources, including the Winter 2011 issue of The Land Report and of course January’s Land Report Top Ten.

As you might imagine, December wrapped up with a slew of end-of-the-year closings, and several key ones are detailed in the January newsletter, including the sale of Montana’s Horse Ranch and the sealed-bid auction of the Robert Mondavi Estate in Napa.

For more up to the minute reports on listings, auctions, sales, and breaking news pertaining to land and landowners, be sure to follow The Magazine of the American Landowner on Facebook and Twitter.

P.S. Our award-winning quarterly magazine is available in a print version via subscription.

Record 17% Jump in Farmland Values

Farmland values in the Federal Reserve’s Seventh District climbed a record 17 percent during the second quarter of 2011, according to the Chicago Fed’s Farmland Values and Agricultural Credit Conditions Report. This economic shot in the arm marks the largest year-over-year gain since the 1970s for the District’s five-state area—one of the most productive regions in the Midwest. The value of “good” farmland increased 4 percent during the second quarter, compared with the first quarter of this year.

The report was compiled from the Chicago Fed’s survey of 226 bankers in the District, which includes Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Findings revealed that higher revenues for crops and livestock, coupled with growing investor demand, fueled the rural real estate roll. Agricultural mortgage rates averaged 5.62 percent—a record low that also contributed to the surge in District farmland values. Some respondents cited a higher-than-usual number of summer auctions as a factor.

“The combination of higher revenues for crop and livestock production has been an impetus for the significant increases in agricultural land values seen this year in the District,” the Fed reported in its newsletter. “Demand for farmland remained strong from both farmers and investors.”
Among the District states, only Wisconsin had a smaller year-over-year increase in farmland values in the second quarter of 2011 than in the first. Year-over-year land values in Indiana and Iowa climbed 21 and 20 percent respectively, while values in Wisconsin rose a modest 8 percent. Fewer than 2 percent of the survey respondents expect farmland values to decline in the third quarter of 2011.

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David Oppedahl, a business economist for the Chicago Fed, shares the bankers’ notion that the spike is no fluke. “Overall, the higher level of corn and soybean prices looks to be something that will continue through the end of the year,” he said early this week. “I think that over the next year we aren’t going to see any declines, and we are going to see continued increases, though probably not as strong as over the past year.”

On November 15, 2011, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago will hold a conference to explore the factors contributing to large increases in agricultural land values and cash rental rates in the Midwest. The details and agenda are available HERE.

Market Watch: Chicago Fed Cites Surge in Midwest Land Prices

Agricultural land values in the Seventh Federal Reserve District jumped 12% in 2010, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The district encompasses key portions of America’s Corn Belt, including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The increase was the second largest on record over the last three decades and was greatest in Iowa, where values soared a whopping 18 percent.

According to the Chicago Fed’s newsletter, “Slightly more than half of the respondents expected farmland values to keep rising during the January through March period of 2011.”

Read the Chicago Fed’s AgLetter HERE.

For Sale: Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams for $5.4 Million

By all accounts, it’s the typical sort of listing you see advertised in The Land Report:

FOR SALE. 193-acre corn farm for sale in eastern Iowa for $5.4 million. Owned and farmed by same family for over a century. Includes two-bedroom house, barn built in the mid-1800s, and baseball diamond built by Universal Studios.

OK, maybe the Lansing family’s farm is not so ordinary. Twenty years ago it got a serious upgrade courtesy of Kevin Costner, Ray Liotta, James Earl Jones, and a blockbuster movie called Field of Dreams.

“If you build it, they will come.” – The Voice, Field of Dreams

Located outside Dyersville, much of the land in the listing has been in the Lansing family for over a century, but for Don and Becky Lansing it’s time to retire. As Becky Lansing told the Associated Press, “We really would just love to become spectators. We want to sit in the bleachers. We want to look forward to all that the Field of Dreams will become in the future.”

Asking price on the 193 acres is $5.4 million, including a total of seven structures and two websites. Additional acreage is available. Ken Sanders is representing the Lansings. Further information is available HERE.