Just look at Landwatch for a bunch of different southern Iowa counties. Lots of properties just sitting. Some obvious good hunting properties, some marginal ones.
Glad you brought up that 1306 acre property in Van Buren County because it actually goes to the point I was trying to make, which is that "list price" doesn't always equal "sale price", especially in a slower market like this. List price on that farm was $8,990,000. But it actually sold for *$7,210,000*. A 20% haircut off list price. Just because it went under contract quickly didn't mean it sold at or close to list price. That was a very unique property because of the size. There was never going to be anything but a very, very small pool of legit eligible buyers for a property of that size so I'm not surprised the seller accepted the first offer they got. Did it still sell for a strong price? Yes. Close to list price? No.
I acknowledged that there are still a minority of properties going for unusually high prices, but that is not the norm right now. A lot of the guys who are cash buyers and financially capable of still being active in the current market *despite current interest rates* didn't get in that position by making a habit of overpaying for stuff. It happens, but not the norm. Sale data is public information regardless of whether it was a public listing or a private sale.
