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Land prices / insane!!!

THIS is gonna make a dent in land prices. Not “collapse” but absolutely will soften the longer this continues. Remember - corn was what: $7??? Beans got like $15-17??? This is a big difference & trend.

That can squeeze a lot of farmers since cash rent rates don't follow the commodity price trends.

Most landowners aren't going to start taking less when the commodities halve in price.....
 
yeah I have been following his new channel. Im pretty surprised with his new farm and its size etc that he hasn't had bigger/more deer on it. Never would have guessed that based off of just looking at all the cover, surrounding area etc. Many of his hunts this past fall was literally seeing nothing and not much for bucks on trail cam for a couple years now.
I am in way no way questioning Bill Winke, he's one of the greats, but I have been continually surprised at how openly intrusive he is. He walks through a good portion of his wide open main bottom field to hunt it over and over and I always wonder how in the world he gets out at night without blowing the place out. Same with zig zagging up the hills on his quad with dogs all Sept/Oct checking chips every few days. Maybe I'm just way too conservative and over think, but it seems like it could make a difference.

It's fun watching a good old bowhunter like him hunt for all the right reasons and not try to be flashy, especially nowadays. You sure don't see any instagram flatbillers spending the night at the bottom of their tree!
 
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I am in way no way questioning Bill Winke, he's one of the greats, but I have been continually surprised at how openly intrusive he is. He walks through a good portion of his wide open main bottom field to hunt it over and over and I always wonder how in the world he gets out at night without blowing the place out. Same with zig zagging up the hills on his quad with dogs all Sept/Oct checking chips every few days. Maybe I'm just way too conservative and over think, but it seems like it could make a difference.

It's fun watching a good old bowhunter like him hunt for all the right reasons and not try to be flashy, especially nowadays. You sure don't see any instagram flatbillers spending the night at the bottom of their tree!
I know his filming crew now, or some of them I should say (they moved here from Wisconsin) and basically, they condition the deer to tolerate them. I will say the deer at my home place tolerate a whole lot more than my farm in Allamakee that I am never on. So I do understand that piece of the puzzle.
That being said, it amazes me on how much ground he found to buy in that area, I have heard stories, but will absolutely not reshare those.
 
Without a doubt, all boats will rise and fall with the tide. Maybe not to the same degree but will have an impact.

I was thinking this when daniel93077 said this. If you get into a 70s style bear market, you'll see how correlated REC land and the stock market really is. When guys on here say that REC will never see the $4000s again...people forget.
Fully agree…key word there is “typically”…but it’s definitely not always. The differences in degree of rise and fall can really be a game changer to from a uncorrelated/diversifier standpoint.

The real risks are the things we can’t see. Maybe there won’t be another Savings and Loan crisis but it definitely doesn’t mean a 30% drop in land price will never again be in our future. I have to think that it definitely will be at some point…whether that’s in our lifetime…who knows.
 
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I’ll take that bet. You’ll never see 4k again. This isn’t the 1980 commodities crash. No comparison. Rec ground wasn’t a thing then. During the 08 crash, caused by Bill Clinton’s everyone should own a house even though they can’t afford it program that he began in 1995, rec ground held steady. A substantial decline is wishful thinking.
 
I’ll take that bet. You’ll never see 4k again. This isn’t the 1980 commodities crash. No comparison. Rec ground wasn’t a thing then. During the 08 crash, caused by Bill Clinton’s everyone should own a house even though they can’t afford it program that he began in 1995, rec ground held steady. A substantial decline is wishful thinking.
We may not see $4K again but we could see a crash of that magnitude. Say rec land prices are averaging $10K, it’s possible it could go back to $7K. The reason it’s so common for us to think that can’t happen is because we can’t see or know what would cause it to do that today. True risks aren’t the things we know are likely to happen. I don’t know that such a thing will happen in my lifetime so I’d never take that bet.. and I wouldn’t let that concern stop me from buying land if I had capacity to take that risk.
 
I’ll take that bet. You’ll never see 4k again. This isn’t the 1980 commodities crash. No comparison. Rec ground wasn’t a thing then. During the 08 crash, caused by Bill Clinton’s everyone should own a house even though they can’t afford it program that he began in 1995, rec ground held steady. A substantial decline is wishful thinking.
Windlooker would you like to make a friendly wager of $100 that in the next 2 years i will be able to show proof of a property that sells for less than 4k per acre in the bottom tier of Iowa?
 

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When Bill Winke first sold his farm, his timing was terrible and the run up literally took place after he sold.

It was too cheap. Just my opinion, but big farms like that should command a premium !
 
Windlooker would you like to make a friendly wager of $100 that in the next 2 years i will be able to show proof of a property that sells for less than 4k per acre in the bottom tier of Iowa?
There will always be extreme outliers. Someone that is on their way out that gives someone a killer deal out of good will, someone that gets bamboozled, someone with an extreme urgent need to sell immediately, etc. I know of a KILLER farm that sold for under 4k just a few months ago. Old guy liked the dudes that leased it and gave them a great deal. All of the above happen.

A far better metric is looking at average sale prices per acre of similar property.

Extreme outliers (high or low) don't really prove anything
 
There will always be extreme outliers. Someone that is on their way out that gives someone a killer deal out of good will, someone that gets bamboozled, someone with an extreme urgent need to sell immediately, etc. I know of a KILLER farm that sold for under 4k just a few months ago. Old guy liked the dudes that leased it and gave them a great deal. All of the above happen.

A far better metric is looking at average sale prices per acre of similar property.

Extreme outliers (high or low) don't really prove anything
Yeah- There’s a few land agents and attorney’s I see that seem to get really great deals semi-frequently then turn around and sell them. Seems questionable from an ethical standpoint to me. I hope they know many of us know who they are too. I definitely wouldn’t be doing business with them.
 
I know his filming crew now, or some of them I should say (they moved here from Wisconsin) and basically, they condition the deer to tolerate them. I will say the deer at my home place tolerate a whole lot more than my farm in Allamakee that I am never on. So I do understand that piece of the puzzle.
That being said, it amazes me on how much ground he found to buy in that area, I have heard stories, but will absolutely not reshare those.
eh I can think of a half dozen farms roughly that size that have sold off market within 20 miles of his new place in the last 3 or 4 years. I am surprised he hasn't been able to turn up much in that neighborhood though. There was an absolute bomber of a typical shot just down the river last fall.
 
There will always be extreme outliers. Someone that is on their way out that gives someone a killer deal out of good will, someone that gets bamboozled, someone with an extreme urgent need to sell immediately, etc. I know of a KILLER farm that sold for under 4k just a few months ago. Old guy liked the dudes that leased it and gave them a great deal. All of the above happen.

A far better metric is looking at average sale prices per acre of similar property. Absolutely.

Extreme outliers (high or low) don't really prove anything. Exactly. Hyper-local circumstances frequently have a huge effect on the sale price of an individual property, but that doesn't mean what it sold for is "the market".
 
I'd say big farms sell for less per acre. Just an incredibly small buyer pool.
Definitely true in the vast majority of cases. Though occasionally if it's a super special farm or is an unusually large contiguous landholding for the area, sometimes that will cause it to actually sell for a premium. But best to figure in most cases that a smaller pool of legit buyers = buyer has more leverage than seller on sales price.
 
You better check with Skip on that . I’d say it depends on several factors, but if it’s good, it will sell high !
They certainly can, but more often than not they will be below average market value for that area on a per acre basis. Anecdotally, big Warren co farm ~ 800 acres just sold for mid 5's. You arn't buying anything in Warren under 200 acres for less than mid 6's (rare exceptions)
 
I think larger tracts, 600ac plus, were established years ago when timber was considered garbage land. Many hunters want to own as much as possible but money limitations today with the crazy prices break up the tracts. Guys with the resources to own a bunch of acres are few. Add in that most serious hunters are solitary and do not want partners to lessen cost exacerbates the land break up. Most of the time partners are a bad idea. At some point, for some reason, a guy wants out. The battle begins.
 
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