News

Steady land market defies trend

After several years of declines, farmland prices have shown some stability–in certain areas–in 2017.

But Randy Dickhut, who heads up real estate operations for Farmers National Company, thinks it’s a temporary lull in a continued downward trend.

“I think the trend would continue to be slowly downward,” says Dickhut. “Just the nature of the farm economy we’re in right now and waiting to see what type of crop yields we have this year, the regional differences, and the commodity prices.”

Dickhut says there could be more land coming onto the market this fall.

“We don’t know, come fall, if there will be a few more lender-encouraged sales or farmers deciding they want to sell of a tract of land to shore up some financial cash flow needs or something,” he says. “We haven’t seen much of that yet, but we’re just kind of wondering where that will fall.”

Dickhut says estates are the primary sellers of land right now. He says farmers continue to comprise the majority of land buyers with interest by investors coming back into play in the market.

AUDIO: Randy Dickhut