Yates farmland: It's a seller's market

YATES COUNTY--It's a seller's market for farmland in Yates County.
Jim Moon, broker, owner of Penn Yan's Howard Hanna office said, "The sales price per acre for farm properties just keeps going up." Moon said it all comes down to supply and demand. "There's only so many acres of farmland available in the county, and right now there are more buyers. I am getting seven times more calls now for craft breweries and distillery locations than I am getting for wineries." Moon said between current farmers that want to expand their operations, new wineries, craft breweries and distillers along with young farmers buying their first property the demand keeps pushing the prices higher.
Moon said there were two public auctions recently in Yates County for farmland and the sales price for each property ended up over $10,000 per acre.
Such high costs are not unusual. Moon said one of the farm properties currently for sale in Barrington has 52 acres and the per acre price is $12,500. The property is listed at $650,000.
But location still makes a difference. Another farm on State Route 14A is listed for $780,000. The farm has 178 acres and the price per acre is $4,382.
Even though the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) publishes agricultural land value per acre every year (by region and state) their tracking for individual counties lags real-time transactions by years. Tony Dorn, head of the economics section for the USDA in Washington, D.C. said they provide a per acre Yates County land value every five years, but they won't have their 2017 number for another 11 months. Dorn said in 2012 the Yates per acre land value average was $3,956. In 2007, the average per acre was $2,845. That's a 39 percent variance in that five-year period alone. Showing the strength of Yates County farmland, the USDA farm value averaged $3080 per acre nationwide for 2017. With USDA numbers, they show the highest real estate farm values in the Corn Belt region at $6260 per acre.
Skip Jensen, Yates County senior field advisor for the Farm Bureau, said, "It's all comes down to competition. There's only so much farmland available and there are a number of people ready to buy."