Eastern Iowa Farmer Spring 2021

Land prices
Prices moving to the north
Land values in Eastern Iowa ticked up last year
BY Nancy Mayfield
eastern iowa farmer
Land prices in Clinton and
Jackson counties went up
more than twice as much as
the state average last year,
fueled by rising commodity
prices, low interest rates and a tight
supply.
Respondents to Iowa State University’s
annual survey also identified government
payments, including COVID-19 assistance,
as another driver behind the overall
1.7% increase in values statewide.
Clinton County’s average farmland
value rose 3.9% to $7,758 from November
2019 to November 2020 and
in Jackson County it increased 4.9% to
$7,056 during the same period, according
to the 2020 Iowa
State University
Land Value Survey.
An average acre
of farmland in the
state was valued at
$7,559.
From their
vantage point at the
DeWitt office of
Peoples Company, a
national brokerage,
Doug Yegge and
Alan McNeil saw a
marked difference
in the last quarter of the year.
Doug Yegge,
Peoples Company
“Moving into that fall season and people
getting a crop out, it seemed like there
was some optimism and traction in the
market,” said McNeil, a sales representative
with the company. “It turned into a
very aggressive market. A lot of that is the
fall selling season. Guys get the crop out
and have a little money in their pockets.
The commodity prices did tick up, which
definitely helped. With low interest rates,
people were willing to take a stab at
farms. Even moving into the start of the
year, things have been crazy.”
Higher quality land especially has been
affected, said Yegge, who is a broker with
the company.
“There’ve just been a number of farms
that sold in the last few months that had
been sitting on the market for quite a
while. It was somewhat of a stagnant
market for the first part of 2020. It wasn’t
real slow, but it wasn’t anything like it is
now,” he said.
98 Eastern Iowa Farmer | Spring 2021 eifarmer.com