America’s Land Auctioneer
Captivate and celebrate the dynamics of rural America, American Agriculture and inspire and teach others how to live a bold and abundant life in rural America. Background: The intrigue, endless opportunities, and romance of rural life in America have never been more on the minds of Americans. The recent pandemic and civil unrest have Americans of all ages earning for a more peaceful, less hectic life. Even billionaire Bill Gates is now the largest crop landowner in America. As many Americans look for peaceful refuge in the rolling hills and wheat fields they are faced with a richness of opportunities. But where do you begin to look? This show will highlight and feature endless opportunities in every state. What is it that is so unique about rural America, the land and what it produces? How can I live that life? The American Land Auctioneer will tell stories and weave into those stories a place for you to dream, live and enjoy the abundance of all that rural America has to offer.
America’s Land Auctioneer
The Iowa Effect: How Midwest Land Values Shape American Agriculture
The agricultural land market demonstrates remarkable resilience in early 2024, despite ongoing concerns about tariffs, interest rates, and commodity price fluctuations. In this information-packed episode, we dive deep into current farmland trends with special guest Jim Rothermich, "The Iowa Land Guy," who tracks every land auction in Iowa and provides crucial market insights.
Rothermich reveals that Northwest Iowa continues to see premium farmland prices exceeding $20,000 per acre, driven primarily by local producers rather than outside investors. This producer-dominated market reflects the strategic importance of land acquisition beyond simple ROI calculations—farmers recognize that expansion opportunities may be once-in-a-lifetime chances. Despite rising interest rates reducing the buyer pool somewhat, most transactions still involve significant cash positions from farmers with strong balance sheets.
The conversation shifts to recent auction results across several states, showcasing the tremendous range in current land values. From recreational properties selling for $3,800/acre in Pembina County, North Dakota, to premium farmland reaching $12,500/acre in Brown County, Minnesota, and multi-parcel offerings near Moorhead bringing $9,600/acre, the market demonstrates continued strength across diverse property types.
Hosts Steve Link and Andy Murdock share exciting details about upcoming auctions, including a 3,000-acre ranch property in Golden Valley County and a unique 840-acre offering near Custer State Park in South Dakota featuring parcels with direct views of Mount Rushmore. The episode provides valuable perspective on market trends, buyer motivations, and what both sellers and purchasers should consider in today's dynamic land market.
Discover why agricultural real estate continues to attract strong interest despite economic headwinds, and gain insights that could help you make more informed decisions about your land assets. Visit piferscom to explore complete details on upcoming land and equipment auctions mentioned in this episode.
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Contact the team at Pifer's
Welcome to America's Land Auctioneer. I'm Steve Link, broker for Pfeiffer's Auction Realty. We're glad you could join us today. Don't forget you can catch up on all our past episodes by visiting Pfeiffer's website, that's wwwpfeifferscom, and clicking on the podcast tab.
Speaker 2:Before we get into today's show, I want to thank America's Land Auctioneer sponsors, pifers Auction and Realty and Pifers Land Management. Pifers team of land and equipment auctioneers, real estate agents and land managers will give you a free consultation on selling your land and equipment or managing your farmland. Nobody does it better than the team at Pifers when it comes to your land and equipment or managing your farmland. Nobody does it better than the team at Pfeiffer's when it comes to your land and equipment or managing your farmland. All right, today we have with us Andy Murdock out of Bowman. He's going to co-host and you know, let's be honest, there's never a dull moment in the world of agriculture. You know we're inundated with tariff talk and commodity price talks and cattle price talk and the farm bill. And because Andy and I are doing what we do, it inevitably leads to what does this mean for the land market? How is the land market reacting to these stories? Andy? How are you doing?
Speaker 3:I'm doing. Great Thanks for working with me again here this morning. Andy, how are you doing? I'm doing. Great Thanks for working with me again here this morning.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, and so, when we wanted, when we think about these land values, it's well known that the land market really typically starts in Iowa, and so we thought we would ask a returning guest, jim Rothermich, is that how you say your last name the Iowa land guy? He's the expert we thought we'd ask him. You know, jim the land talker. Jim is a seasoned appraiser with the Iowa Appraisal and Research Corporation and he's really done a great job at looking at results, tracking it, mapping it, putting it all together in a blog format, in a newsletter format, and getting that out to everybody. Jim, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4:Well, thank you for having me, guys. I think this is a good topic right now. I was watching I think this is a good topic right now. I was, you know, watching RFD TV over the lunch hour and, man, they were really talking about tariffs and and worried about what the land market is going to do, and, and so I think this is a good time to talk about that.
Speaker 2:So what? What is the general vibe in Iowa right now?
Speaker 4:Well, I tell you what, like you were saying, I keep track of all the land auctions in Iowa daily. So I have a list of auctions every day, that the sale flyers that I follow, and I get the results from the auctioneer and post those results on social media and put it in my spreadsheet and and keep it up daily and and what I've noticed? The market's just very stable. Just, I have seen some really good results. Um, as far as um, you know, the way to gauge uh the how good the market is in iowa is is how how many farms sold twenty thousand dollars an acre or higher. And know, last week there was three of them.
Speaker 2:Wow, Do you know off the top of your head how many sales total you had last week that you tracked?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I got to pull up my spreadsheet.
Speaker 2:Here there's about 30 auctions 30 auctions and three of them hit over that $20,000 mark. Yep, yep, was there a county? Is there a county or two that those high-priced ones are, yeah, northwest?
Speaker 4:Iowa cranks out those big prices and that's typically where we see those big $20,000-plus an acre sales is in Northwest Iowa. It can happen anywhere here in Iowa, but Northwest Iowa it's more prevalent up there. Dollars an acre sales as a northwest I it can happen anywhere here in iowa but um, but northwest iowa it's more prevalent up there. Very aggressive area with a lot of livestock production up there. Not much comes up for sale so they're very aggressive.
Speaker 2:When something comes up for sale, they're very aggressive up there and from my knowledge here they really they need that land, not only for crop production, but they also need it for manure management. Is that correct?
Speaker 4:right, right. That's what I hear when I confirm those results. The buyers need it to put effluent on, either from a dairy operation or hog operation, or maybe a beef feeding feedlot, you know. So that's what I hear most of the time.
Speaker 2:So you know. So that's probably going to answer our own question then. So a majority of those buyers are producers that are buying that land versus investors. Is that correct?
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know I get that question a lot Most of the time on those big prices. Those are producers and you know. You know we do have investors in Iowa that buy farm ground but typically they can't compete with the local farmers. The local farmer is drives the market most of the time in Iowa there's so much demand for farmland that they'll, you know, run those prices up to get them bought, run those prices up to get them bought and most investors you know that gets those cap rates so low that you know they're not that interested or are not willing to pay that much for that. So the local buyers, local farmers, they really drive the market and keep those investors pushed to the wayside most of the time. I'm not saying they don't participate, uh, but they really uh, push those guys back.
Speaker 3:From an, from an investor standpoint, though, at what, what cap rate would you expect them to try to enter the market? At?
Speaker 4:For investor Um I, I think you know around that 3%, if they can get higher, and most of it's in 2% here in Iowa.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think we're seeing that growing pretty much across the board, wouldn't you agree, steve? I mean even in North Dakota. And if you start looking at Iowa, if you got $20,000 ground at 3%, that means you're going to have to hit $600 per acre cash lease on this. That obviously gets relatively tough to accomplish. But as you start creeping down into that $12,000 or $13,000 an acre range, maybe you'll start seeing some of those investors enter that pool. Maybe not in Northeast Iowa, maybe Central Iowa investors enter that pool.
Speaker 4:Maybe not Northeast Iowa, maybe Central Iowa. Right right, that's right. They do buy, but they're just. You know, they're not as active as those local farmers are. And they do get some buy, there's no question about that. But they're more disciplined buyers and the farmers, if it joins them, they'll typically bid more aggressively.
Speaker 2:And what I've noticed too on that return on investment. That cap rate that we talk about is the higher quality of land, the lower the cap rate that people are willing to buy at, and lesser quality, they're going to expect a little bit higher cap rate because you may just not have the appreciation level that the poor. You'll have more appreciation potential on better land than you will on worse land, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Has there been a lot of talk on the interest rates at these sales, or from your buyers or from your customers that are asking you to appraise it.
Speaker 4:There is some it's a concern out there. Most of these buyers are still cash buyers, very strong cash positions still here in Iowa. I'm not saying it's that way for everybody, but there's still a lot of producers out here that have good balance sheets and are willing to pay up for land and pay either all cash or mostly cash for land. There are some farms that are being bought using borrowed money and those interest rates definitely are having an effect. It has pulled back the number of buyers at an auction. There's no question about that. The buyer pool has gotten smaller and the ones that are there are being I don't want to say conservative, but you know they're being cautious. But you know if it's the right farm they're going to pay up to get it bought because it might be one chance in a lifetime to get that farm bought.
Speaker 3:And that's kind of what we were talking about in the break there. Steve is, you know we've always kind of gauged a lot of Jim's information and what's happening in Iowa with what's happening in our own region, in our own territory North Dakota, south Dakota, minnesota, montana, nebraska, so on and so forth. But you know a lot of the same trends. We're in 2024. We saw about less than 20% of the total purchases were made by non-producing. You know buyers, so your investor pool, and then, as far as you know, what they're trying to accomplish is right along the same goals. So Iowa may set the trends but we're still seeing all the same activity here in North Dakota Less buyer pool, maybe less, you know, less bidders at each of the auctions, but the perception of value and the target value for each of these individual properties is still remaining extremely strong.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing I also gauge is, you know, I look at each month auction results and I see how many no sales that we have, and since the beginning of the year we've had very few. You know three or less in each month. And, and as I look over time over my auction results, in a stable or increasing market you're going to run between zero to three no sales in a month, and so we're in that right now, been in it for all year so far, and so that tells me the market's just being very stable. And one thing I'm hearing not to get political, but one thing I'm hearing from my auctioneer friends that provide me the results is there's a lot of optimism, even in spite of the terrorists. That's going on. There's the, the, the people are optimistic and uh, and a lot of this optimism happened after the election. That's what I'm being told and and that's that's what the market's showing right now.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned that there was, uh, possibly around 30 auctions last week. So how is that trending this first quarter of the year? Are we seeing similar number of total number of auctions compared to recent years, or are we up or down?
Speaker 4:we are down and we're trending lower. In 2022. That was the highest year ever, I think, in in Iowa, 150,000 acres went to auction and so each year past that we've trended lower, and so and I see that trend continuing this year.
Speaker 3:Perfect. I think we've seen a lot of those same trends and I think the National Ag Statistics Service, or NASS, the USDA report that came out at the end of the year, showed Iowa still up 1.8%, a couple of the other surrounding states in that three to 5% range, so still seeing a lot of strength in the market and I think we're going to anticipate and expect to see that more into the 2025 year. Jim, we'd ask you to stick around for one more segment. We'd like to know what your crystal ball says here for 2025, maybe even even 26, 27, 28, if you got that, if you can look that far in advance. But we'll be right back after this break. And a word from our sponsors, because whether you're buying or selling land, equipment or real estate, trust the team that's built on experience and results Piper's Auction, realty and Land Management, their farm and ranch auctioneers, land brokers land managers are the best in the business. Nobody does it better.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to America's Land Auctioneer. I'm Steve Link, with your co-host, andy Murdock. We are in each of our studios spread out and our guest Jim. Jim is down in Iowa, andy's in Bowman. I'm in Fargo, all over the corners of all the great land that we see throughout the upper Midwest, and we want to continue this conversation with Jim.
Speaker 2:But we always got to thank our sponsors, pfeiffer's Auction and Realty and Pfeiffer's Land Management. Pfeiffer's Team of Landing Equipment, au auctioneers, real estate agents and land managers will give you a free consultation on selling your landing equipment or managing your farmland. Nobody does it better than a team at Pfeiffer's. So, jim, when we were ending there at the last segment, we were talking about the number of sales, that we were, that we were doing and we are going to. We came back. We wanted to ask you about your crystal ball. So you said that the total number of sales are starting to diminish or go down total number but we're not seeing the land prices necessarily going down. Is that gonna be that demand, that supply and demand argument, because it's maybe less buyers there but we're having less sales? Is that equilibrium there, so that our land prices are going to just kind of stay where they're at?
Speaker 4:I think so. As the volume of auctions go down, the number of listings goes down, that's going to be supportive to the market. Absolutely it's going to be, and we still have a lot of demand to buy land. So so I think so yes, do you?
Speaker 2:uh? Do you? Do you attend these sales, or is it uh? Do you watch them, watch them virtually, or how do you track this?
Speaker 4:yeah, thanks to covid, I can watch them online. Now, before covid, I'd have to call and get the auction results, but I can't attend all those auctions. There's too too many of them. So most of the time I watch online or I will attend a few that's close by. But if they don't have them online, I'll call and get the results. So that's how I get those results, or they send them to me. People want to see their data in my newsletter, so the auctioneers have gotten very good here in Iowa sending me the results if I don't, if I'm not calling them.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about that newsletter. So how often do you send that newsletter out?
Speaker 4:OK, so so I report all the auctions in a month in my newsletter and I put some narrative in there with it. That is just basically the narrative is. You know, here's what I'm picking up from the auctioneers and realtors I talked to and then I've got the auction results in a month and it goes out via email first business day of the month. And if you would like to get that, it's a free subscription and just go to wwwiowaappraisalcom and there's a way to sign up for the newsletter there on our website. So that's the best way to get that. And I also started adding cash rent auction results. I do pick up some cash rent auctions and I publish that as well. Up some cash rent auctions and I publish that as well. I'll probably quit doing that here in the summer months, but when rents are being negotiated I'll get what information I can pick up and put it in there and you have access to that too.
Speaker 2:How many land rent auctions are you seeing? Are you seeing quite a few of them happen in the spring?
Speaker 4:Well, it's always, you know, just a handful. There's not many done that way, but it seems to be trending more as people realize that once they expose their farm to the market it tends to bring more farm to the market. It tends to bring more. And you know, just two weeks ago I picked up some results a cash rent auction results $587 an acre for five years. So that's tremendous and so that is kind of gets people's eyes opened up. Landlords kind of opens their eyes up to expose their farms to the market and get those better.
Speaker 3:So it's fair to say that the land lease auctions, or the lease rates that you're seeing, at least, are following along the same trend lines, trying to keep up with the land values, at least on a percentage or a proportionate value.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. The results I've picked up are as strong as last year or the year before. I have not seen one that was weak, and that just totally amazes me. I wouldn't believe that if I don't see the results myself.
Speaker 2:Are most of your clients, your customers, when they hire you to do an appraisal. Are they banks, Are they financial institutions?
Speaker 4:Sure no. Right after COVID it was mostly banks. It was as fast as I could get those appraisals done and they were not fee sensitive At the end of 2023, that spigot started shutting off, and so the banks. I still do some work for banks people buying farms or refinancing but not not near as active as it was, and the banks are much more feed sensitive than right now. So most of the work I'm doing right now is estate work. Um, so I do a lot of that right now and then just here lately just had several divorce cases show up, so be appraising farms for divorce cases. So I don't know why it's just shot up all of a sudden, but but we have had.
Speaker 4:I've had several phone calls for divorce cases here lately.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your. Your line of work and our line of work are parallel with the three D's death, divorce and default. And are you seeing many default cases come through your desk?
Speaker 4:I haven't. I will say some of the auctioneers or realtors I talk to. They have told me that there's an uptick in people wanting to do sale leasebacks and that creates issues with the realtor. It's harder to sell a farm when the seller wants to rent the farm, and so I'm hearing that that is starting to uptick where it was almost next to nothing, but it's starting to hear more about that right now.
Speaker 3:I think commodity prices are going to have a big impact on what we see as far as those scenarios are concerned here for the next six or eight months.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So to get your newsletter. Do you charge for that, or is that a free newsletter, free, free?
Speaker 4:free subscription? Um. It goes out via email first business day of the month. All you have to do is go to wwwiowaappraisalcom, um. I have a subscription website called land hero and if you'd like to access my sale database, um go to wwwlandherous and and we can. You can see a demo of what you get, and that's basically iowa. It's all iowa information.
Speaker 2:So I know I was kidding you last time. I said, uh, if you could uh replicate your service here in north dakota, that would save me a lot of time, because andy and I um, we spend a lot of our time tracking these sales, because every time we get a new customer, they're wondering what their land is going to sell for, and some of that information that the information you provide is invaluable on figuring out what it could or may sell for. You know, we're trying to predict the future on just as much as you're trying to predict what the value is in real time, and we are too, and so that's a wonderful service.
Speaker 3:And the nice thing that Jim's always had the ability to put together is you follow a lot of your trend lines on a dollar per production value and we try to do that a little bit in North Dakota and throughout the region and to a certain degree it does make a lot of sense. But specifically for what you're seeing in Iowa, you guys follow that trend line pretty close.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. That is one of the great things of Iowa is that's a nice handle to grab a hold of, is to tie price and productivity index together, and that's widely accepted here in Iowa. Everybody follows that the farmers, the buyers, the sellers, the appraisers, the bankers, and so it's. It's a very nice tool to have.
Speaker 2:In Iowa, it's, it's, it's. Is it the corn suitability index? Is that what it is?
Speaker 4:Yep Corn suitability rating. Two is the updated version. It's a from zero to one to 100 to 100. And so typically anything over 80, I think, is very high quality farm.
Speaker 2:And are you working in any other states right now?
Speaker 4:I do go down into Missouri a little bit, but not very much, just because I don't have the quality sale data like I do here in Iowa, you bet Well, Jim, thanks for being on America's Land Auctioneer here this Saturday morning.
Speaker 3:We appreciate all you do and for all the data that you've provided for us over the past decade at least for Steve and I who have followed you on. But it's always a pleasure to visit with you. We hope to maybe have you on here later this fall and we'll test that crystal ball even further.
Speaker 4:Oh, I'd be glad to. It's a very interesting market right now. We'll see how it plays out, but right now it's very steady and I just see that going forward too.
Speaker 3:Sounds good. Jim Rothermich, iowaappraisalscom. You guys want to check out his newsletter? Feel free to get on there. We'll be right back with Steve Link. Andy Murdock.
Speaker 1:America's Land Auctioneer right after this Welcome back to America's Land Auctioneer.
Speaker 2:I'm Steve Link, with your co-host, andy Murdoch, with Pfeiffer's Auction and Realty, and we're glad you could join us. Don't forget. You can catch up on all our past episodes by going to Pfeiffer's website, that's wwwpiferscom, and clicking on the blog tab and going to your podcast library of Apple and Spotify. And before we get further into this segment again, I want to thank America's Land Auctioneer sponsors, pfeiffer's Auction and Realty and Pfeiffer's Land Management. Pfeiffer's team of land and equipment auctioneers, land real estate agents and land managers will give you a free consultation on selling your land and equipment or managing your farmland. Nobody does it better than the team at Pfeiffer's. What?
Speaker 3:a great opportunity. I'm sorry, I thought you were done there, steve. That's my fault, that's all right. What a great opportunity I was going to say that to tie America's land auctioneers right into the Iowa appraiser from Central Iowa there with Jim Rothramich. What a fantastic job he did in the first couple of segments and everything you know. He's got such a broad range of information for that part of the world.
Speaker 2:Well, right and so if people are just listening to us right now, they need to go back into our into our library and listen to those two segments, because it is he is spot on. And again, I can't emphasize enough what starts out in Iowa that ends up in the Dakotas and Minnesota and a lot of these other trade areas that we go to. So if they are seeing level steady prices, we're likely going to see level steady prices. If they start to see prices go down, we might see that as well too. But you know, every sale that we have is another chance for us to learn something and to take that on to the next sales is another chance for us to learn something and to take that on to the next sales.
Speaker 2:And you know, last time you and I were on the radio together we were actually in Bowman and we had that sale west of west of Amidon and I think that that sale ended at what? 1975? An acre, that was a half section, and a producer bought that and, and you know, a farmer bought that one and I thought that that was a really good sale because the productivity index wasn't super high on it. It wasn't the most productive land that you guys have out in that area, but there was still quite a bit of interest in that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, especially for Western Slope County. You know you get into Slope County on the western side of Highway 85, you really start getting into more of the badlands. So the farmland that's kind of off the foothills of the badlands, if you will, generally is a little less productive, maybe a little sandier, might have some hard pan in it in different areas. This one actually laid really, really well, had great access, only a mile off of Highway 85. So I knew there'd be some really good interest and fortunately the tenant was the winning bidder on that particular property. So it was great to see that day. We had a lot of good interest. We had some out-of-state interest in that property as well.
Speaker 3:Slope County does get a lot of out-of-area interest with some extra recreational and hunting aspects and different values, good return on your investment. So that you know that particular sale didn't surprise me a lot. A couple weeks later we had a really nice one here in Bowman as well. That was a quarter of land just outside of Scranton, north Dakota, by Gascoigne Lake. That one was generally I'm going to call it 100% recreational property. It was pure farmland but all along, you know, it bordered the Gascoigne Lake and had a couple fingers of sloughs in it that offered a really good upland bird hunting, which this part of the world is really really famous for. So a lot of good interest out of Wyoming and a prevailing buyer out of Colorado as well as some other investors out of North Dakota that were really seeking that part of the world in that particular area. And that property went out the door at $2,400. So really really strong value for Eastern Bowman County.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's something we talk about a lot. You see, those numbers, the 1975, the 2400. What was the difference between those two sales? Well, part of the difference there was the adjoining landowners, and what if they were in the expansion mode and what their purpose is for buying that. It really tied in well, for the recreational purposes on the little bit more expensive one, but it happened to tie in for a couple of buyers there and so, or work for a couple of buyers, and that made a world of difference there. Yeah, without a doubt, out it out.
Speaker 2:So then, uh, so, from, uh, from from when I was out there, we, uh, we headed down to, uh, we didn't headed down to south dakota, and I'll touch on that a little bit later, but uh, went up to stutsman county and had a sale there, half section of some more, a little more marginal ground, and that ended at 2050 an acre. Um, still a really good sale for what we were selling there. The number of acres that were being tilled versus the deeded acres was a big difference there. Much of it was not farmable land and they had already taken the easements off of it, meaning they couldn't drain, fill, burn those areas, and so that affected the price. You hear Stuts it meaning they couldn't drain, fill, burn those areas. And so that affected the price. You hear Stutsman County at $2,000 and you think, wow. But if you break it down to what's actually being farmed year in and year out, that was a really solid sale for that profile land.
Speaker 2:And then we went up to Eddy County and sold a couple short quarters of pasture and I mentioned this the last time we were on um.
Speaker 2:I was really curious what that was going to sell for because, um, you know, for pasture land, 282 acres isn't a big pasture but it acted like a big pasture because it had the cross fences, um, it had the water, it uh, it had good grass production on it and that new Rockford area and east of there there is quite a few cattle producers in that area and that ended up selling for $1,900 an acre and that's a really good price for pasture land. This had the benefit of not having grassland easements on it and it actually had some tillable on it, a little bit lighter soil. So if you were going to break up and farm it, you'd really want to make sure that you farmed it in a conservation-minded way because it can blow out there. But $1,900 an acre I thought was a really good price for pasture land out there and the seller was ecstatic and the buyers were happy to have that and put that into their rotation this coming year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, without a doubt, especially get up into that new Rockford country, that Eddie and Wells. Good grassland, good productivity, really good production operations up there, really good cattlemen. So it doesn't surprise me we're starting to see a lot of strength, especially with today's cattle markets.
Speaker 2:Yep, and I'm going through these, starting to see a lot of strength, especially with today's cattle markets. Yep, and I'm going through these. These are North Dakota sales. We're going to hit on Minnesota sales after after this run.
Speaker 2:But we had an interesting sale up in up in Pemina County and it was 160 acres. Mostly the tillable was in, was in grass production or hay production and but there was some wonderful deep draws and trees on it and that sold for $3,800 an acre and that was a majority of those top bidders were looking at it for recreation and hunting, um, I don't know if there were elk on there, but there's elk in that area, um, and I'm sure there's. There's certain times that that elk are are on this property, but the deer hunting is fantastic on that property and that sold really well. $3,800 an acre is a really really good sale for that type of property. And then we were back to McHenry County in Minot and we sold some hay land for $2,560 an acre and we sold some some hay land for 2560 an acre. Um, that was good sale.
Speaker 2:And then over to Oliver County um 1950 an acre for for some, for some crop land, um, and pasture land, mix and uh, and then we made it back out to back out to Bowman for that $2,400 an acre uh land sale that you referred to there, and and uh, and then um, um, then we just had some some land sell up in in roll rollout county for for 1450 an acre. Um, again a little bit uh, lower productivity stuff, but uh, that's a really solid sale at 1450 an acre it's pretty good sales in minnesota.
Speaker 2:Steve, you want to touch on some of those yeah, so the minnesota, so the Minnesota land sales have been rampant here. So you know we were in the Norman County area. We started out in the Norman County area. Some of that land sold for $1550 an acre, not $15,000, $5050 an acre, 15, 5,050 an acre, um, and that was, uh, that was some pretty, pretty, pretty good land but had, um, some issues with it being cut up and maybe not the highest productivity index, um. And then we went over to bore up and or over to Otter Tail County and sold some land for $7,750 an acre, $7,750 an acre. That was a really good sale in Otter Tail County. But I want to get to the big sales here.
Speaker 2:We went down to Brown County, minnesota, in their Springfield area, and there we sold a short quarter for $12,500 an acre. Really good turnout, really good buyer interest. That probably is a little bit higher than they were seeing in recent times in the recent sales, but there was a lot of demand. There's not a lot of land that sells in that area. And then we were east of Moorhead, here in Clay County, glendon area. We sold almost 1,900 acres in that area, 12 parcels. Two of the parcels sold for $9,600 an acre and then 10 of them sold for $8,700 an acre. Just a fantastic sale. We had a lot of in-person interest, a lot of online bidding. It ended up going to two buyers. One of the buyers was a producer. One of the buyers was a 1031 buyer who was in the middle of a 1031 exchange. Really outstanding, outstanding results there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that one right there and I know you and Kevin Pfeiffer and myself we talked about that one here just the other day and really the process of how Pfeiffer's does their, their, their land auctions and how we, how we conduct the sales and the opportunities that we provide for the buyers to, you know, select which parcels that they want, really drives the, drives that market and provides a great benefit for value. Of each of these land sales and that particular one, you sold the first two parcels. They went out the door at 9,700. And then when the high bidder come back in the second round, 10 parcels left takes all 10.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that that was a little bit of a surprise to everybody in the room, but you know, this land really justified these higher prices. It was a really good quality land and we talk a lot about these loamy soils that can produce good row crop and good sugar beets and maybe even potatoes one day again. I don't know if they'll do that there, but this was a really nice farm and you're exactly right to put it up to that. Put it up in an auction format really was the best way to handle that, Without a doubt.
Speaker 3:Steve, let's touch on some more land auction results and upcoming land auctions right after this. I'm going to get a new one, $35,000.
Speaker 3:And I have it sold to you right there. Good purchase, great buy. Welcome back to America's Land Auctioneer, andy Murdock, along with Steve Link, today, this Saturday morning. Thank you for listening on your favorite network radio station and podcast platform. When it comes to buying and selling farmland, ranches or equipment, experience matters. Pfeiffer's Auction Realty and Land Management has a team of industry-leading professionals ready to serve you. See upcoming auctions and listings at pfeifferscom, because when it comes to getting results, nobody does it better, steve.
Speaker 3:We want to thank our sponsors Pfeiffer's Auction Realty and Land Management each and every weekend here and I appreciate everybody for listening to America's Land Auctioneer. We're going to be back with our fourth and final segment here and we had a great show here thus far talking about what we want to consider here on America's Land Auctioneer, all the values that we can see across America with Jim Roth Mitch and giving us the Iowa insight and kind of the leading economic indicator in the land markets, if you will. I think Iowa, like we've talked about, has really kind of sets the pace for what we see in American farmland and obviously we went through our North Dakota and Minnesota Pifers auction results. If anybody has any questions about the details or any of those auctions that we've had. You can find all of the results at piferscom. You can just click on to our online bidding platform and find all the upcoming sales, as well as completed auctions, right there at your fingertips at Piferscom New website.
Speaker 3:So it might take a little bit to learn how to navigate it. If you have any questions, give us a call Anybody at 877-700-4099. Steve, we've got an exciting spring left in front of us and it seems like it's not slowing down. I would say that the next few weeks is probably going to be as important in the economic indicators of North Dakota as we can ask for. But why don't you highlight some of the upcoming extravaganzas we've got with pipers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we did. We started out in Norman County. Back to Norman County, some of those sales that we talked about just recently and we have over a section of land 653, which is a little bit unusual for a section of land to be bigger than 640 acres, but that's happening. And then we go back out to Emmons County for a quarter and 828 acres and those are going to be some really dynamic sales. That's a wonderful area. The market's always been strong for cropland and non-cropland Pastureland has always sold well there. And then out to nelson county.
Speaker 2:But I wanted to talk about um burke county. We're selling 320 acres and that's a timed online and many hear us uh, here's at our auctions. We talk about the live auctions and and attending in person. But you know, if you're still um traveling for for for spring break, or if you're still um traveling for for for spring break, or if you're, if you're out and about still in Arizona, if you're a snowbird or Florida or Texas, you know you can log on and you can watch some of our our timed online um only sales and those are really fun to watch. We've got 320 acres in Burke County that we're selling. That ends in April 2nd. Um, really good, um, really good farm, good farmland and a really good area. And then also on that day, we were selling some land in Grand Forks County, a short 80 there, and then up by Cavalier we're selling just short of 100 acres of some good quality farmland. And all those are timed online auctions, and so you can go on there, get registered and bid to your delight.
Speaker 3:You've got full inventory details on dozens of land and equipment auctions, always available at Piferscom. You can click on each individual sale. It'll lead you right to the online bidding platform and you can follow along. You don't have to log in to watch them. You can watch live with every one of our upcoming sales, whether it's online only or whether it's a live auction, which the majority of our sales are. So always. Just refer back to Piferscom. You'll find all your information right at your fingertips.
Speaker 3:Steve, a couple of sales that we've got going on here with the Western team is, first and foremost, on May 8th we've got a tremendous sale in Golden Valley County, north Dakota 3,000 contiguous acres of a really really nice farm and ranch operation just straight north of Sentinel Butte, north Dakota. It is a tremendous property. We've got it broke down into six different parcels. There's going to be a couple larger parcels that are pushing 1,000 acres each, but really good cropland along the northern and western boundary of this property, but the heart of it really is wrapped around a beautiful farmstead, a really good working ranch and lots of good water, lots of good pipelines, excellent fencing. They've done a great job of building and maintaining that for the last decade of ownership and really just a well-managed and well-taken care of operation and a once in a lifetime deal, as we look forward to what grassland is now doing in record high livestock commodity prices.
Speaker 2:So for our listeners. Andy, there you mentioned, one of the parcels is going to be up over a thousand acres. Talk a little bit about why that's necessary to sell it at that size.
Speaker 3:You know you really want to offer some of these ranchland and grassland properties in a manner that makes sense. Number one how is it fenced? How is the access? Where's the water? Where's the water? Where's the electricity? What's the production level like as far as the grass is concerned, if we break it down into quarters like we would see in, you know, in Eastern North Dakota farmland, right, if we want to break it down into individual quarters, well, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to run 15 cows on a quarter. You know we would eliminate our buyer base actually the other direction as we would, as we generally like to see, with that a smaller parcel increases a buyer base. What we're trying to accomplish here is to have a property that makes sense, where it's turnkey ready, where somebody can actually come in.
Speaker 2:here they don't have to fence it. They can just go turn the cattle out as soon as, as soon as the property closes, and really let the property go to work for you. And I think you hit on that. You know, unlike a sale that you got coming up, that you want to offer smaller parcels because of the location towards potential development. I mean, this is going to be a cattle ranch, right, that parcel is going to be a cattle operator that's going to buy that, or investor that's going to have cattle run on it.
Speaker 3:So size matters on those pastures, yeah without a doubt and yeah, exactly to your point. So, on that property, it makes the most sense to have the most complete offering per parcel that we can come up with. And then, conversely, what we're going to talk about here on July 17th, one of the premier auctions that I think Piper's going to have here in 2025. Really, really excited about the opportunity that we've got in front of us down in Custer County, south Dakota. We are south of Rapid City, southwest of the city of Hermosa, and you drive right up to the Custer State Park fence and there's the property. You've got 840 acres, and I can't wait to get you down there, steve. It is as breathtaking of a property as I've had a chance to be on in quite some time. Now, in this one, we actually have exactly the opposite. It's currently a working ranch, but now we've got this one offered into 40 or 80 acre parcels.
Speaker 2:And you do that because the average person like myself can afford 40 acres and build my Western South Dakota home on versus. You know, a thousand acre chunk would would price me out of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, and so we want to make this as appealing to as many people as we possibly can, and this property right here, I believe it's going to appeal to the masses there's. I think we've got it down into nine parcels now, or maybe 10, nine, nine parcels, and it's it's really going to provide a tremendous opportunity for somebody to to take a piece of the Black Hills. Now, parcel number one. This is what's exciting. Parcel number one is one of the very few properties in the world, very few properties where you can build your house right on top of the peak of this property. It's a big plateau deep into the Black Hills, but from this peak you have a direct line of sight with Mount Rushmore each and every night.
Speaker 2:Wow, that is exciting. Are you going to be down there showing that property?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we will. We're going to post all of our open house dates. We're going to do this routinely throughout May, june and July. The auction is going to be an online only sale. We'll host that for a period of five days. We're going to allow people to come take a look at it. If you're bidding and you get beat out on a parcel, come back and we'll put you on a side-by-side and we'll go find another piece for you. It's really going to be an opportunity to work one-on-one and hand-in-hand with each of our individual buyers or bidders on the property and ensure that everybody has an opportunity to get what they want.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's exciting. I can't wait to come down there and look at that. Um, have they they? They haven't had snow recently, or have they had snow recently?
Speaker 3:No, it was. It snowed the first day that we were there so I actually couldn't didn't get a chance to see Mount Rushmore from up there. We saw the blizzard coming so we we launched the drone, got a couple of pictures and then had to had to go check out the South portion of the ranch. But uh, back on the property here shortly and that is published. That property is online at pyferscom, so check it out.
Speaker 2:So when you're not, we're going to talk about this because I don't know how you're going to have time to show the property, because you've got a ton of machinery auctions coming up, don't you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we do, and I know we've only got a minute left here, but I'll give you kind of a quick breakdown. We had a tremendous sale in Bowman in our Western Dakota spring equipment auction here this week. It was a two-day sale. Next on the agenda April 10th, harmon Farm Retirement Auction Carrington, north Dakota tremendous line of equipment. Then we go straight to Steele, north Dakota.
Speaker 3:Pfeiffer's Auction Center of North America for the Central Dakota Spring 2025 equipment sale being built. Each and every day that's going to be a two to two ring sale, two days sale as well. So lots of great sales coming up. The Lee farm retirement auction up in Berthold, north Dakota. We've also got Sheely farm retirement auction in Drake, north Dakota. The Myers estate auction in Manda in North Dakota, which is a real estate and equipment sale, and that's you know. All of the upcoming sales are at Piferscom and we want to thank our sponsors, pifers Auction, realty and Land Management. Nobody does it better. Steve, thanks for joining me here this week. Thank you, andy. We'll be back with more America's Land Auction here next week. We'll see you next Saturday right here.