How to Sell Farmland in Iowa

6 Easy and Stress-Free Steps to Take When Selling Farmland in Iowa

As an Iowa Farmland Auction Company, we receive many phone calls and emails throughout the year from Iowa landowners interested in learning more about how to sell their farmland. Typically, those who inherit farmland or are looking to retire, only sell land once in their life. We understand that it can be an intimidating process. The team at DreamDirt, has sold more than 700 tracts of farmland! We have seen it all when it comes to selling farmland. We’re a team of experienced auctioneers and land brokers here to help you make the farmland selling process as stress and worry free as possible!

3. Decide on What Sale Method You’d like to Use – Auction, Listing, Private Sale, or For Sale by Owner

Each sale method has its pro’s and con’s. Read more about each method here. We recommend having an auction since we see the most powerful results from this method. It is also risk free to our sellers. However, if you’d like to list your farm for a certain price or keep it more private, we can connect you with our list of buyers looking to buy more farmland in Iowa. You can sell your land for sale by owner. No one is stopping you from doing so and if you’re worried about the costs of our services or commission fees, we are more than willing to negotiate and adjust our prices.

Risk-Free Auction

Remember our auctions are risk-free since we don’t charge a penny until you confirm the farm to sell. Even at that, we ONLY charge commission. We don’t charge a no sale fee, per bid fees, marketing fees, etc. We recently received this testimonial from a client we helped sell 800 acres for:

“DreamDirt wasn’t the cheapest option, but you offered the most value. From your proposal of tract splits and auction strategy, I could see the knowledge you had was worth more money to us in the end. And your wider variety of advertising resources just means you’ll drive more bidders, and I know we need as many as we can get! I knew at the end of the sale you’d have covered all bases and we’d never have to worry about legal issues” 

4. Marketing and Advertising Your Farm for Sale

Depending on what sale method you chose and if you’d like our in-house team of professionals to help you, this step is crucial. You want as many people to see that your farm is available to buy on the open market. Our marketing and advertising reaches more than 20,000 registered bidders, and over 1.6 million impressions! We do everything from traditional print advertising to high tech drone videos and digital ads.

Iowa Farmland Company

As an Iowa Farmland Company, we can set a target audience to show ads to other farmers in Iowa, and out of state investors. If you decide to do for sale by owner all the marketing will be up to you and at your own costs. Our free marketing package includes: signs on the property, local newspaper ads, flyers hung up around the county, drone video, Facebook ads, radio ads, and more! When clients ask us what all we do for advertising we say, “It’s easier to provide you a list of things we don’t do which is hardly none.” We cover everything and make sure your farm sale gets maximum exposure to the right audience!

5. Accept Offers or Agree to the Final Bid

This step is probably the most nerve wracking and stressful of the all. The decision to confirm the sale is entirely up to you! We don’t force any of our farmland sellers into a price they are not willing and comfortable to take. More than 90% of our farmland auction sellers agree to selling the farm before their auction ends and the farm trades hands to the highest bidder. Our auctions often pass the market price we provide in step 2 during research. We’ve even had clients confirm their sale a week before bidding was to end!

With listings you’ll either accept, reject, or counter offer any offers buyers present you. We can help you understand their offer and write up contracts for you to negotiate. If you’re still on the fence about whether to have an auction or a listing, we recommend having an auction first. There’s the danger of under and over pricing a farm for sale and with an auction we can find the highest price someone is willing to bid for your farm. If you don’t agree to the final bid, moving into a listing is the next step. Here’s a testimonial from one of our sellers who trusted the auction process instead of listing for sale at a lower price than what they received at auction.

“We sold our real estate using DreamDirt’s Online Auction and in the end the high bid was higher than we would have ever dreamed of getting. The team was very professional and got great results for us.”

-Barb Hocker, Lee County IA

6. Have an Attorney Help you During Closing

You’ll want an attorney to help you prepare documents and represent you at closing. We work closely with attorneys in Iowa who understand farm real estate extremely well. Even before this last step, if you have questions on inheriting farmland, how to settle estates, settle family disputes, etc. we can connect you with an agriculture attorney to help answer those questions. If you hire us to help you during this journey of selling land, we have an in-house closing specialist who will be the main connection between you, your attorney, the buyer and buyer’s attorney to make sure closing stays on track. Typically, closing happens 30 days after signing the purchase agreement (after your auction) and can all be done remotely!

Iowa Farmland Auction and Real Estate Company

We work with farmland owners every day full-time and have a team of trained and licensed professionals ready to help you! Let us take the stress off your plate, and handle all the details. Start today with a free consultation by requesting one here or call Rachel at 515-954-8063 with questions on how to sell farmland in Iowa.