Iowa Farmland Auction Results Week 19, 2018

Iowa Farmland Sales Summary

Its been a tough planting season in Iowa.  There are always just small windows of opportunity to get the crop planted but this years prolonged Winter delayed soil temperatures from warming up and wet snow conditions delayed field work especially north of Interstate 80 in Iowa.  As of May 20th there really have only been 2 planting opportunities so far this year and a large number of acres remain unplanted right now and time is starting to get tight compared to the number of acres left to plant.  I expect it will get done, it always does but there certainly is a little anxiety about the weather in the countryside today.  Farmland sales have been slow and results of the last few weeks have been very few and the lower price results recently have turned statewide charts downward for both price and volume of sales.  Our reports are always based on averages which are of course all of the sales combined to find the level where they meet in the middle.  This week brings 2 results of farmland sales that are well below the state average which is similar to all results post week 16  2018.  Farms selling over the past few weeks have been in the lower medium quality farms with lower CSR’s.

Farmland Sales Volume In Iowa

We have a sharp downturn in our charts this time of year in terms of farmland volume and in 2018 you see low volume go to very low volume.  We are seeing an increase in inquiries about farmland auctions across Iowa currently so we expect the volume to increase over the next 4 months as some of those auctions make they way to market more toward the end of Summer and into the Fall and Winter sales season.  It is not uncommon to see low sales volume this time of year but currently we are seeing only 2 to 3 farmland auctions of 80% tillable farms across all 99 counties so it is very slow right now.

These charts represent the sales of 80% tillable farmland since January 1, 2018 across Iowa.  The results are gathered from Iowa farmland auctions across the state conducted by auctioneers from many different companies.

Iowa Farmland Auctions Report For May 6-11, 2018