Ranch Land Report: Spring 2010
May 18th, 2010 - "Mark Twain once quipped—“Buy land, they don’t make it any more.” That seems to have been pretty good advice over the past decade, and may well be a solid perspective into the future as well. In contrast to massive pockets of value meltdowns of over-priced residential areas across the country and a very listless commercial property market, the market for agricultural land has remained strong during the Great Recession. The reason for agricultural real estate assets maintaining value goes back to solid fundamentals. First is relatively strong economic base within the agricultural sector. According to USDA’s recent Agricultural Income and Finance Outlook report, farm financial ratios show a favorable financial performance with agriculture’s Debt- to-Equity Ratio remaining at historical lows—a far different pattern than that of the farm crisis years of the 1980’s" Read more...
