Greene County Farm Sales Trends

 

While there are many farms scattered throughout Greene County, the smallest county in Virginia, few farms come on the market and are sold.  I have been tracking the real estate market in Greene since 2007 and the charts look rather odd.  The chart to the left shows the number of farms in acreage bands that have been sold.  The red line indicates 22-50 acres, the blue 51-100 acres and the black is for 101+ acres.    I use the word farm very loosely, as in acreage with a home on it.  So the parcel may actually be all wooded and mountain land, rather than nice pastures.

Four farms sold in Greene County last quarter and I am very proud of my firm for having brought the buyers to 50% of them.  Okay, well it was just two, but still……..

Another interesting statistic is how long does it take to sell a farm in Greene?  In most regions of the country the Days on the Market is much longer today than it was back in 2007.  Of course, with only four sales, it is hard to say that these figures are indicative of how long other farms will actually take to sell, but I think the information is still interesting and there is not that much difference between 2010 and 2007.  Also as a side note there are currently 13 properties on the market in Greene County with more than 21 acres.

This chart  indicates what the median sales price per acre was for these farms.  Every farm is unique so many characteristics must be taken into consideration when pricing a farm.  Location is one of the greatest factors as well as the quality and condition of the land and the home.  To try to derive an accurate price per acre, we have calculated the percentage of the Greene County real estate tax assessment that is land and then used that percentage to determine the amount of the total sales price that was land.  Then we divided the number of acres into the land price and determined a price per acre.  Obviously this is not an exact science but hopefully it keeps us within the ball park.