Making the Offer

Land and farm offers carry contingencies and timing considerations that a standard residential contract doesn't need to account for — survey verification, financing that runs on a Farm Credit or FSA timeline rather than a conventional 30-day close, and closing mechanics unique to acreage. This chapter walks through how those pieces fit together into an actual offer.

Pricing land and farm property

Land and farm property prices on a per-acre basis first, then adjusts for what's on it — a different mental model than pricing a house per square foot. Tillable cropland, improved pasture, and wooded or wetland acreage all carry different per-acre values even within the same tract, so a 100-acre parcel that's 60 acres of cropland and 40 acres of swamp doesn't price as a flat rate across the whole thing. Standing timber, where present, is often valued as its own line item — a timber cruise, a professional inventory of species, volume, and quality, separates timber value from bare land value rather than folding an estimate into the per-acre land price.

Comparable sales data is thinner and more scattered in this market than residential comps — land trades less often, and per-acre value swings hard based on soil type, drainage, road frontage, and timber, so two tracts a mile apart can price very differently for reasons that don't show up in a simple per-acre average — lean on an appraiser experienced in ag/timberland, not just a residential-focused MLS search, to read the comp set correctly. Working infrastructure — fencing, barns, wells, an equipment shed — adds real value, but rarely dollar-for-dollar against replacement cost, and a barn or fence in poor condition can be closer to a removal cost than an asset. Get contractor quotes on anything that needs work rather than assuming book value, and lean on an appraiser who specifically works ag and timberland, not a generic residential appraiser, for the valuation itself.

Survey and boundary contingencies

Rural tracts carry legal descriptions that are often decades old, written in metes-and-bounds language, and drawn from a recorded plat that may not reflect what's actually on the ground today. Fence lines frequently don't match deed lines, and encroachments that would be obvious on a quarter-acre residential lot can go unnoticed for years on 50 or 500 acres. A fresh, current boundary survey is the only reliable way to confirm actual acreage, true boundary location, and where any easements physically fall — treat it as closer to mandatory than optional on any acreage purchase, even when the seller has an older recorded survey to show you.

Structure the survey as a due-diligence contingency with a real right to act on what it finds: require a current boundary survey be completed within a defined window, and give yourself the right to terminate or renegotiate if it turns up a material acreage shortfall, an encroachment, or an easement that conflicts with your intended use. Negotiate up front who pays for it — sometimes the buyer, sometimes split, occasionally covered by the seller if a recent survey doesn't already exist. If the survey does turn up a problem, get a title attorney involved before doing anything else; the fix might be a boundary line agreement with the neighbor, a quitclaim deed resolving an encroachment, a price adjustment for an acreage shortfall, or in some cases simply walking away under the contingency.

Financing contingency timing for Farm Credit/FSA

Farm Credit and FSA timelines run longer than the 30-day close most residential buyers expect, and it's worth building the offer around the real timeline rather than a template one. Pre-closing appraisal and title work commonly take one to four weeks and can run as long as eight on larger or more complex tracts, per general ag-lending guidance. FSA direct loans add a government processing queue on top of that, which can push timelines out further than a Farm Credit loan through a commercial lender.

Write the financing contingency with a realistic window — 60 to 75 days is a more honest starting point than the 30 days a conventional residential contract defaults to — or use contingency language tied to the lender's written progress updates rather than a hard date that risks default if the appraisal runs long. Get your buyer's agent talking directly to the ag lender within days of going under contract, confirm the appraisal has actually been ordered (not just requested), and ask the lender for a realistic clear-to-close estimate before you and the seller agree on a closing date. Keep the seller's agent looped in on the timeline too — ag financing schedules are unfamiliar to a lot of residential-side listing agents, and a surprise 60-day closing date reads very differently to a seller who was expecting 30 if no one explained why in advance.

Closing considerations specific to acreage

Large rural tracts turn up title issues far more often than a standard residential closing: mineral rights severed from the surface decades ago (common enough on old rural tracts that the closing attorney's title search should specifically confirm current ownership), old utility, timber, or access easements that may not be current on a modern survey, and — a real risk on family land that's passed down informally — heirs' property, where title sits with multiple co-owners as tenants in common rather than one clear seller. A closing attorney working rural acreage should specifically check for this, since an unresolved heirs' property situation can mean there isn't a single seller who can actually convey clear title.

Prorations on farm property go beyond the standard tax splits: standing crops or timber not yet harvested at closing need explicit contract language on ownership — often reserved to the seller with a defined removal window, or credited to the buyer as part of the purchase price — and any existing hunting lease, crop-share arrangement, or boarding income needs to either be prorated, assigned to the buyer, or terminated at closing, spelled out in the contract rather than assumed. If the property carries a present-use value tax deferral, closing needs to address whether the new owner intends to continue the qualifying agricultural or forestry use: a new owner generally has 60 days from the transfer to reapply and continue the deferment, but doing so means accepting the existing deferred tax liability, including years before you owned it. If qualifying use won't continue, rollback taxes — typically the current year plus the prior three years, with interest — become due, and the purchase contract should say explicitly who's responsible for that bill. See the Working Farms & Zoning chapter for the full PUV and rollback mechanics.