Waddya mean, latest?
From AgWeb, March 21:
It’s a conversation occurring more regularly in rural coffee shops across the United States: “Who bought the ‘X’ farm that sold last week?” Answer: “An outside investor.”
Farmland currently appears to be something akin to a modern-day gold rush. It can’t be bought up fast enough, while per-acre prices fetched for recent sales set record high after record high.
Flip on your television during a Sunday business show, or open up your social media feed, and you’ll likely see ads for farmland investment brokers like AcreTrader, Farmfolio, and FarmFundr.
These companies provide investment access to farmland via “crowdfunding,” in which the company purchases a farm, then offers investment in fractional shares. The land is either farmed by the company or leased back to private farmers, with proceeds returned to investors.
Delaware-based FarmTogether also offers crowdfunding investment, boasting 7-13% net returns and 3-9% target cash yield. Additionally, FarmTogether provides brokerage services for sole ownership of farms, as well as capital gains tax avoidance swaps via 1031 Exchange transactions.
NASDAQ-traded Gladstone Land Corporation and NYSE-traded Farmland Partners, Inc., take a slightly different tack, buying and leasing farmland and placing it in a real estate investment trust (REIT). In a REIT, investors then gain partial ownership by purchasing the company’s publicly traded stock. Gladstone also actively recruits farmers who are looking to expand via leased acres....
....MUCH MORE
Do not crowdfund your real estate purchases. There are too many things that can go wrong, over and above the vicissitudes of farming.
Keep in mind our mantra that farmland is only worth a multiple of the cash flow it can deliver. Farmland can trade higher than that value but it will correct, either in price or over time in reduced appreciation.
If you are reluctant to take the concentrated risk of putting $10 - 15 million* into a single property you are probably better off looking at the REITs.
Finally, the best situation is if you find a property on the edge of a growing metropolitan area and are in possession of non-public information that the zoning rules are about to change.
*With Iowa farmland sales averaging $9750 per acre it does not take too big a piece of land to cross the eight-figure line.
