Earlier this month, Florida-based Saunders Real Estate firm hosted its inaugural Lay of the Land Conference at Mount Sequoyah in Fayetteville. The day brought together industry leaders, investors, and landowners to explore emerging market trends in Arkansas’s land economy and ended with the release of the firm’s Lay of the Land report. Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis visited the conference and spoke with the folks behind the event to learn more.
At the first-ever Lay of the Land Arkansas Conference, experts and landowners gathered to discuss what's shaping the state's land real estate market — from the rising value of farmland in the Delta to booming development in Northwest Arkansas.
“We talked a lot about what's going on in the Arkansas land and ag markets, which is really interesting right now.”
That is Tyler Davis, president of Saunders Real Estate. The Florida-based firm has produced similar reports to Lay of the Land for decades, but this year marks its first dive into Arkansas, a state where farmland, timber, and recreational property make up a vast majority of the landscape.
Davis said the Arkansas land market — or the buying and selling of properties of 50 acres or more — is defying expectations.
“There’s a lot of challenges with commodity pricing and input prices, but we're seeing record-high land sales and land values. So we really spent a lot of time today discussing why that is and what's driving the market, so that our clients and people in the audience can make informed decisions.”
The firm’s report analyzed more than 800 verified land transactions. Each sale was vetted through county records and direct conversations with buyers and sellers. Even with tariff uncertainty, high interest rates, and falling commodity prices, Arkansas land values remained relatively steady. Davis said there are multiple economic sectors, and each region of the state has its own unique characteristics and drivers.
“It's very different here in Northwest Arkansas than it is in Eastern Arkansas, for example, and we hit on a lot of that today.”
Saunders Managing Director David Hill said growth in Northwest Arkansas is, unsurprisingly, driving prices and market fluctuation.
“The total metropolitan population right now is about 500,000 people. All indications point to growing to a million people by 2050, so the next 25 years. In this pocket of the state that we're in, that's drastically impacting land prices. People that are used to paying $2,000 or $3,000 an acre for pasture land are now sitting on a gold mine. Some of these properties are worth $50,000.
“I was just talking to a guy a second ago — he’s got some listings for pasture land near the airport at XNA. It’s like 200 acres, or I actually can't remember how many acres it is, but he's selling it for $150,000 an acre. So that’s like Florida prices. Not really used to that here.
But the cat’s kind of out of the bag in terms of Northwest Arkansas being such a desirable place to live, and it’s putting a lot of pressure on land prices.”
Outside of Northwest Arkansas, state land sales tell a different story. In the Delta, the report shows that about 30,000 acres of farmland sold last year, averaging just over $7,500 an acre. Institutional buyers — from investment funds to agribusinesses — remain active there.
In South Arkansas, timber still rules. More than 12,000 acres of commercial timberland changed hands, averaging $3,900 per acre. Central Arkansas saw steady activity near Little Rock and Conway, with investors eyeing both agriculture and recreation. And Western Arkansas continues to attract buyers seeking hunting and multi-use tracts.
Davis says the number of institutional investors interested in acquiring land in certain pockets of Arkansas surprised him.
“In Northwest Arkansas, it’s a lot of developers — private equity-backed developers. But as you go into Eastern Arkansas and Central Arkansas, it’s a lot of private equity groups looking to deploy large amounts of capital into farmland. And that’s a trend we’re seeing not just in the Delta but in other parts of the Southeast, too. As capital market requirements grow to deploy more money in green investments, a lot of groups are looking toward farmland to do that.
“So the challenge becomes finding good assets where they can generate a return, despite the input challenges on labor and pricing that people are experiencing and the troubling commodity markets right now. But opportunities exist, and there's a lot of groups looking to acquire large tracts in that area.”
Hill said he’s eyeing commodity prices — and specifically Brazil’s impact on Arkansas farmers.
“A lot of our farmers are kind of getting crushed right now, and a lot of that's due to Brazil’s deforestation and investment from China into converting a lot of that forested land into row crop farmland. That floods supply and sends a lot of soybeans, in particular, to countries like China, which is where most of our soybeans go. So that's something to keep an eye on. I don't know the answer to it, but it definitely is a little bit concerning, to say the least.”
And of course, there are people entering into the land market. Davis said he expects demand to rise as economic conditions soften.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of pent-up demand — people entering the market to acquire land, to acquire real estate assets, to acquire houses or acreage — that have kind of been sitting on the sidelines waiting for conditions to improve. So I think over the next six months, while there are challenges, hopefully there’ll be some new buyers entering the market that keep pricing pretty stable.”
Hill said an aging Delta population will play a critical role in the market’s future.
“That’s a touchy thing to talk about, but it’s also a reality. There’s not a lot of younger generations of farmers that are dying to move back to parts of the town. I almost said a specific town, but that would have been an unnecessary drive-by. But that is a reality. So it’ll be interesting to see, as the baby boomer population continues to age out, what that means for a lot of these legacy farm holdings that have been in the family for 100 or more years. I think there’s probably going to be some turnover, but we’ll see.”
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