Another year, another 12 months of land sales. Saunders Real Estate releases a market report every year that tracks statewide trends, and this year, the market reacted to myriad outside influences. We got in touch with David Hill, regional managing director and land advisor at Saunders Real Estate, to talk about the latest report. Hill says that the market remained strong. However, buyers are becoming increasingly hesitant. Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis has more.
Despite economic influences nationally and globally, Northwest Arkansas' growth remains consistent. And David Hill with Saunders Real Estate says that this past year's land sales serve as proof.
"I'd say it was another really strong year. Transaction volume was maintained. The strength that we saw year over year, really just really strong year all around. I would say the biggest even land values remain about the same as they were year over year. I think the biggest thing that has really stuck out to me, I would say, buyers seem to be a little bit more disciplined."
Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, buyers were eager to snap up land at almost whatever cost. Now they're thinking twice about settling on a less-than-good deal.
"Basically like we're not in 2022 anymore, where everything was so incredibly hot that you could overprice land and it would still sell really quickly. Like now it's, I mean, the land is absolutely still transacting, but if it's overpriced, I mean, the buyers seem to just be a lot more disciplined when it comes to pulling the trigger."
This is a light trend, and it might be a sign of a softening market. But Hill says that it's not a cause for serious attention yet. Northwest Arkansas is a good example. The market is still strong, but developers are being more cautious so as to not repeat a now nearly 20-year-old disaster.
"Builders, for instance, or developers, I should say, are absolutely still buying. But when it comes to, I mean, it has to check a lot of boxes. There's entitlements that go into play. Most of the time they're not going to have access to a lot of the utilities, specifically sewer. They're running their numbers a little bit differently in pricing development land on like a per lot basis rather than a per acre basis. And if they don't see that a deal can pencil pretty quickly, like they're not going to pull the trigger.
"Again, no one has a crystal ball, but back in 2008, which was, I mean, I was in high school at the time, I remember it, but I wasn't in the business. But a lot of these developers got themselves in trouble by having too much land on their books for too long when the market crashed. And I think that they're a lot more disciplined and hesitant to get themselves in that same bind if the economy, if something were to happen to the economy, which again, who has a crystal ball, but there are some unknowns out there, and uncertainty tends to just make people a lot more disciplined, especially whenever coming out of 2008. I think people don't want to, people are trying their best to not let that happen to them again."
A lot of this land use is transitioning as well. Another trend Hill has started to notice is traditionally agricultural land turning into more housing developments.
"Which is bittersweet for me. I would love nothing more than for ag land to stay in ag land. The reality is you can't have your cake and eat it. Like Northwest Arkansas has prided themselves on continuing to grow."
People who bought land for cattle or poultry 30 years ago are now seeing prices for their property multiply wildly, making agricultural tradition a hard thing to prioritize.
"Because the reality is, if you bought a cattle ranch 30 years ago in Northwest Arkansas, you paid maybe a couple hundred dollars an acre for it, and now it's worth literally tens of thousands of dollars an acre. So whenever you're faced with the decision of the sell, as a landowner, that's a predicament. It's like they care deeply about the land. They care deeply about preserving and conserving the character. But at the same time, you're talking about generational wealth that can be generated by selling your land at market value, when you bought it for $100 an acre, and you sell it for $70,000 an acre or something like that."
Hill says that other types of agricultural adjacent land are experiencing use changes, too. For example, buyers are now looking at timberland for more than just the trees.
"What we would have probably classified as timberland, like investment grade timberland, maybe 10, five or 10 years ago. A lot of times, I mean, there's still certainly merchantable timber on those properties, but with the state of the timber market globally. And you can see that across the board even in other states that were in Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas and Alabama. No matter where you are, the timber market is so incredibly depressed right now.
"However, the recreational, so the highest and best use for those properties is not timberland. It's not investment grade timberland. It's the hunting and the recreational value that comes out of it. And for quality properties like those, man, that's still booming."
Not post-COVID numbers. Hill says transactions are trending positively. However, buyers are exercising that discipline.
"If there are things that are maybe I would classify it as like a B or a C rather than an A, like they're not going to be trading for what they were coming right out of COVID. But I would say for really, really solid hunting and recreational tracts with good access, good wildlife habitat, water sources and food and cover, if you're within an hour radius of that Northwest Arkansas corridor, you're still looking at really, really strong per acre prices, because as the Northwest Arkansas market just continues to grow from a population and an economic standpoint, people still crave having a place to get away and go kill a big deer or just go build a cabin and get away for the weekend. It's not super far away. So those properties still have maintained really, really strong values I'd say."
Factors that are out of the buyers' and sellers' control seem to be accelerating this rate of change.
"But when it comes to a lot of these other economic policies that Trump has implemented, like that factors in. And then there's also year to year things. So right now we're in a very, very deep drought. And when you're in a drought like what we're currently in, it vastly extends the amount of days that loggers can cut timber. Usually you have wet days here and there where you cannot get a log truck in and out. But we've had so many consecutive dry days that these timber mills are literally putting loggers on quotas, and they will not let them cut other than like one or two days a week. So it's hurting the timber industry big time."
And outside Northwest Arkansas, Hill says that he's still watching land in the Delta move away from historic ownership toward, well, he's just not sure yet.
"A significant amount of my time and energy is also spent on cropland in the Delta. And we're still seeing consolidation. A lot of the independent family farms are being sold to institutional farm aggregates and stuff like that. I'm still going to be keeping a very close eye on that. We have the new farm bill coming out, which hopefully that extends the runway a little bit. But the reality is, man, the way that input costs just continue to stay so high and commodity prices still remain so depressed and so incredibly low, it is really, really tough for farmers right now, just to stay in business. It costs a ton of money and you're not really getting much of a return because commodity prices are so low."
Oftentimes these landowners' equity lies in the appreciation of the land that they own. So they're selling their land. But Hill says it's usually under a buy-lease-back situation.
“So they'll keep farming the land. They just no longer own it. They cash out on the equity they have in the land. But eventually something's got to give because that cash is going to run out.”
As growth occurs in one part of the state, consolidation occurs in another. And you can read about every corner of Arkansas' land sale trends in the Saunders Real Estate 2026 market report.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
