Eighty acres of land near Steen sold for $19,000 per acre Thursday morning, topping Rock County’s previous land sale record of $16,200 in November 2012.
“It just blew me out of the water,” said Tom Houselog of the Rock County Land Records Office. “The bidding started at $12,000 and went to $19,000 in a matter of a few minutes.”
The successful bidder was Steen farmer Matt Boeve, who lives directly across the road (Highway 270) from the 80-acre parcel, which sold for a total of $1,520,000.
Houselog said the tract of land, all tillable ground, is among the best and most fertile in Rock County, but he was still surprised by the record sale, due to dropping commodity prices.
“With prices half of what they were at their highest, I didn’t know how the market would react,” Houselog said.
“But it’s just one sale. … It could have been $9,000 instead of $19,000 and would that mean the market is tanking? Again, it’s just one sale, and it’s hard to know what motivated the bidders.”
He said one factor that drives up land auction prices is proximity to adjacent ground, especially if more than one bidder shares that interest.
While Thursday’s land sale is a record-breaker, Houselog said the implications for land values in the neighborhood will not be. “It’s only one of several sales we’ll be looking at for our 2017 assessments,” Houselog said.
The highest-priced land so far in 2015 was 56 acres in Springwater Township that sold in April to the Hoogland Trust for $13,850 per acre.
The highest price in 2014 was $15,250 per acre in Kanaranzi Township, and in 2013 the high sale was $15,300 in Kanaranzi Township.
Until Thursday, the all-time record sale in Rock County was in Beaver Creek Township in 2012 when Eric Fick bought 80 acres for $16,200 per acre. The land had been in the Walter and Leora Hellwinckel family for 85 years.
Houselog said he often attends land auctions to get a feel for why and how land sells for the prices it gets. When asked about Thursday’s auction by Steen, he said, “It was such an extreme sale, I didn’t know what to take away from it.”