Your farm or ranch represents your life’s work. It can be hard to put it up for sale, even when you and our family are ready to retire. Now that you have made that decision to sell, you need to be sure you do it the smart way, preserving the equity you’ve built and securing a solid financial future for you and your family.

One of the biggest challenges you will face when selling your farm or ranch is knowing the price point. The timely sale of your land is often burdened by poor pricing strategies during the initial stages of the selling process. Emotion, subjectivity and personal preference can lead to errors or overpricing.

It is extremely important to find a competent, experienced and honest land brokerage to value your land accurately. If your goal is to sell your land for the most money possible, you have to put your emotions aside and get the expertise and advice from experienced and knowledgeable land agents.

Listing with a brokerage that provides an inflated value to your farm or ranch just to acquire a listing is one of the most difficult tasks you will face as a seller. If you price your land accurately from the beginning, you will have a much better chance of selling for a fair market value or even above that value.

There is a bubble of purchasers that meet the “buyer profile” which is called “The Market”. It is extremely important to successfully build a detailed listing package and then distribute your listing to where the buyers are searching. When you as the seller select a “go to market” listing price, a spike in interest will occur within 60-90 days of activating the listing. This will give you the best chance in making a great first impression. If your price is too high, you will be at a disadvantage as a seller.

Your property will become stale after 90 days of launching. The active buyers in the market will move on and all that is left is a seller and an agent praying that a new buyer will occasionally enter the market for some reason. To avoid this situation your brokerage needs to quickly and confidently analyze market activity. The brokerage does this by reviewing web reporting statistics and compiling data including the numbers of showings and feedback from buyers and their showing agents.

Recently, land investors have become more educated and so the need for accurate pricing is more critical than ever. Investors have more market information available to them through electronic media outlets than ever before. A smart seller will quickly make adjustments by analyzing the information and then adjusting the listing as necessary to find the market value and sell the property at the highest price the market will bear.

Once you have made the important decision to sell your farm or ranch remember it is important to find an experienced brokerage that will spend the time and effort developing a relationship with you and will help you sell your land using their expertise for your benefit.