I've heard some people speculating that the lending institutions in my area are going to start to tighten up on loaning money on this high dollar land............but, I've not seen any evidence of that, yet. As I've written about before, the Mennonites and Amish are responsible for the high prices here, especially the Mennonites. They buy anything and everything that comes up for sale, and don't seem to mind paying whatever it takes to buy it. With their population growing, they must have a place to live or else move elsewhere, so price is whatever they are willing to pay.
Sounds like they are setting the market there.
Two things...
1) Are they paying cash, or financing?
2) With inflated land sales like that, higher tax values will follow the comps. They aren't doing their neighbors any favors at the tax office.
Barry, some of them sold land back in Pennsylvania for some very good prices, and that has allowed them to come here and buy more land than they had back where they came from. They were the lucky ones, as they didn't have to go in debt to buy land. But, not all of them fit into that category. A lot of them have to finance what they've bought, and from what I've been told, quite a few are just paying the interest and nothing on the principal. But, they are usually considered good risks by the people who loan them money, as it's rare to see any of them being repossessed.
As far as tax values go, we are very lucky here in Kentucky because farmland is both evaluated and taxed at a much lower rate than is other property. But, they have driven property values up dramatically, and it's probably just a matter of time before our taxes will be adjusted for that. The one thing that's in our favor is that a lot of the elected officials that make the laws here come from rural areas and they don't like paying taxes anymore than I do.
