American Land Seller Podcast: Creating a More Efficient Land Market

The American Land Seller Podcast recently featured Acres' VP of Business Development. Hosted by Kolby Rickertsen, the conversation delved into the importance of data access, transparency, and technology for the future of the land real estate industry. Find the full episode below along with several key takeaways.

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5 Key Takeaways

1. Bringing It All Together

04:13 - Ben: Our product gives you parcel details, transaction information, bank financing data, really all in one place. [...] importantly, we do that both on desktop—when you're at your office—but also on a mobile app, right? So you can take this out in the field, and it works when you're in offline mode. That's really important to us is that this is not just something you sit behind a desk and use, but you gotta get out there and actually use these things in the field.

Takeaway: Acres brings together your land data needs into one platform and makes it accessible from your desktop and from your phone.

2. Combining Industry and Product Expertise

06:45 - Ben: ...there's two types of expertise when you do what we do. There's subject matter expertise and there's product expertise. And so subject matter expertise is what you and I do every day, right? We are in the land business, and you have to understand that business to build a product like this.

At the same time, I don't know really anything about coding or app development or software engineering, but we have a lot of people who do. And that's where the product expertise comes into place. [...]

07:28 - Kolby: Yeah, that's absolutely true. But the fact that you're one of us and you're on the staff, like making sure that they're giving them the direct feedback as a land broker as to this is kind of something we don't need. This is stuff that we do need.

Takeaway: Acres combines both industry and product expertise to create a platform that's tailored for land professionals and is easy to use.

3. Creating a More Efficient Market

10:39 - Ben: You know, we've had digital plat maps for a decade or longer at this point. And while that feels like progress, when you look at these other types of real estate—so let's take residential or take commercial real estate—that have come so much further in technological adoption. And it's not just, do you have the latest tool? It's do you have data and information to explain to your client why this is the right property, why they should buy this property, and why this price is the right price for that property?

And I think the lack of that progress in, let's just call it rural land—so it could be farm or timberland or ranch land—lack of progress in that particular space is really what we're trying to address.

So, I think we have an outlook on things where if you increase transparency and you bring more data to the marketplace, you create a greater efficiency in the market and that creates liquidity, right? And so we are all in the business of land. Greater liquidity, greater market efficiency, frankly drives more business at the end of the day.

Takeaway: Access to more data and greater transparency will create a more efficient marketplace and ultimately drive more business.

4. Building a National Database

16:37 - Ben: What we want to do is build a national database of property data, transactions, and mortgage information. And while some of these things already exist in other individual programs or other platforms, we really want to bring it all into one spot, build a national version of that, and put a real emphasis on data quality.

Takeaway: Acres is building an all-in-one, national database that emphasizes data quality and coverage.

5. Land is a Relationship Business

32:55 - Kolby: When you print out a report from Acres and it has crop data from five years and all the soil types and all that kind of stuff, those people geek out on that. I mean, that's no joke. [...] a lot of the people that I deal with, they want the data because they make their decisions more so based on, not necessarily trusting me, but they trust that, hey, I see where you're going. I see where you got this. So you have to prove your work, so to speak.

33:29 - Ben: Our business is a relationship business. It will always be that way. I'm convinced. It's also a business that requires an immense amount of local expertise. [...] You still need that local expertise, you need relationships, but your point is a really good one, which is that you can have all of that and still lose an opportunity because you didn't bring data to back up your years of experience and wisdom. That's great, but there has to be a trust but verify element, and you verify with data.

Takeaway: Land will always be a people business, but having access to (and the ability to share) high quality data helps build trust and verifies your expertise.

Final Thoughts

The importance of transparent, accessible data in the rural land industry cannot be understated. Insights from Acres' VP of Business Development showcase the game-changing potential of technology to create a more efficient marketplace and empower boots on the ground experts with high quality data. If you'd like to explore Acres for yourself, you can get started with a free account at acres.com!