2025 Land Prices Per Acre: How Our 9 States Compare

Farmland across the nine states where Perspective Properties buys ran from $2,970 per acre in Texas to $6,800 in Michigan in 2025, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. That is a 2.3-times spread. Where your land sits on that map shapes what a fair offer looks like, but the statewide average is only a starting reference, not a number to anchor to.

Below is the full 2025 picture for all nine states, followed by the three patterns in the data that actually matter to someone deciding whether to sell. We also walk through why a high per-acre headline does not always mean a bigger check at closing.

This is general information about land valuation, not an appraisal or a tax opinion. For a parcel-specific number, a county assessor record and a state-licensed appraiser are the right places to start.

The 2025 Numbers, Ranked

Michigan led all nine states at $6,800 per acre of farm real estate in 2025, and Texas trailed at $2,970, per the USDA NASS Land Values 2025 Summary released August 8, 2025. The table below sorts all nine by farm real estate value, with figures reflecting values as of January 1, 2025.

The spread is the first thing to notice. A Michigan acre at $6,800 is worth 2.3 times a Texas acre at $2,970, even though both states sell plenty of rural land every year. That gap reflects soil productivity, development pressure near metro areas, and how much of each state’s land sits in active farming rather than timber, pasture, or recreation. The table reports three separate numbers per state for that reason, because a working cropland acre and a wooded hunting tract are not the same product.

Five of the nine states sit above the national farm real estate average of $4,350: Michigan, New Hampshire, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. The other four, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, sit below it. The national cropland average of $5,830 is higher than every one of our nine states except Michigan, which tells you something useful right away. Most of the land we buy is not the high-yield corn-and-soybean ground that pulls the national cropland number up. It is mixed rural acreage, timber, pasture, and inherited family parcels that price on a different scale.

New Hampshire is the outlier to read carefully. Its cropland figure of $9,900 and pasture figure of $7,850 are newly published for 2025 after years of being withheld, and they sit on a very small base of farm acres. A handful of high-value parcels near developed areas can swing a small-state average hard. The farm real estate number of $6,500 is the steadier benchmark for a New Hampshire seller.

Where Pasture Costs More Than Cropland

North Carolina and Georgia broke the national pattern in 2025: pasture outpriced cropland in both states. Nationally, cropland runs about $3,900 more per acre than pasture. North Carolina pasture came in at $6,050 against cropland at $5,360, and Georgia pasture reached $4,900 against cropland at $4,520. North Carolina pasture is more than three times the national pasture average of $1,920.

Southeastern demand explains the inversion. Open grazing and recreational land competes there with rural homebuilding and hunting demand, and those buyers set a floor that has little to do with crop yield. A pasture acre near a growing North Carolina or Georgia exurb is worth more to a homebuilder or a horse owner than to a cattle operation, and the market prices it that way. Tennessee shows a milder version of the same effect: cropland at $6,050 and pasture at $5,600 are within $450 of each other, a far tighter gap than the national $3,900.

For a landowner, the practical takeaway is direct. If you own uncleared, wooded, or never-farmed land in North Carolina, Georgia, or Tennessee, do not assume it is worth a fraction of the cropland number. The non-farm demand that lifts pasture in those states often lifts raw recreational and residential-adjacent parcels too. Michigan is the mirror image. Its cropland at $6,350 is more than double its pasture at $3,100, so a productive Thumb-region tillable parcel and a brushy hunting tract there really are two different markets.

Which States Gained the Most in 2025

Michigan led 2025 land value growth among the nine states at 7.8 percent, with Tennessee a step behind at 7.7 percent. Both ran well ahead of the national 4.3 percent gain in farm real estate. Texas rose 6.1 percent, though off the lowest base in the group, and North Carolina added 5.4 percent. Georgia gained 4.9 percent.

The slower movers were Alabama at 3.8 percent, Louisiana at 3.5 percent, and Arkansas at 3.4 percent. None of the nine fell. That matters for timing. A seller who bought or inherited a Michigan or Tennessee parcel a few years ago is generally selling into a stronger absolute number today than the appraisal they may be carrying in their head. A seller working from a 2022 or 2023 valuation in those two states is almost certainly looking at a stale baseline that understates current value.

Growth alone does not make a parcel easy to sell, though. A rising statewide average says nothing about road access, title condition, or whether a parcel is landlocked. Those parcel-level facts move an offer far more than a percentage point of statewide appreciation.

A High Per-Acre Value Does Not Mean a Bigger Check

Michigan has the highest land value of the nine states, but not the highest take-home. What a seller nets depends on two costs the USDA survey does not cover: the transfer tax charged at closing, and whether the state taxes the gain on the sale. Both vary widely across the nine states.

Michigan illustrates the squeeze. It has the highest land value at $6,800 per acre, but it also stacks a combined state and county transfer tax of about 0.86 percent under MCL § 207.525 and MCL § 207.504, then taxes the gain as ordinary income at a flat 4.25 percent. Now compare the no-income-tax states. Texas levies no transfer tax and no state income tax under Tex. Const. art. VIII § 24-a. Tennessee charges a modest $0.37 per $100 recordation tax under TCA § 67-4-409 and has no state income tax. New Hampshire has no income tax on the gain, though its real estate transfer tax under RSA 78-B:1 is one of the steepest at $0.75 per $100 on each side of the deal. Georgia and North Carolina land in the middle of the pack. Georgia taxes the gain at a flat 5.19 percent for 2026 per the Georgia Department of Revenue, while North Carolina applies a $1-per-$500 excise tax at recording under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 105-228.30 plus a flat 3.99 percent income tax.

Arkansas deserves a callout because its rule is easy to miss. The state allows a 50 percent exclusion on net long-term capital gains under A.C.A. § 26-51-815, which cuts the effective state rate on a long-term land-sale gain to roughly 2.2 percent. An Arkansas seller and a Georgia seller with identical gains do not pay identical state tax, and the gap is not small. The lesson is to read land value and net proceeds as two separate questions. A $4,000-per-acre parcel in a no-income-tax state can leave a seller with more cash than a $5,000-per-acre parcel in a high-tax one once closing costs and the gain tax are settled.

One federal point applies everywhere. If the land was inherited, the stepped-up basis rule under IRC § 1014, explained in IRS Publication 559, resets the cost basis to date-of-death value. A near-date-of-death sale often produces little or no taxable federal gain, and the state income tax follows that adjusted figure. A qualified tax professional should run the specific numbers, especially when the holding period crosses a tax year.

How to Read a USDA Number When You Own the Parcel

The USDA figures are statewide averages for land inside working farms, and the farm real estate number folds in barns, fences, wells, and other improvements. Your raw or inherited parcel is usually not a working farm with buildings, so the cropland average is a ceiling reference rather than an offer floor. Most rural land we buy trades somewhere in a band below that ceiling, set by four parcel-level facts.

The first is access. A parcel with deeded road frontage prices far above an otherwise identical landlocked tract, because a landlocked parcel cuts the buyer pool sharply. The second is land cover. A tract that is mostly tillable cropland prices closer to the cropland average; one that is wooded, wet, or brushy prices closer to the pasture or timber figure. The third is parcel size, where very small lots can carry a higher per-acre price and large raw tracts often sell at a per-acre discount. The fourth is title condition, including back taxes, recorded easements, severed minerals, and heir-property complications that have to be cleared before a clean sale.

Two parcels with the same county address can carry very different per-acre values once those four factors are applied. In practice, most of the parcels we are asked to buy price below the cropland average for exactly these reasons, which is why our standard practice is to pull the county assessor record and overlay it on the USDA land-cover classifications before we put a written number on a parcel. The statewide average gets us to the right neighborhood. The parcel facts get us to the offer. For a deeper look at how this works in one state, our breakdown of Michigan land values and how county composition moves the number shows the same method applied parcel by parcel.

What This Means If You Are Selling

If you are weighing an offer on rural or inherited land, use the 2025 USDA number as a sanity check, not a target. Confirm which figure fits your parcel: cropland for tillable ground, pasture for open grazing or recreational land, and a discount below both for landlocked or title-clouded tracts. Then factor in the transfer tax and income tax in your state, because those decide how much of the sale price you actually keep.

We buy land across all nine of these states and price each parcel on its own access, cover, and title facts rather than a statewide headline. If you want to see how the numbers shape up where you own, the North Carolina and Tennessee pages cover our offer process and out-of-state-seller handling in detail. When you are ready for a written number on a specific parcel, send us the parcel details and we will return a fair cash offer in 24 hours, with closings in as little as 14 days on clear-title land.

This piece reflects the 2025 USDA NASS Land Values release and state tax law as of June 2026. Christian Smith, Managing Partner at Perspective Properties LLC, reviewed the figures against the source statutes and the USDA summary.