Can You Take a Break at the Auction?

Top 50 Questions about Farmland

Hey, it's the Iowa land guy. And here's the top 50 questions that I get asked about farmland. Do you take a break at the auction or how fast does it go? Yes, we do. So on farmland auctions, they're typically a little bit different than selling cattle. If you happen to have been to another auction where they went very quick and it was a one, two, three and sold, um, farmland is a.

big, big decision and it's a lot of dollars that are moving. So with that, we want to make sure that we're reading the crowd and giving everybody fair chance and time, um, to make that educated decision on a large dollar volume. So typically what we do is we sell, sell, sell, uh, we get the price up and, uh, uh, to where, uh, the, the bidding starts to slow down.

We take a break. We normally have some kind of treats at the break. At that point, we talk with you, the seller in the back room. Uh, just let you know what we're seeing. Uh, how many bidders, who's bidding, who might be interested, do we think or feel that there are more bids in the crowd? And then, uh, go back, uh, have, has the reserve met, or has it not met?

Go back to the crowd, and after we go back to the crowd, we tell them, hey, ladies and gentlemen, the farm is going to sell today. Arguably, when they know that the farm is going to sell, um, we normally, typically, Farmers don't necessarily want to show you their checkbooks, so they're not going to bid, um, 2 million to let all their neighbors see that they have that, unless they know that they're going to buy the farm.

So, it's kind of a funny thing, but we do take a break for all those reasons, uh, indicated there. Um, sometimes we just need to take a break because the internet doesn't work. bidders said that the internet connection was slow and we wanted to make sure that they had full opportunity to bid. So, again, back to that auctioneer and the decision maker.

Um, they're reading the crowd constantly, they're reading all the conditions of the room, and making the decision when it is appropriate and if they should take that break.

David Whitaker | Iowa Land Guy