10 Ways to Sell Your Land Faster in Kansas

Blanketing 52 million acres farms, forests and rural residential space, Kansas lands nourish souls and economies statewide producing one-fifth nation’s wheat bounties while hosting robust ranching and dairy operations grazing livestock ultimately feeding millions beyond borders. This agriculture land heritage builds community fabrics woven generations strong yet poses challenges predicting days passing before non-core assets held convert into cash meeting evolving lifestyle dreams or demands arising unexpectedly. Industry analysis shows average marketed periods running 8-16 months locating end-user buyers able to secure financing ultimately transfer deeds legally convey properties to new stewards. 

However, specialty land acquisition companies now exist transacting quick closures sidestepping traditionally elongated sales cycles. Published 2022 data reports Kansas per acre averages around $2,500 for cropland and $1,730 rangelands, but direct sales coordinated privately with cash buyers often deliver 20-60% value premiums compared to public listings for owners prioritizing expedited liquidity events. Let’s connect unlocking mutually beneficial contract terms furthering interests both sides.

10 Tips to Sell Your Land Faster in Kansas

1. Price Your Land Competitively

One of the biggest mistakes Kansas land sellers make is severely overpricing their property. Farm land and ranch land pricing can be very subjective. Owners often develop an emotional attachment to their acres if it has been in their family for decades or it is where they have fond memories from over the years. However, when selling land, you need to separate feelings from facts and focus on the business side of making a deal.

Work with a local real estate agent in Kansas who can pull recent comps for both land and home sales in your specific county as well as nearby regions. Comparable properties that are most alike yours which have sold in the past 6 months give the best indication of current fair market value. Be sure the comps used involve parcels with similar acreage, features, access, road frontage, existing structures, and zoning restrictions. The selling prices of those comps will offer a fairly accurate picture of real value, being the amount, an informed buyer is willing to pay.

Another good strategy is getting multiple valuations from different local real estate agents in Kansas. Also consider enlisting a specialized land appraiser to assess your property. Getting 3-4 values from informed sources lets you establish a reasonable list price at the higher end but not exceeding this collective range. Pricing your land within 5-10% of average fair market value based on very comparable land will position it well for a faster sale in the Kansas area. Purposefully listing over the typical market rates will just length the selling duration.

2. Market Your Land Aggressively

Simply placing a generic “For Sale by Owner” sign along the road frontage or listing it on common digital platforms like Zillow or Realtor.com is not nearly enough. You need to cover all marketing bases to reach as many qualified buyers as possible who are actively and urgently looking for land in Kansas.

Be sure to create professional print ads and distribute these to multiple local Kansas newspapers and relevant agriculture industry publications. Develop an eye-catching informational for sale flyer summarizing your land’s highlights and include persuasive images showing off the best features and views. Print full color flyers to post on community bulletin boards at local Kansas feed supply stores, tractor equipment dealerships, cattle auction houses, Farm Credit bank branches and relevant places where serious farm buyer prospects frequent.

You also need online visibility to promote the sale to the widest possible audiences. Develop a dedicated website exclusively showcasing your land for sale, optimized with effective search engine keywords. Create social media posts customized for sites like Facebook Marketplace, LinkedIn and even Instagram given expanded usage among younger farmers. 

Set up accounts at popular land listing sites like LandsOfAmerica.com, LandWatch.com and LandAndFarm.com which allow buyers to search for properties by very specific criteria. Distribute digital listing flyers by email to relevant Kansas real estate agencies, farm management companies and others who encounter prospects seeking land. Cast the widest net using diverse integrated marketing so your messages reach more buyers urgently looking for properties like yours.

3. Offer Flexible Owner Financing Terms

The reality is very few buyers, other than large corporate entities, have the ability to pay 100% cash upfront for land and farm purchases. Yet many land sellers initially only advertise “Cash Only” terms. By providing more amenable and flexible owner financing options, a seller can significantly expand the pool of prospective buyers for their property.

Offering enticing terms like low down payments, longer-term installment payment plans, and below market interest rates allows more buyers to confidently make offers. For instance, stating “20% Down, 6.5% Interest, 15 Years” in your marketing materials makes purchase conditions much more attainable for buyers without large pools of capital on hand. The easier you make it for buyers to realistically afford your Kansas land, the faster high-quality offers will come.

You can consult an attorney to formalize owner financing agreements. outlining detailed amortization schedules with exact payment amounts, due dates, total interest paid, balloon conditions etc., also consider recording liens on the land title to secure your financial position. Having an experienced lawyer customize fixed-rate or variable-rate financing terms with appropriate legal protections allows sellers to accommodate buyers while reducing nonpayment risks. This makes sellers more willing to provide favorable terms that bring in deals faster.

4. Showcase All Property Attributes and Updates

All too often, land sellers post simple online classified ads focusing on just very basic details like acreage amount, county location, road accessibility and soil productivity grades. This is the bare minimum. You need to showcase everything that enhances your property’s overall value if you want to garner serious buyer action faster.

Emphasize attributes like drainage improvements, irrigation rights, productive crop yield history, recently updated fencing, accuracy of boundary surveys, enrolled tax breaks/incentives, potential leasing revenue, accuracy of estimated mineral rights values, appraised timber value, documented water well output for livestock, and similar positive characteristics.

Showcase any major updates or capital investments made over the years which enhance functionality and therefore resale value. The more worthwhile features and upgrades you showcase through both words and photos, the faster buyer interest and deal velocity typically occurs. Touting just the acreage size and location simply isn’t enough anymore to drive rapid sales activity in the very competitive Kansas land sales marketplace.

5. Segment Your Land into Smaller Parcels

Selling your land in one large contiguous parcel caters only to buyers with high net worth seeking 100+ acre farms or ranches for either personal or commercial usage. The reality is there is far less demand for larger agricultural spreads due to the substantially higher capital needed for purchase and ongoing operational expenses. Yet there is no shortage of prospective buyers eagerly seeking smaller rural recreational building sites or cropable land to add onto existing spreads.

Therefore, segmented your land into smaller subdivided parcels aligned with the greatest buyer demand profiles can greatly reduce the sales duration. Yes, this may involve getting updated boundary surveys, splitting up water rights, adjusting, mineral deeds, securing subdivision approvals and replotting parcel deeds. But the extra effort lets you get asking prices from multiple interested buyers simultaneously. This ability to close sales faster with different parties makes the work very worthwhile.

For example, a 160-acre Kansas cattle farm may be breakable into:

• One 100-acre parcel priced for an adjacent owner to expand
• Four 15-acre lots able to be residential building sites
• Remainder 25 acres of pasture land for part-time hobby farming

Cast the widest net by offering diverse options that align with the predominant buyer interests in your local Kansas area. The types of segmented parcels above allow you to potentially sell off the pieces much faster than waiting for a single buyer willing and able to acquire the entire 160-acres.

6. Offer Incentives for Fast Payment

Savvy land sellers use incentives to motivate and reward rapid sales activity leading to deals closing faster. Providing enticing discounts for buyers who demonstrate ability pay the full amount within 14 days or less makes it more rewarding for buyers to finalize sales faster.

Alternatively, you can maintain list pricing but be willing to accept longer 30 year owner financing terms at higher 6.5%+ interest rates. Then offer shorter 15 year payment plans at lower 5.5% annual interest for buyers who make at least a 30% down payment and close within 21 days.

Having different incentives tied to speed and down payments makes it more beneficial for qualified buyers ready to move urgently to do so. Just be sure adjusted prices or rates still meet your own minimum acceptable levels for each type of terms.

7. Be Flexible on Possession Date

Another very effective negotiation tool for sealing deals quickly is being highly adaptable on the property possession transfer timing after the sale closes. Typically, Kansas land transfers involve 30-60 day closing periods after an offer is formally accepted before new owners can take legal possession.

However, you may encounter situations where buyer needs acquire the property much faster to quickly begin a crop planting season, move equipment onto the land, harvest existing crops still owned by you, or start renovation projects ASAP to establish operational viability sooner.

If a serious buyer asks for early occupancy or quick land access for key business reasons, try to accommodate them if at all possible. Offering to release the land to a buyer within 7-14 days after the deal closing instead of the standard 30 days can often be pivotal leverage to secure the deal. It shows you are willing to negotiate on a sticking point that matters greatly to them. Find ways to make the sale optimally convenient and the deal can come together faster.

8. Promote Relevant Tax Advantages

Kansas has over 105 counties, many of which have implemented “1031 Exchange” incentivization programs under the U.S. IRS code. These programs let landowners sell highly appreciated properties to buyers while legally deferring any taxable capital gains they would owe on the sale. To take advantage of the tax deferral, sellers must redirect proceeds from the sale into acquiring another “like-kind” replacement real estate property within 180 days of closing.

If you have owned your land for many years, promoted these deferred gains benefit could motivate buyers who have recently sold their own property and may be looking to defer gains tax exposure. The ability to essentially let buyers exchange one property for another while deferring tax payments often encourages quicker sale decisions.

You can highlight examples of how a 1031 Exchange transaction facilitates selling your land while avoiding capital gain taxes which may eat up 20%+ of sale proceeds. Buyers can quickly redirect money into a replacement property to sustain their real estate investment portfolio. Promoting this advantage makes your land listing more enticing at decision time.

9. Consider Land Leasing If No Sales Offers

If you have your land aggressively marketed for over 90 days with no serious offers coming in, an alternative revenue strategy to consider versus letting the property sit vacant is leasing it out on annual contract terms. This maintains your underlying ownership for future sale while generating rental income from tenants wanting to leverage it for cash-cropping, cattle grazing, hunting access or natural resource extraction in the short term.

You can continue marketing a leased out property for sale and the tenant lease terms simply clarify there is possibility of land sale ending their lease rights each year going forward if you opt for an offer. Some buyer prospects may even value acquiring a property with stable lease income to offset tax liabilities. Either way, land leasing can put an unused asset to work. Just be sure to get fair market rates based on typical Kansas rental rates for varying land usage purposes and stipulate required condition upkeep.

10. Consider Land Buying Companies

For some Kansas landowners needing to sell property for urgent reasons like liquidating an estate, paying medical bills, exiting the farming business or retiring out of state, attempting to sell it themselves may not be realistic if they have no experience in real estate transactions. Self-marketing land takes substantial time, effort and patience which they may lack.

An alternative to attempting to sell land privately is working directly with specialized land buying companies like Land Boss. They exist to purchase land, farms, ranches and timber acreage directly from private Kansas owners at fair cash market prices normally within 28 days or less. This professional exit strategy circumvents hassels with securing bank financing, paying commissions and waiting extended periods to close deals.

Reputable land buying firms have cash on hand to buy properties that fit their purchasing criteria for acreage size, location attributes and total valuations. They buy lands outright for purposes like cattle grazing, timber harvesting, mineral rights extraction, recreational uses or to add smaller parcels together into more valuable large-scale spreads for farming or ranch operations.

The key benefit land buying companies provide sellers wanting faster exits is ensuring deals close on serious offers with no financing contingencies at competitive prices in much shorter 1-4 week time spans. This enables landowners who lack requisite expertise or time to liquidate their properties faster to get back to focusing on retirement, medical needs or other pressing priorities sooner.

Final Thoughts

In summary, selling land privately in Kansas does tend to yield better sale prices but involves considerably more effort, patience and uncertainty regarding closing time frames. Landowners with flexibility and expertise can get deals done in 30-60 days by aggressively showcasing properties to optimum buyers and negotiating wisely. However, those seeking to liquidate land holdings faster with fewer deal complications may find reputable land buying companies like Land Boss better aligned with their needs and limitations.

Either way, thoughtfully employing the helpful tips above allows Kansas landowners to shave months or even years off the historically glacial land sales duration. Treat the sale mission urgently, proactively market to serious buyers daily, demonstrate flexibility on terms and transfer timing, and maintain realism on pricing aligned with local fair market rates. This type of proactive approach reduces typical land sales cycles so owners can satisfy objectives faster and move on feeling content sooner.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What documents do I need to provide potential buyers when selling my land in Kansas?

Some key documents buyers will want to review include: the deed showing current legal ownership, the most recent land survey evidencing exact boundaries, property tax receipts showing payments are current, any water rights documentation, mineral rights leases or transfer records, and title insurance commitments showing no existing property liens or other encumbrances. Having clear paperwork speeds sales.

Does my land need road or access improvements to sell faster in Kansas?

Ease of access is crucial. Most buyers want land directly bordering county roads, highways or interstates for convenience and future development plans. If an inner parcel has no road frontage, ensure there is a deeded ingress/egress access easement to the property described in the deed and survey. If access points are worn or need upgrades like gravel or culverts, make improvements to attract offers sooner.

What role do real estate agents play in selling land faster?

Experienced local farm and land brokers have existing buyer networks and promote listings aggressively through MLS platforms reaching thousands of agents. They facilitate showings, negotiations, paperwork and closing logistics. Paying a listing commission around 5% of sale price means handling marketing and sales hassles but agents earn their keep closing deals weeks or months sooner.

Should I offer owner financing to sell my Kansas land faster? 

Providing financing options expands your buyer pool. Outline terms like 30% down payment, 6% interest rate, 15 year amortization due in ballooned full 5 years. This yields faster bids and better loan control versus banks. Set the bar low enough to attract buyers but high enough to meet investment return thresholds.

How soon can I expect my Kansas land to sell after listing it?

Marketing high-demand parcels priced keenly with surveys, title commitments and flexible terms can yield offers within 30-60 days. More complex listings or those in slow rural locations may take 4-8 months. With focused sales initiatives, aim to sell quicker than the 1-2 year statewide average duration.

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