Land Link Vermont

Posted by Preston Bristow on May 6th, 2007 filed in Farm Real Estate Market

A blog on buying Farms In Vermont would not be complete without describing Land Link Vermont, a program of the UVM Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Land Link Vermont is a matching service that seeks to connect beginning farmers with retiring farmers and non-farming landowners.

To access Land Link Vermont go to http://www.uvm.edu/~landlink/ and in the left column choose “For Farm Seekers” and then “Summary List of Farmland Owners.”

Many people ask me about farms available for lease and Lank Link Vermont is a great resource that I can send them to. As a farm real estate professional it doesn’t make sense for me to list farms for lease. When I checked today, Land Link’s Summary List of Farmland Owners had 30 entries, and of those 30 entries 22 were described as being offered for short-term lease, long-term lease, partnership, work-to-own, joint venture or “other creative idea.”

The remaining 8 of those 30 entries were farms for sale, and the asking prices for those farms were comparable with prices I see for farms in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and my own farm listings.

With the availability of Vermont Land Link, why work with a farm Realtor? After all, who wouldn’t want to avoid paying a real estate commission if they could? The harsh reality is that choosing the farm of your dreams from a list is no easier than finding the love of your life from the personal ads in the classified section. In fact, a National Association of Realtors study has shown that 84% of all private sellers ended up working with a Realtor. Realtors work hard to match the right buyer with the right seller. And with the complexities of modern real estate transactions, it can be frightening to undertake something so complicated as buying or selling a farm without the help of a real estate professional!

Check out my website at www.farmsinvermont.com and click on “Current Listings.”