Terrel L. Shields
Elite Member
- Joined
- May 2, 2002
- Professional Status
- Certified General Appraiser
- State
- Arkansas
What about areas that are largely rural, but prices vary from $20,000 to $6 MILLION? These "neighborhood" prices are meaningless. Let's talk about the various demographics that might live in the same area. In NWA you have the "planters" who work in industry or the chicken processing plants, drive the trucks, catch the chickens, etc. You have the builders, the service sector. You have the myriads of executives who are working for Walmart, Tysons, and the thousands of vendors that Walmart requires to be present in the area to sell to them. You have a shrinking rural population of farmers and small business owners rapidly being displaced by a wealth class of investors. And they all live side by side in many cases.
When I started appraising there were numerous small dairy farms in NW Arkansas and NE Oklahoma. How do you discuss the Dairy farm market when you have almost no dairies? What "market"? These are now dispersed isolated legacy farms with no future. It's pointless to discuss their future. They have none. Highest and Best Use? Under current management or the eventual demise of the owner? Will they sell as some pie in the sky speculation about development? Will they simply cease to be a dairy and become a rural small tract farm? A family heirloom of sorts like my own property that will remain in my family for perhaps another 50 years before it is forced to sell. Sure, it will sell. But speculation on some magic future use serves zero purpose. The bank isn't going to sell it for that anyway if repo'd.
