LandsofAmerica.com Sees Strong Demand for Recreational Property

One morning last year, Web guru Allen Shannon had a big surprise when he fired up his computer. A real estate broker had listed a 100,000-acre New Mexico ranch on LandsofAmerica.com, a network of real estate marketing Web sites that Shannon founded in 2002.

When the ranch sold a few months later to a buyer wanting a place to hunt and relax, Shannon knew that LandsofAmerica.com had established a niche: bringing buyers and sellers of recreational property together.

10,500 Listings
In July, the LandsofAmerica.com network of Web sites had nearly 10,500 property listings. Shannon estimates that 80 percent of those listings were recreational properties — rugged ranches, farms with fishing ponds or lakes, waterfront properties and other types of rural land.

“Around 90 percent of our buyers are looking for recreational property,” Shannon reports. “Many of them want a ranch for the weekend or a place to hunt or fish. And in Texas, riverfront property seems like a really hot item now.”

According to the National Association of Realtors, 77 percent of people looking for real estate use the Internet to research properties for sale.

This doesn’t surprise Janet Helm, a West Texas broker specializing in large ranch properties. “The first time I put my properties on LandsofTexas.com, a volume buyer found me. Since I had just been brokering for two years, it was a very good experience,” she says.

Farm Credit Sponsors Web Sites
Recently, Farm Credit financial cooperatives in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas recently formed a strategic alliance with LandsofAmerica.com to provide five state-specific Web sites. They are:

www.LandsofAlabama.com
www.LandsofLouisiana.com
www.LandsofMississippi.com
www.LandsofNewMexico.com
www.LandsofTexas.com

The alliance combines the resources of the largest rural lender and the largest online rural property listing service in the five-state region.

“Because Farm Credit makes loans for all types of rural properties, we saw a need for an online source for locating, listing and financing rural land,” says Stan Ray, vice president of marketing and corporate relations for the Farm Credit Bank of Texas. “We are glad to work with LandsofAmerica.com to provide this valuable service.”

Financing Options
Visitors to the LandsofAmerica.com Web sites can learn about financing options, find a Farm Credit lender and search for properties by region, county and type of land. Listings are provided by real estate brokers and are updated daily.

Rural properties for sale in all five states also can be searched by going to www.FarmCreditBank.com and clicking on Real Estate Marketplace.

Current listings range from a few acres to 101,000 acres, and include country homes, working farms and dairies, as well as recreational properties.

This year, the number of listings on LandsofAmerica.com has been increasing at the rate of 500 or more a month. Shannon, who worked for the giant online marketplace, eBay, in its startup years, doesn’t expect listings to decline any time soon. “Considering the price of gasoline and people’s hectic schedules, it just makes sense to search online for properties that may be a few hours’ drive from home,” he observes.

Article by Janet Hunter