LandThink

I talked with an old friend last week about selling a large New England farm that’s been in his family since the 1930s. The farm is in a pretty setting, at the foot of publicly owned mountains. Land prices have risen dramatically during the last 15 years, driven by second-home buyers and retirees from southern New England and, primarily, the Boston area.

People are constantly asking me why land deals are so special, and why the time and cost required completing them far exceeds that associated with traditional residential or improved commercial property deals.

About 10.6 million privately owned acres — an area about twice the size of Connecticut — now carry conservation easements. This land base is growing by more than one million acres annually.