Most of the people in America are in agreement on one thing right now: our national economy is a mess. Those who keep tabs on the land markets across the country would share that sentiment for recreational and timberland tracts. From what I experience first-hand inAlabamaand the anecdotal evidence from land professionals in other regions shows that in many locations across the country timberland sales are way down.

The bright spot in the land market right now is good agricultural land. Arable acreage in the Midwest and the Mississippi Delta is selling at all-time highs; bolstered by strong commodity prices and investors like George Soros betting that the demand for food will increase dramatically as the world population grows in the coming decades.

I believe what is happening in the timber and recreational segments of the land market right now is akin to a major logjam in a river. We have many factors that have combined to form a major blockage in the flow of land sales that were happening from 2004 to 2007. We all know that what happens in the global economy now trickles down to our local markets. Thomas Friedman is correct, “The World is Flat”, and so there are many more forces at work that affect our local land sales than even a decade ago. I am not smart enough to identify and address even a fraction of those factors, but there are three main logs in this jam that I think we can put our finger on that we have some influence over. Running a successful business right now means you have to focus on what you can influence, and work hard at tilting the table your way.

1. Behavioral Economics of Sellers

Understand your product (land) and work to understand people. Markets fluctuate, circumstances change, but human nature is relatively constant. Personalities vary, but there are traits that most people share in common when it comes to their money and assets.

Most landowners will feel like their property is worth more money than the exact same type of property across the road or next door. It is worth more money for one very important reason: it belongs to them. This is called the endowment theory, which boiled down is, “mine is worth more than yours because it is mine.”

In addition, human nature makes us hate losing money. The average person has more anguish over losing $1000 in a deal than they have joy over making $1000. This is called the risk aversion theory, and that coupled with endowment is why so many sellers say, “I am not going to give my land away.” It is as natural a reflex as your knee bouncing when tapped by a doctor’s mallet.

In an investment, if you had a 100% chance of making $5,000 or an 80% chance of making $6,000 which would you choose? If you had to sell and you had a 100% chance of losing $5,000 or an 80% chance of loosing $6,000 which would choose? Most people choose option A in the first question and option B in the second. That is exactly the opposite of what a smart investor would do. The upside is almost certain in the first question and the downside in the second has a strong chance of increasing your losses. So choosing option B in the first example almost assures you of making 20% more money, and you are almost certain you will lose your $5,000 plus 20% if you chose option B in the second example. We make those decisions because we naturally have an aversion for risk. (I found a similar example in a TD Ameritrade investment class I took this year.)

It is our job to provide the most recent and accurate information about what a landowner’s property is worth in our professional opinion, and then help them make the decision as to whether they are willing to sell their land in this market.

2. Financing Difficulties

Securing financing for rural land is more of a challenge than it was five years ago. Land professionals need to be more educated about the possibilities of financing acreage. Having preferred lenders to recommend potential buyers to is a good start, but having a working knowledge of USDA Rural Loan Programs, owner financing options, and 1031 exchanges are also very helpful.

3. Lack of Consumer Confidence (Scared Buyers)

The plain truth right now is that people are uncertain about the future of our country and are afraid to turn loose of large amounts of money. A recentGalluppoll showed that 81% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way our government is being run, and they believe that $0.51 of every tax dollar is being wasted. That fear is causing paralysis when it comes to making major purchases.

However this distrust of government and fear of the unknown is opening markets for mini-farms of 10 to 20 acres where families can grow their own food and get out of  cities. The 2010 census showed that over 83% of Americans now live in the 331 largest metro areas, leaving roughly 17% of our populous in rural areas.  Land professionals have a unique knowledge that 83% of the population are not experiencing on a day to day basis. That means the odds are highly in our favor when someone is ready to purchase rural land. By showing a prospective buyer that investing in land is historically safer and a better investment than buying stocks or gold, you put them at ease with the purchase and increase your probability of making a sale.

The flow of the land market is shifting. Just as a logjam in a river causes the flow to change course, so the cumulative effects of the global economy are shifting rural land buying trends right now. Farmland in the Mississippi River Delta and Midwest is at all time highs, Florida citrus farming acreage is down 36% since 1996, China’s imports of pecans have created a demand for pecan orchards; these are all trends that are happening because of forces outside their regions. When a stream changes course it erodes part of the old bank and makes a new shoreline. The same is true in the land market. This logjam is creating new opportunities. It does us no good to pine for how things used to be, all of that has been washed downstream. This logjam is moving our industry in new directions and also building up demand for when the economy recovers. Opportunities to make money are out there. This logjam may be just the thing that helps take your business to the next level if you are prepared and are willing to accept the change.

Whether you are a land buyer, seller, or broker, you’ve probably noticed the many recent references in the news to the word “uncertainty”.  That word, it seems, applies to the economy, availability of jobs, land prices, government, the stock market, politics, interest rates, and pay increases.

Without a doubt, uncertainty translates to hesitation, inactivity, fear, frugality, lack of confidence, and downright procrastination.  Our country is built squarely on confidence.  Just think, every time someone writes a check, the payee assumes that the check will clear the bank.  Store clerks take a piece of plastic with your name on it, assuming that their bank account will be credited with your payment.  Borrow money from the bank and they give you cold, hard cash – yet all they have is your signature.  As long as we continue to have confidence, our economy flourishes, jobs are created, money is spent, profits are made, the stock market rises, etc.

Yet, inject uncertainty into our lives and everything comes to a screeching halt.  After all, you can’t be too careful.  Who knows what will happen next?  Pretty soon, fear of the unknown takes hold – and everything slows down.

This year’s election, just decided in recent days, removes a great deal of the uncertainty – regardless of which side of the issues you are on.  The direction of the country can be more accurately predicted.  The dreaded “unknown” now becomes known.  Now, we can settle down, begin making plans again, and move towards achieving our goals – whether that be buying or selling land.

Over the past 40 years (and 3-4 recessions) in the land business, this author has noticed a very predictable trend.  The purchase and sale of land usually begins to slow down about 6-12 months before a recession begins.  Even as the recession falls into place, prices continue to rise, as they had for up to two years before the recession loomed on the horizon.

During the recession, prices tend to remain at their highest level – up to a point – usually ending about 6-12 months before the recession begins to wane.  At that point, some land sellers begin to feel the pinch and begin lowering their asking prices somewhat – thinking that the reduction will catch the eye of a serious buyer.  Unknown to those sellers however is the land buyers’ perception of what’s happening.

Land buyers, still feeling the pressures of the painful contraction of the economy, are the last ones to know it’s over.  Even as company profits begin to turn positive, with interest rates at their lowest point in years, the stock market perking up, and land prices beginning to tumble even further, the buyers must feel and experience a positive change before their confidence returns enough to go ahead with their land buying plans.

Finally, in summary, prices have generally hit bottom – their lowest point in several years – about 6-12 months after the recession is over.  The light at the end of the tunnel for buyers is now in view – and it’s no longer the train.  It’s the clear blue light of a new day.

For land buyers, the next 6-12 months presents one of the greatest periods in recent history to benefit not only from the largest selection of available properties – but also the lowest prices and interest rates.

This IS the “woulda, shoulda, coulda” time to buy land!

Wherever I turn, I see their hostile takeover. These are not your garden-variety louts like Lamb’s Quarters and Queen Anne’s Lace. They are big and well-armed. Thistles have a mean streak. Teasels go for your eyes. And burdock heads stick to you like credit-card collectors. Weeds run in gangs; many have foreign roots.

Looking at our economy, I see more weeds than flowers.

Forty years ago a fairly large number of young people sprawled on a muddy dairy pasture in Bethel, New York practicing their own version of weed control.

I spent that weekend being job-interviewed at an “alternative” school not far from the festivities. I was not impressed with the alternatives, nor they with me. The headmaster said I was “probably too academic” for his students. “Groovy,” I said, trying to snatch a paycheck from the jaws of presumed rigor. “Far out,” he replied.

I did teach that year at an alternative college in Franconia, New Hampshire. It had a couple of hundred students and about the same number of dollars in its account. Some students were genuinely interested in learning; the rest were mostly interested in feeling good pharmacologically. In my first academic appointment, I was the head of the Social Science Division…also its only faculty. I knew nothing, but taught everything. Russian novelists. Homesteading. Practical Anarchism for Fun and Profit.

I made $3,500 in 1969-1970, a bit better than the 85 cents per hour Oberlin College had paid me six years earlier to scrub pots and mop the Talcott dining hall.

I never had much hippie in me, and a year spent with the “alternatives” left me without a taste for wiggly-tailed beans and macroneurotics. I guess I found my inner square among the out of bounds.

The first wave of back-to-the-landers in the late 1960s and 1970s were fleeing conditions they found hostile. If I had 85 cents left from my floor-boy wages, I would bet that some Boomers and their children will retrace that migration to small towns and the countryside in response to current conditions–middle-class unemployment, high living costs in metropolitan areas, uncertainty, instability and environmental fears.

Bailing out for the country is nothing new. Second homes sales have tracked growth in personal income for years. And for decades, metropolitan retirees looking for peace and quiet have moved out here as rural adults looking for work moved in there.

But what we have never seen is a middle-class migration under duress, a flight from our City Bowls to places of affordability where refugees hope to scrape by on public and private funds during their increasingly longer lives.

These City Bowl migrants will be a mix of retirees, involuntary retirees, buy-out beneficiaries, the no-longer employed and pioneers looking for a new start.

They will prefer low-tax states (www.retirementliving.com/RLtaxes.html) and communities that are not high-cost, vacation destinations (www.relocationessentials.com).

One difference between now and then, of course, is that this second wave has better judgment, job experience and more resources than the first. While many migrant Boomers will downsize, they’re not about to make-do in the mildewed tepees of their youth.

A second difference is that they have much to offer communities who are looking for new economic underpinnings. While they will have been roughed up, they bring brains, talent, experience and money.

While some economic and cultural conflicts should be expected, both newcomers and their new communities will share much more of a national culture than did the first mingling.

Those looking to book passage on this ship should keep their expectations in line with current realities.

Everywhere is the same, though different. The countryside is woven into the same national fabric as cities and suburbia. Economic problems know no boundaries.

Look up the “adversity index” of every community in the United States beginning in 1995 at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29976394/ns/us_news-the_elkhart-project as well as places that are resisting adversity at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30216797/sp-dt. Shangri-la does not exist.

There are fewer people out here, which is good and bad. Small communities have fewer people problems like traffic, lines, crowds, bureaucracies and pollution. The lack of population usually means there are fewer people who share both your skills…and interests. You need to like your own company to live in the countryside. Opportunities for structured entertainment — professional sports, movies, concerts and the like — are limited in both number and range. On the other hand, we, too, have satellite TV, Internet service, DVDs, books and even profitable newspapers.

Jobs. In most small towns and rural communities, job openings are limited and pay scales can be 50 percent lower than in big cities. Official unemployment rates underestimate actual lack of employment in rural areas by 100 percent or more in my experience. There’s a lot of “self-employment” out here.

Adapt. Start with what’s available, because starting is more important than anything else. Don’t steep in being over-qualified.

Be prepared to make something out of nothing. Most communities have their traditional business niches filled. Look into what’s not.

Newcomers may find that starting something from scratch suits them after working for a salary. Nonprofit work is often underdeveloped in rural areas.

Patience and persistence. Start something new, small and slowly. Work into it. Conserve your cash; set up a home-office. Maintain old networks; make new ones.

Every patch of dirt has weeds. They come with the territory.

Weeds survive and prosper, because they have learned to adapt. In turn, we need to adapt to those we find around us.

I don’t see this economy, however green, as reemploying many of us who are over 45 in the ways we were. The past is gone.

Among the hostile thistles, teasels and burdock, we need to find our own ground.