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LandAndFarm.com Newsletter  |  |
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Picture This: A New Photo Tool Debuts 2. Suburban Farming: Catch the SPIN 3. County Profile: Clayton & Allamakee counties, IA 4. Find Yourself: New Mapping Apps Debut! 5. Land-Use Profile: Recreational 6. Money: Metrics Down, Regulation Likely 7. Recent Properties
A lot of you have been asking for greater flexibility in managing and manipulating your photos. And for those of you that use the full complement of allowable photos - 16 pictures, hint, hint - the need for this kind of control has been even greater. Well, happy days are here...
Photos can now be rotated 90 degrees, meaning they can be turned on their side, either to the right or left. This is important if, as is often the case, they've posted to your online or computer album on the side - and now you need to right them so they display correctly. One caveat: if the photos dimensions are not equal (i.e., it's taller than it is wide), then rotating may impact the listing and make it display incorrectly; we'll launch a re-sizing tool soon to handle this - meanwhile, be careful in choosing which photos you rotate. More questions? Just email us at customer-service@landandfarm.com.
It was bound to happen. With high food and gas prices, water rates going up and available land going for biofuel, some suburbanite was probably going to plant over their lawn and azaleas with, dare we say it, crops. An April 22 report in The Wall St. Journal, by Kelly Spors, talks about the trend of moving the backyard tradition of growing a few supplementary vegetables during local growing seasons, to the front yard - and turning it into a business. The technical name is SPIN (small plot intensive) farming, and loads of folks are doing it. LawnsToGardens and PathToFreedom are but a few examples of web-sites with additional information about this interesting trend.
A river runs by them, smack dab in the middle of the rolling country of northeastern IA. Located in a geological anomaly known as the "diftless area," the region escaped glacial coverage, and thus flattening, during the last ice-age. The hilly area, carved by rivers, streams and creeks features high bluffs along the Mississippi River to the east. It's an area that looks more like the rural countryside of the Mid-Atlantic than the iconic, flatter portions of Iowa just to the west that typify Midwestern landscapes.
Clayton County's center of tourism is the the historic German-influenced river town of Guttenberg. One of the tallest water-driven mills in the Midwest is close by: Motor Mill in county seat Elkader, along with the restored Opera House, provide historical context for the area, settled in the 19th century. Named for President Zachary Taylor's Secretary of State, Clayton County barely tops 19,000 residents, spread out among roughly 800 square miles. Its neighbor, Allamakee County borders it on the north. With 14,000 residents among 650 square miles, Allamakee shares more than its small size and America's most famous river. The two counties also share Effigy Mounds National Monument, a series of federally-protected areas along the Mississippi that cover 206 native American mounds created several thousand years ago, in the shapes of animals.
This area's villages have gussied up their streetscapes and parks, and town-living may be best bet for settling here. Available land outside the scattered hamlets and towns of these rural counties is scarce: A little more than 75 acres of hunting and recreational property in Allamakee's Paint Creek area is selling for $257K. Meanwhile, to the west in Winneshiek County, a 204-acre farm and hunting property is on the market for $1.5M. In the same county, a large new home on 185-acres of prime hunting land is selling for $1.4M.
Last month we really pushed hard to get our customers to correctly map their properties (OK, we whined and stamped our feet). Why? Well, a correctly-mapped property is great marketing and hugely helpful to prospective buyers.
This month, the news gets even better with two wonderful and helpful new site utilities, or tools, that help you display your mapped property even more accurately, and also allow you to search a wide area for available property. First, we launched perimeter mapping; it's awesome! Sign in, go to your account and below your ad you'll see the "edit perimeter map" link. Click on this and follow instructions on under the appropriate link to create an ultra-specific map of your property's exact perimeters. Note that you shouldn't rely on this map as the definitive map of your property and all perimeter maps contain a disclaimer to this effect.
Second, with so many properties, our visitors want to be able to find those properties in a variety of ways. Well, we've responded with a marvelous view of properties mapped in a region. For the time being, this interactive map search is being tested on the home-page at the very top - right next to the news and press release links. You can't miss it. Zoom in or out on the interactive Google Map, to see how many markers denote properties in a given area. If you don't see markers pop-up, keep zooming in until you do. Roll over the markers to get the URL for that listing on our site; click on that marker to go to the listing. It's that simple. If you don't see your property on the map, latitude and longitude may be incorrectly listed - check your listing to see this information.
When folks talk about buying rural property, there's a good chance they're talking about recreational property - it's virtually the largest category at LandAndFarm.com...and with good reason: a lot of farm land is often underutilized or out of production, and is being sold as recreational or hunting property. Unlike a lot of sites, we allow customers to categorize hunting and recreational property exclusive of each other - one may not be right for the other use, and vice-versa.
Recreational property runs the gamut from inland 'country-farm' property suitable for a weekend getaway, and with no significant water elements, to waterfront property on a lake, stream, river or saltwater bay. Hunting property is often classified as recreational - and we don't mind one bit!
Examples of recreational property are: a high-end WV property with its own private airstrip in the Cincinnati MOA, a residence, barns and out-buildings, asking $14M; a country contemporary on 50 rural acres in upstate NY provides sunsets and acres of blueberry bushes for under $200K; classic western ranchettes are available in CO's San Luis Valley for less than the price of a hybrid SUV. And, deer and quail hunting property in GA is fetching $1.5M.
Existing-home sales, including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, were down 2.0 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.93 million units in March from a level of 5.03 million in February, and remain 19.3 percent below the 6.11 million-unit pace in March 2007, the National Association of Realtors said. Regionally, sales rose in the Northeast and West but fell in the Midwest and South, NAR noted.
The Mortgage Bankers Association ( MBAA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending April 18, 2008. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decrease 14.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis was down 3.2 percent compared with the same week one year earlier. Refinancings also decreased. The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages increased to 6.04 percent from 5.74 percent, with points decreasing to 1.040 from 1.05 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value (LTV) ratio loans.
Although loan defaults on commercial properties remain at low levels, the credit crunch in the real estate markets will still have some negative impact on commercial property values. In many instances, property values will decline because the lenders financing commercial property purchases will demand higher yields on their loans than they did when property prices soared between 1993 and 2006, the MBAA said. The group said the feds are likely to limit securitization of loans going forward, in order to prevent the kinds of credit-market problems now extant.
| |  | Water Powers Southern Cone Farm by LandAndFarm.com Staff
Not every historic water-mill is located in the upper Midwest or New England. Some aren't even located in the U.S. This particular water mill is located a little south of here - about 5000 miles. The Southern Cone, to be exact - the southern third of South America.
The 45-acre property in the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul is typical of the small ranchos founded by European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries throughout Brazil. The subtropical climate is kind to a great variety of crops and is especially suited to grape-growing. With a network of river systems flowing from and over the escarpment that characterizes a portion of the state, ample water power is generated from creeks and streams flowing swiftly toward the Atlantic Ocean, or to the Uruguayan river systems to the south and west. [...click here to continue]
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| Sample of Recent Properties
Exceptional 11 Acre Estate (horse farm) 11 acres. Sweet Home, Oregon 5.700 Acres (horse farm) 6 acres. Lawrenceburg, Tennessee Vacant Land In Sarasota County (residential land) Englewood, Florida 45 Acre Wooded Building Lot (hunting property) 45 acres. 1 mile North of Spencer, IN on HY 67, Indiana Little Ochlocknee River (recreational property) 720 acres. Ochlocknee, Georgia Custom Built Home - Horse Farm (horse farm) 32 acres. Russellville, Kentucky 64 Ac. Farm On Raccoon Creek (horse farm) 64 acres. Vinton, Ohio Jones Farm Road (undeveloped land) 13 acres. Bumpass, Virginia 187 Acres With Log Cabin (hunting property) 187 acres. Near Bowman & Hartwell, Georgia 128 Acres.. Reduced (residential land) 128 acres. Franklin, North Carolina Hunting-Livestock Opportunity (hunting property) 116 acres. Quality, Kentucky Beautiful Farm. (horse farm) 9 acres. Franklin, North Carolina Cozy Moutain Home (residential land) Franklin, North Carolina Great Horse Or Dairy Farm (commercial land) 310 acres. New York Beautiful Cattle Farm (livestock operation) 133 acres. Virginia Hidden Knolls.. (residential land) 2 acres. Franklin, North Carolina Hunting Farmland (hunting property) 544 acres. New Rockford, North Dakota Historic Home On 2 Acres (residential land) 2 acres. Fort Covington, New York Big Creek Frontage. (waterfront) 4 acres. Franklin, North Carolina Cattle Farm (livestock operation) 55 acres. Virginia Bldg Lot Timberon New Mexico (residential land) Timberon, New Mexico The Narrows (waterfront) 128 acres. Hardin, Tennessee Great Country Location (residential land) 3 acres. Appomattox, Virginia Super Land Deal (hunting property) 200 acres. North Carolina Historical Farmhouse & 124 Ac (horse farm) 124 acres. Lower Salem, Ohio 10 Acres Unrestricted Motivated Seller (waterfront) 10 acres. Driftwood, Texas 20 Acres 2 Hours East Of Reno (undeveloped land) 20 acres. Lovelock, Nevada 17.7 Acres In Elkton Va (residential land) 18 acres. Elkton, Virginia Kentucky Lakes 3 Adjoin Lots (recreational property) Murray, Kentucky Over 30 Acres Tremendous View (horse farm) 31 acres. Franklin, North Carolina High Traffic Corner Lot (commercial land) 3 acres. Georgia 35 Acres With Creek Frontage (waterfront) 35 acres. Charlotte, Tennessee 242 Acres (undeveloped land) 242 acres. Sharon, Georgia Office Tract (forest - natural) 964 acres. Lumpkin, Georgia 300 Ac 50 Miles From Nashville (hunting property) 300 acres. Tennessee Unique Business Potential (commercial land) Anna, Illinois 83 Ac. Cattle Farm & Home (ranch) 83 acres. Villa Ridge, Illinois 35 Acres With Creek & River (waterfront) 35 acres. Charlotte, Tennessee 109 Acres Great Hunting (hunting property) 109 acres. Lewisburg, Kentucky 52 Ac Estate Sub Division (undeveloped land) 52 acres. Beacon Falls, Connecticut 175 PRIME ACRES, 5 PRIME BUILDING LOTS (residential land) 175 acres. Bedford, Indiana, Indiana Lovely Victorian Style Home (historic) 1 acres. Rugby, Tennessee Unique River Property (waterfront) 377 acres. Dixon, Missouri Auction May 3 2008 (livestock operation) 14 acres. Mountain Grove, Missouri 75 Acres Jasper Co (hunting property) 75 acres. Monticello, Georgia Stockdale Road (recreational property) 24 acres. Stockdale, Ohio Bay Branch Plantation (recreational property) 900 acres. Edison, Georgia Dairy Or Hobby Farm (commercial land) 10 acres. Arkansaw, Wisconsin 20 Acre Mini Farm (waterfront) 20 acres. Charlotte, Tennessee Executive Home Oswego River (waterfront) 3 acres. New York
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