The National Land Podcast

If you own land, chances are you have gotten the letter. Someone you have never heard of wants to buy your property, close fast, pay cash, and make it easy. Pat Snyder, managing broker for National Land Realty in western North Carolina, gets about one call a week from landowners trying to figure out whether that letter is legitimate, a lowball, or something to ignore entirely. In this conversation...

Matthew Symonds grew up on a ranch in western Nebraska, started training barrel horses right out of high school, and recently added a real estate license to the list. He is new to land sales and not pretending otherwise. What he brings instead is a lifetime of working with horses, reading animals, and figuring out when to push and when to walk away, instincts that translate to land work in ways th...

The Delmarva Peninsula sits between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, two hours from Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC, and it is one of the last relatively undeveloped stretches of the entire eastern megalopolis. It is also the third most vulnerable spot in the country to sea level rise. That combination makes it one of the most interesting places in America to talk about land co...

There are roughly 1.6 million licensed real estate agents in the United States. Only 749 of them hold the Accredited Land Consultant (ALC) designation. That gap is the whole conversation. RLI CEO Aubrie Kobernus and two-time past president Jeramy Stephens join Mac Christian for a full breakdown of what the REALTORS® Land Institute is, what it is not, and why it matters to anyone buying, selling or...

Forty percent of the land in this country is expected to change hands by 2035. Most of the people holding it have no idea how much of that wealth they are about to hand to the IRS. Joe Michaletz and Mike O'Toole, CEO and principal at Discipline Advisors, have spent decades helping farmers, ranchers and land owners exit their real estate in the most tax-efficient way possible. In this conversation...

Every quarter, Jackson Takach sees what most people in agriculture do not. As Chief Economist and Vice President of Farm and Ranch at Farmer Mac, the secondary market that quietly powers ag lending across the country, he watches credit demand, land transactions, farm bankruptcies, and commodity market signals from a vantage point very few people have access to. This conversation is his Q2 2026 rea...

National Land Realty just restructured the way agents and brokers earn with 80%, 70%, and 60% plans, but the headline is not just about the splits. Starting April 2026, NLR introduced these commission plans. Agents have the ability to choose the structure that fits where they are in their career, whether that is a new agent finding their footing or a seasoned producer ready to cap out at 100%. In...

Most private forest land owners have no idea what tools are available to them, and that gap is costing them money while their forests quietly degrade. Andy Tait, co-founder of EcoForesters, a nonprofit professional forestry organization based in western North Carolina, breaks down a practical framework for private land owners who want to manage their forests well without having to choose between c...

Mark Peterson grew up on a fifth-generation fruit farm in Michigan, managed five processing facilities and a thousand employees by age 22, and then walked away from all of it to chase pheasants. What followed was one of the more unlikely success stories in the outdoor industry. In this conversation, Mark traces his path from farm kid to acquiring Cabela's Outdoor Adventure and Tag Service to build...

Farmland as an Investment Asset: A Conversation with Chris Rawley, Founder of Harvest Returns Most people who want exposure to farmland think they have two options: buy it outright or stay out. Chris Rawley built a third option. As founder and CEO of Harvest Returns, a platform with over 12,000 investors, he has spent a decade matching private capital with farming operations across row crops, graz...

The biggest financial event in a farm family's life is often the one they are least prepared for. Mark Balzarini, an estate planning attorney with Helmuth and Johnson in the Twin Cities, has been working on farm succession plans since 2008 and breaks down the tools families need to understand before land changes hands. The centerpiece of this conversation is Tax Code 1062, a provision introduced t...

Someone could list your land for sale today, find a buyer, close the deal, and pocket the money. You would not know it happened until it was too late to stop it. This is not hypothetical. It is happening right now across the country, and vacant land owned free and clear by out-of-state or absentee owners is the number one target. In this conversation, National Land Realty broker Ryan Schroeder out...

Understanding Timber and Timberland Investment with John Ross Havard Most people who own timber have no idea what it is actually worth or what it takes to harvest it. John Ross Havard, a consulting forester and land agent based in Alabama with National Land Realty, breaks down the realities of owning timberland for private landowners who make up roughly half of all timberland ownership in the coun...

2026 Land Market Outlook with Jeramy Stephens, National Land Realty Few people in the land industry see more deals in a year than Jeramy Stephens. As compliance director at National Land Realty, he has eyes on roughly 1,700 to 2,000 transactions annually across Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Ohio. In this conversation, Jeramy breaks down what the land market a...

California's agricultural land market is unlike anywhere else in the country, and right now it's navigating two forces at once: collapsing commodity prices for specialty crops like almonds and pistachios, and sweeping groundwater pumping restrictions that are rewriting land values from the ground up. Brian Neufeld, a land agent based in California's Central Valley with licenses across Alabama, Flo...

What does the agricultural land market really look like heading into 2026? Shannon Schlachter, a land agent based in Holyoke, Colorado, just 14 miles from the Nebraska border, breaks down current conditions across northeastern Colorado and western Nebraska. Shannon covers why dry land acre prices have softened from $2,200 toward the $1,950 to $2,000 range, how high input costs, 9% operating note i...

Oklahoma land broker Dillon Smith returns to The National Land Podcast for a boots-on-the-ground update on the western Oklahoma land market — and delivers the kind of straight talk that only comes from an agent who's actually closing deals. Based in Kingfisher, Dillon breaks down exactly what's moving and what's sitting: cattle pasture is gaining value on the back of a red-hot beef market, wheat g...

Farmer Mac’s Jackson Takach returns with a title update and a clear read on the new USDA outlook. He unpacks why USDA revised 2025 net cash farm income down by about 30 billion dollars, then sets 2026 at 158 billion dollars with roughly 44 billion dollars of support payments, about 30 percent of profits. Inputs are still high for grains and oilseeds, while protein sectors benefit from cheaper feed...

Morse Nursery’s Tim Mills and National Land Realty agent Jacob Jenkins explain how to “row crop” hardwoods with proven genetics, tree tubes, and tight management to create reliable timber and wildlife results. From West Lafayette, Indiana, Morse grows grafted fruit and nut trees and supplies Tree Pro tubes that speed straight, tall growth. They cover black walnut and white oak veneer genetics, bli...

Forester and timber consultant Kraig Moore (KY/TN) breaks down the 2025 hardwood landscape: prices up roughly 3% YoY overall (net flat after inflation), sharp species splits (yellow-poplar +~20%, sugar maple +20–30%, white oak −~11% YoY but +~52% over 5 years; walnut +~85% over 5 years), and fragile mill capacity after 100+ sawmill closures in two years. He explains how tariffs, China’s historic p...

University of Georgia’s David Dickens and National Land Realty forester-agent Steve Chapman break down how pine straw turns timberland into a cash-flowing asset before the first thinning. For longleaf stands, raking can often start around age 12–15 and run 5–10 seasons, commonly paying about $150–$250 per acre on cutover sites and $250–$400 per acre on old-field sites, with first-year old-field ra...

Jesse Allen, vice president of National A Content at Farm and Ranch Media, joins to talk about the real state of U.S. agriculture and ag media. He hosts Agriculture of America on roughly 60 stations and SiriusXM 147, plus Market Talk and the American Ag Network. We cover sub $4 corn, $9 soybeans, record beef prices alongside the lowest U.S. cattle inventory in 60 years, and the squeeze producers f...

Gabe Goodson, a National Land Realty agent in Alabama, breaks down exactly how to design, build, and manage small duck impoundments that actually hold birds. We cover ideal water body size (start around 2 acres), target depths (12–16"), clay-based soils (plus when bentonite makes sense), drawdown timing, pump/ice strategies, and moist-soil management that feeds ducks all season. Gabe also outlines...

Foreign ownership of U.S. farmland is a political lightning rod, but economist Danny Munch from the American Farm Bureau Federation walks through what the data actually says. Using USDA’s AFIDA reports, he explains that only about 3.61% of privately held U.S. ag land (roughly 48–49 million acres) is foreign-owned, and more than 60% of that is held by allies like Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, the...

The National Land Podcast sits down with journalist Chris Keyes—former Editor-in-Chief of Outside Magazine and founder of Republic, a new nonprofit newsroom dedicated to America’s public lands. We unpack why the outdoor recreation economy ($1.2–$1.3T) depends on access, how public-lands realities differ East vs. West, and what’s really at stake in debates over federal-to-state land transfers vs. o...