What is my land worth? Fair cash offers explained.

The short answer

Your land is worth what comparable parcels near it have actually sold for — adjusted for the specifics of yours. Not the tax-assessed value, not an online estimate, and not what a neighbor is asking for a parcel that hasn't sold. Recorded sales of similar acreage in your parish or county are the starting point; access, road frontage, flood zone, timber, utilities, and title condition move the number up or down from there.

A cash offer from a direct buyer will sit below full retail — that gap pays for speed, certainty, and zero fees or commission. The way to judge any offer is not the number alone but whether the buyer will show you the sales it's built on. We show ours with every offer. As one example from our own books: our 2025–26 sales of 5–15 acre parcels in Washington Parish, Louisiana closed between roughly $6,400 and $7,500 per acre.

The method

Comps: how everyone who’s serious prices land.

Every serious buyer, appraiser, and lender prices land the same way: find recent recorded sales of similar parcels nearby, then adjust for how yours differs. That’s a “comparable sales” — comps — analysis, and you can sanity-check any offer you receive by asking one question: which sales is this number built on?

Good comps are recent, close by, similar in size, and similar in character — timber to timber, pasture to pasture. For rural land they’re harder to find than for houses, which is exactly why land pricing feels murky: sometimes the honest comp set is four sales over two years across a whole parish. That murkiness is also what lets bad actors name a number with nothing behind it. Make them show the sales.

The variables

What moves the number up or down.

Size — smaller usually brings more per acre. More people can afford a $45,000 parcel than a $450,000 one, so 5–15 acre tracts nearly always sell for more per acre than a large tract in the same area. When we bought a 57-acre tract near Angie and split it, the smaller parcels each sold for more per acre than any buyer would have paid for the whole — that difference is the subdividing work, and it’s why per-acre “averages” mislead.

Access and frontage. Legal, deeded access is the threshold question — a landlocked parcel without an easement is worth a fraction of the same land with road frontage. Paved frontage beats gravel; gravel beats a shared dirt easement.

Flood zone and wetlands. Buyers building anything check FEMA panels first. Land mostly in a flood zone or mapped wetlands still sells — for hunting, timber, pasture — but to a smaller pool, at lower prices. We pull the panel on every parcel we evaluate.

Timber. Standing pine or hardwood can add real value — sometimes worth selling separately before the land, sometimes the very reason a buyer wants the tract. Before taking any offer on a timbered parcel, it’s worth knowing roughly what’s standing on it.

Utilities. Power at the road matters to homesite buyers; well-and-septic feasibility matters where there’s no water line. Rural parcels without electric still sell — we’ve bought them — but the price reflects the hookup distance.

Title condition. Land you can’t currently convey — an unopened succession, missing heirs, old mortgages or liens — isn’t worth less forever, but making title current takes legal work and time, and a buyer’s price accounts for who does that work.

Reading an offer

Fair offer or lowball? How to actually tell.

A fair cash offer is a retail-informed number minus the honest costs of a direct purchase: the buyer’s risk, the title and closing costs they’re absorbing, and their margin. A lowball is a number hoping you don’t check. You tell them apart the same way every time:

Ask for the comps. Fair buyers show the sales behind the number — we include them with every offer. Compare the net, not the headline. A listing price isn’t a sale price; after commission, closing costs, and months of waiting, a retail sale nets less than its number too. Take your time. Any offer that expires before you can think about it or show your attorney wasn’t built to survive scrutiny.

What land actually sells for, parish by parish, is its own topic — our real per-acre figures from our own closings are published there, and how we run the whole process shows where the offer fits. If you’d like the real answer for your specific parcel — comps included, no obligation to act on it — ask us.

Questions & answers

Asked by nearly every family we work with.

Why is the tax-assessed value so different from market value?

Assessed values exist to spread the parish or county tax burden, not to predict sale prices — they're often years old and use formulas, not inspections. They can run far above or below what the land would actually bring. Recorded sales are the real signal.

Are the online land-value estimates accurate?

For rural acreage, rarely. Automated estimates work best where there are many near-identical sales — subdivisions, not 20 acres of timber with a creek and a gravel-road easement. Treat them as a rough orientation at best.

Does an acre have a standard price in my parish?

No — per-acre prices swing widely even within one parish. Smaller parcels almost always bring more per acre than large tracts, and access, flood zone, and timber can move otherwise-similar parcels far apart. That's why real comps matter more than any average.

What hurts a parcel's value the most?

The big three we see: no legal access (landlocked parcels), most of the land in a flood zone or wetlands, and title that isn't current — an unopened succession, unknown heirs, or old liens. Access and title can usually be fixed; that work is a real cost, and pricing reflects it.

Sources: Driftless Land Co. closings and evaluations in Louisiana and Mississippi, including Washington Parish sales, 2025–26. General information, not an appraisal or financial advice. Published August 2026 · Updated August 2026.