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Our Feature Article
Once considered marginal or even worthless, wetlands and poorly drained agricultural land are now selling for top dollar in many regions of the United States. The driving force? In some cases, duck hunters. In prime waterfowl hunting areas, the price of wetlands and seasonally flooded agricultural land has not only followed the upswing of other real estate values, it has many regions surpassed it. Chad Manlove, a DU regional biologist in Mississippi, says he has seen prices of farmland with good duck hunting potential triple in the last decade. Flooded timber habitats have gone up even more.
“Recreation has really been a major factor in the increase in land values in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley,” Manlove says. “I’ve seen soybean fields that sold for $500 an acre eight years ago sell for $1,500 an acre now, and flooded timber land is selling for as much as $2,000 an acre. Everyone is trying to find a duck hole.”
Dave Griffith, a real estate broker on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, says marshland is virtually impossible to come by anymore, although he receives inquiries regularly. What does become available goes for a steep price. “There’s a farm for sale that has 342 acres of marsh and 30 or 40 acres of dry ground for $1.5 million,” Griffith says. “The people who are selling it bought it for back taxes in the 1950s.”
Jeff Kerry, a land broker in the San Francisco Bay area, says rice fields with duck hunting potential that sold for $2,000 an acre 15 years ago are selling for two or three times that amount now. He cited one 284-acre rice farm adjacent to national wildlife refuge that is on the market for nearly $10,000 an acre.
“What really drives land values in California more than anything, especially when it comes to duck hunting properties, is water,” Kerry says. “There’s not a whole lot to go around, and there are some very complicated issues with ownership and distribution.”
Manlove says investors who restore wetlands and make other improvements that boost hunting potential can add even more other to the value of their property. So if someone offers to sell you some swampland at a good price, you might want to take the offer seriously. And for those lucky enough to already own wetland acreage, you just might be sitting on a gold mine. – David Hart
as found in Ducks Unlimited November/December 2006
David Hart is a freelance writer from Virginia and contributes to DU Magazine occasionally
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