In northwest Iowa, an acre of timber is worth roughly a third of an acre of good cropland. The March 2026 REALTORS Land Institute survey puts Northwest district timber at $4,972 per acre and non-tillable pasture at $5,713, against $15,481 for high-quality cropland. That gap is why CSR2 is the wrong tool on a mixed farm. The 83-acre Somers Farm we sell in Douglas Township on August 20 carries 14.60 cropland acres at CSR2 91.70, so a soil-driven valuation looks at 18% of the farm and writes off the rest. On recreational ground, habitat, access, and scarcity set the price, and the honest way to find that number is to put the farm in front of the people who want it.
Key Takeaways
- Northwest Iowa timber runs about $4,972 per acre and pasture about $5,713, as of March 2026.
- Timber and recreational values rose 2.2% over six months, outpacing cropland at 1.3%.
- CSR2 measures corn suitability, so it prices a hardwood draw at near zero.
- Iowa’s Forest Reserve exemption zeroes out property tax on qualifying timber, but it rules out paid hunting leases.
- Mixed farms usually draw two separate buyer pools, which is the argument for tracts.
Why doesn’t CSR2 tell you what a timber tract is worth?
Because CSR2 was built to answer a different question. The Corn Suitability Rating is a row crop productivity index running 5 to 100, developed for property tax assessment. It tells you how well an acre grows corn. Ask it about an oak savanna and it reports the ground as nearly worthless, true enough if corn is the only thing you value.
For setting cash rent on tillable acres, CSR2 is the sharpest tool there is, and we use it every time. On a farm that is four-fifths timber, it stops working. Run the Somers Farm through it and you get 14.60 acres worth thinking about. The other 68, the rolling terrain and mature hardwoods and bedding cover, score near zero.
What are timber and pasture acres actually worth here?
The Iowa REALTORS Land Institute survey has run twice a year since 1978, and it reports timber and pasture separately from cropland. As of March 1, 2026, the Northwest district looked like this:
- High-quality cropland: $15,481 per acre
- Medium-quality cropland: $12,530
- Low-quality cropland: $9,025
- Non-tillable pasture: $5,713
- Timber: $4,972
Two things there are worth sitting with. Our cropland is the most expensive in Iowa, while our timber at $4,972 sits barely above the statewide average of $4,850. That makes the spread between tillable and timber wider here than almost anywhere. Timber runs about 32% of high-quality cropland value in northwest Iowa. In the South Central district it is 47%. Same trees, different math, because down there the cropland is cheaper and the timber is not.
The other is the direction of travel. Timber and recreational values rose 2.2% over the six months to March and pasture 2.6%, while cropland managed 1.3%. The acres a soil map writes off have been the better performer.
Here is how to put those numbers on your own farm. Say you own 80 acres, 20 of them good tillable and 60 in timber. Twenty times $15,481 is $309,620. Sixty times $4,972 is $298,320. That is roughly $608,000, or about $7,600 an acre blended.
Treat it as the floor, and as a fair guess at what a lender or assessor will see. What it cannot price is whether those 60 acres actually hunt. Two farms with identical soil maps, one with a creek and a bedding ridge and thirty years of history, one with a flat woodlot behind a hog site, will not sell within $2,000 an acre of each other. The survey cannot tell them apart. Buyers can.
Why is there any timber in northwest Iowa at all?
Because the Little Sioux cut through it.
This is the most tillable corner of the state. Drive most of Clay, O’Brien, or Palo Alto County and you pass black dirt to the horizon with a shelterbelt every few miles. The mature timber is not spread evenly. It sits on the side hills and bottoms along the Little Sioux and its tributaries, through Peterson, Linn Grove, and Sioux Rapids, where the ground was too broken to break.
That is a narrow strip of a very large county map, and it explains the pricing. Genuine hunting ground up here is scarce in a way it is not in southern Iowa, and buyers know it. We have sold that corridor for years, including a 70-acre timber and cropland tract on the Peterson and Brooke township line, and a four-tract sale where one parcel overlooked the valley and another sat within two miles of a thousand acres of public hunting ground.
What drives the price of a recreational tract?
Not soil. Buyers ask about five things, in roughly this order.
Habitat structure comes first, every time. Mature hardwoods, bedding cover, travel corridors, and food, close enough together to function as a unit. A block of trees is not habitat. A block of trees with a food source on one side and thick cover on the other is.
Then track record, because deer hunters buy proof. A farm in an area known for mature bucks carries a premium over an identical farm with no reputation, and the Somers sale bill notes a 200-class Boone and Crockett buck taken in the area in 2025.
Access is third and the one sellers underestimate. Not just how you get in, but whether you can get in without pushing deer out the far side, and who owns the ground around you. Road frontage cuts both ways: easy to reach, easy for everyone else to watch.
Then water. A creek, a pond, or a wetland lifts nearly every tract.
Size settles the rest. Tracts in the 40 to 80 acre range draw the deepest bidding, big enough to hunt properly and small enough that one buyer can write the check. A tillable component helps twice, since cropland on a hunting farm pays rent and feeds deer. Fourteen acres at CSR2 91.70 is a food plot that pays you.
Can recreation ground pay for itself?
Partly, and the mechanics matter before you decide how to hold it. The tillable acres rent like any other cropland. Iowa State’s cash rent survey also reports typical rents for hunting rights, pasture, and cornstalk grazing by district, so there is a published reference point rather than guesswork. CRP acres pay a contract rate and usually provide the cover that makes a farm hunt well.
Then there is the piece most landowners have never been told about. Under Iowa Code Chapter 427C, a qualifying forest reservation is exempt from property tax. Two acres minimum in a continuous block, no fewer than 200 growing forest trees per acre, filed with your assessor by February 1. On a farm like the Somers place, that is most of the acreage off the tax roll.
Now the catch. A reservation cannot be used for economic gain beyond products of the trees themselves, meaning logs, firewood, and seed. Paid hunting leases do not qualify. Livestock are not allowed either. You can remove no more than a fifth of the trees in any year, and if the property sells, the seller must tell the buyer it is enrolled.
So you choose: tax exemption or lease income, not both on the same acres. For most owners of a real hunting farm the exemption wins, because they were never leasing out their own deer season. Run the numbers, and talk to your county assessor and your CPA before you file.
Should a mixed farm sell whole or in tracts?
Depends on whether you have one buyer pool or two, and on a mixed farm you usually have two. The neighbor who wants your tillable acres does not care about the oaks. The hunter driving up from Des Moines does not want to farm anything. Offer it as one unit and you are asking each to pay for ground they do not want, which quietly caps your price.
We ran that split on the Jolley property north of Peterson, 80 acres of wooded side hills, cropland, and CRP managed for years to hold mature deer. It went out as two tracts: 16.5 acres with the improvements, timber, and CRP, and 63.5 acres of cropland, CRP, and timber. Two tracts, two buyers in mind.
The Somers Farm sells as one unit, deliberately. At 83 acres with the timber and the tillable working together as habitat, cutting it apart would damage the thing buyers are paying for. Which is the real answer: it depends on the farm, and anyone who hands you a rule instead of walking your ground is guessing. That call is part of what we settle before we take a farm to market.
One practical note if a fall sale is on your mind. The tillable acres are usually rented, and an Iowa farm lease renews automatically for the next crop year unless notice is served before September 1. A buyer who gets the ground open for 2027 is a better buyer than one who inherits your tenant. That deadline is three weeks out.
Method matters more here than on row crop ground, because no comp sheet settles what a hunting farm is worth. Our post on absolute auction versus sealed bid covers the trade-offs. On a recreational tract, the last two bidders are rarely the ones anybody predicted.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much is timber land worth per acre in Iowa?
The March 2026 REALTORS Land Institute survey puts the statewide timber average at $4,850 per acre, the Northwest district at $4,972, and the Northeast highest at $5,181. Those figures reflect bare, unimproved land. A tract with strong habitat and hunting history often sells above them.
Does CRP ground add to recreational value?
It counts twice. CRP acres pay a contract rate and usually provide the cover that makes a farm hunt well. Buyers look at both the payment and the remaining term, so have your contract details in hand before you go to market.
Will enrolling in Forest Reserve hurt my sale price?
Generally the opposite, since a buyer inherits a tax-exempt block, and the disclosure is required at sale either way. The one buyer it complicates is someone who meant to run cattle in the timber or lease the hunting, because neither is permitted on an enrolled reservation.
Come look at the Somers Farm
We sell 83 acres of cropland, timber, and recreation ground in Douglas Township, Clay County, on Thursday, August 20, live with online bidding. Details and catalog are on our land auctions page.
If you own mixed ground and have never had the non-tillable acres valued by anyone who sells them for a living, call (712) 262-3110 or get in touch. We will walk it and give you a straight read on the whole farm, not just the part a soil map can see.