How to Analyze Land Markets with Market Search
Market research is an important part of finding strong land investing opportunities. Before targeting a county or building a property list, it helps to understand what is actually selling, how quickly properties are moving, and how pricing changes across different acreage ranges.
Land Portal's Market Search gives you a deeper look at this data in one place. You can compare sales activity, price per acre, days on market, months of supply, and other market data while adjusting acreage ranges and time periods to fit the types of properties you're researching.
You can even create custom acreage ranges to get more specific with your analysis.
Step by step Walkthrough
- Login to Land Portal
Login to your Land Portal account and select Market Research from the left-hand menu.
Note: Some tools and filters are only available on certain plans. See Plans & Pricing for what’s included in your subscription.
- Open Market Search
At the top of Market Research, select Market Search.
Enter the county or market you want to research and click Search Market Data.
Land Portal will load the available market data for that area, giving you an overview of the market and its recent activity.
- Review the Market Data
The Market Search table breaks down land data by acreage range and time period.
For example, you can see how many properties between 2 and 5 acres have sold within different periods of time.
Use the available dropdowns to change the data you're analyzing. Depending on what you want to learn about the market, you can review metrics such as:
- Sales volume
- Price per acre
- Median price
- Days on market
- Months of supply
Looking at these metrics across different acreage ranges can help you identify which types of properties are seeing the most activity and where demand may be stronger or weaker.
- View the Properties Behind the Data
Click on an individual data point in the table to see the properties being used to calculate it.
This allows you to look beyond the average and review the actual sales contributing to the market data.
If you notice a property that doesn't appear representative of the others, you can hide the outlier from your analysis. This can be especially useful when an unusually high or low sale is skewing the numbers.
You can also open individual properties in Land Portal or follow the available Redfin link to investigate a sale further.
- Create a Custom Acreage Range
The standard acreage ranges are useful for getting a broad view of a market, but sometimes the properties you're targeting don't fit neatly within them.
Select Custom Range to create an acreage range that better matches your investment criteria.
For example, instead of analyzing all properties between 2 and 5 acres, you could create a range from 3.5 to 6 acres.
This becomes particularly useful when researching subdivision opportunities. Rather than relying on a broad 20–50 or 50–100 acre range, you can create a range that more closely represents the size of the parent property you're considering, example: 35 to 60 acres.
You can then compare that data against the acreage range of the smaller parcels you may create.
For example, you might compare the price per acre of a 35-acre property against the price per acre of approximately 6-acre properties. A meaningful difference between the two can help you identify potential subdivision opportunities worth investigating further.
Custom ranges can also be used with other Market Search metrics, such as days on market, so you're not limited to analyzing price per acre.
- Compare Sold and For-Sale Properties
Switch between sold and for-sale data to get another perspective on the market.
Sold data helps you understand what buyers have actually been paying, while for-sale data shows you what is currently available and how properties are being priced.
Looking at both can give you a more complete picture of current market conditions.
- Save Markets You Want to Revisit
If you find a market you're interested in but aren't ready to act on it yet, you can save the market directly in Land Portal.
This makes it easier to return to markets you're researching without having to search for them again.
- Build a Property List
Once your research identifies a market you want to target, click Build a List directly from Market Search.
Land Portal will take you into the property search, where you can enter your desired acreage range and apply additional filters to narrow down the properties you want to target.
Use Market Data to Make Better Decisions
Market Search gives you the flexibility to go beyond broad county-level numbers and analyze the specific property sizes and metrics that matter to your strategy.
Whether you're researching a new county, looking for stronger demand, evaluating pricing, or searching for potential subdivision opportunities, adjusting the data to match the properties you're actually targeting can give you a much clearer picture of the market.
Try Market Search in Land Portal to start researching your next market.