A vacant parcel's market value comes from recent sales of land that its likely buyers would also have looked at, with each price adjusted for the ways that land differs. The federal standard for appraising land the government buys, the Uniform Appraisal Standards for Federal Land Acquisitions (the Yellow Book), uses that method (section 1.5.2): each sale shares the parcel's highest and best use, is as close in place and time as possible, and is verified with someone who took part in it. Price per acre is the usual unit, and the answer is a range, with the closest-matched sale marking the likeliest figure inside it.
This page takes the federal method down to what a private buyer or seller can do with county records and a telephone. It covers vacant land in the United States. It is not an appraisal and does not replace one.
The use the land can support comes first
The Yellow Book treats highest and best use, the most profitable legal use the land can support, as the first filter: every comparable sale must share the economic highest and best use of the parcel being priced, which appraisers call the subject (section 1.5.2.2).
The Supreme Court applied the idea in a 1934 case about lakeshore in Minnesota. The United States had taken flowage easements, the right to flood the shoreland, over land on Lake of the Woods to regulate the lake's level under a 1925 treaty between the United States and Great Britain, and three owners argued their land was worth more as part of a reservoir for power. On April 30, 1934, in Olson v. United States, the Court held that the most profitable use the land is suited to, and likely to be needed for in the reasonably near future, counts only to the extent that the prospect of demand for it affects the land's market value. A reservoir use needed a reasonable possibility of combining the tract with the other shorelands, and that meant assembling land across two countries. The jury had valued the land without the reservoir use, and the Court affirmed its verdicts of $490, $880 and $900.
For a vacant parcel today, the use question comes down to five facts, each from a record:
- Zoning and what it allows, from the county or city.
- Legal access: road frontage, a recorded easement, or none.
- Utilities at the lot line: power, water, sewer or septic.
- The usable share of the land after slope, wetlands and floodplain.
- Acreage from the deed or survey.
Two tracts of the same size, one zoned for a house on a county road and one with no legal access, draw different buyers at different prices even when they share a fence line.
Which sales count as comparable
Fannie Mae's appraisal rules for home loans describe a comparable as competitive with the subject and appealing to the same buyers (Fannie Mae Selling Guide B4-1.3-08). The same rules ask for at least three closed comparables and prefer sales that closed within the last 12 months. They also allow older sales where recent ones are scarce, as in rural areas with little sales activity, provided the appraiser explains why. An older sale is usable once its age is noted and its price is adjusted for how the market moved after it closed.
Size changes the price per acre. The Yellow Book's own example is a 10-acre tract carved from a 200-acre ownership: the per-acre value of the smaller tract may differ, and the appraiser uses sales similar in size to the 10 acres (section 1.4, note 48).
A regional average is not a comparable sale. USDA's report of July 2026 puts average United States cropland at $6,020 an acre and pasture at $2,000 an acre (USDA NASS, Land Values 2026 Summary). Each figure blends land from across the country, most of which no buyer of a given parcel would compare with it.
A recorded price, confirmed by someone who was there
A deed records the price and the parties; it does not show that the buyer was the seller's son. The Yellow Book notes that the terms and conditions of a sale cannot be settled conclusively from the public record, and it requires every comparable sale to be confirmed by the buyer, the seller, the broker or another person who knows the price and terms (sections 1.3.1.5 and 1.5.2.2).
A confirmation call settles four facts: whether buyer and seller were related, whether the buyer owned the land next door, whether the seller was under pressure to sell, and whether the seller carried the financing. A yes to any of them sends the sale to an adjustment or out of the set; in the worked example below, one call removes a sale from a father to his son. Value under the standards is stated in cash or its equivalent, so a sale with favorable seller financing is restated as its cash equivalent before it goes into the comparison.
Adjustments, and the evidence behind each one
The Yellow Book lists ten elements of comparison (section 1.5.2.3):
- Property rights conveyed
- Financing terms
- Conditions of sale
- Expenditures made immediately after purchase
- Market conditions (the time adjustment)
- Location
- Physical characteristics
- Economic characteristics
- Legal characteristics, such as land use and zoning
- Anything sold with the land that is not land
Under the standards, a dollar or percentage adjustment needs market data behind it. Where the data is thin, the sale is rated superior or inferior to the subject, with a written reason. The standards warn that without adequate data, "the apparent precision of quantitative adjustments can convey a false sense of accuracy" (note 57).
Some differences are a cost to cure. The Yellow Book's example is a subject 300 feet from a sewer connection when every comparable is connected: the adjustment is a lump sum for the cost of the connection, because a percentage would change with each comparable's price and bear no relation to the cost (note 58).
The standards also ask for a set of sales that includes some overall superior and some overall inferior to the subject. A set that is all inferior shows only a floor, and a set that is all superior shows only a ceiling.
A worked example
Invented numbers: the subject is 10 acres zoned for one house, with county road frontage and no power at the road. The power company has quoted $9,000 to bring service to the lot.
| Sale | Acres | Price | Per acre | Adjustment | Adjusted per acre | Compared with the subject |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 12 | $66,000 | $5,500 | Has power, minus $9,000 | $4,750 | Similar after adjustment |
| B | 8 | $52,000 | $6,500 | None | $6,500 | Superior, smaller tract |
| C | 11 | $49,500 | $4,500 | None | $4,500 | Inferior, easement access only |
| D | 40 | $140,000 | $3,500 | Not used | Not used | Rejected, size |
| E | 10 | $30,000 | $3,000 | Not used | Not used | Rejected, father to son |
What the table shows:
- Sale E matched the subject on size and road until the confirmation call. A father sold to his son, so its price says little about the market.
- Sale D is four times the size of the subject and drops out.
- The subject has road frontage and C does not, so the subject is worth more than 10 acres at $4,500, or $45,000.
- Before its power adjustment, A is better than the subject, so the subject is worth less than 10 acres at $5,500, or $55,000.
- B is a smaller tract at $6,500 an acre with nothing to adjust, rated superior, so it adds a second sale above the subject and supports the top of the range.
- A needs one adjustment and matches most closely: 10 acres at $4,750 is $47,500.
- No pair of sales of the same kind of land at different dates shows how prices moved over the 10 months these sales cover, so there is no time adjustment, and that gap goes into the file.
The conclusion is a range of $45,000 to $55,000, with $47,500 from sale A as the likeliest figure. It rests on one well-matched, confirmed sale, bracketed by C below and by B and A's unadjusted price above.
The comp file
Each sale in the file carries its parcel number, recording date, price, acreage, source document, the name and role of the person who confirmed it and what they said, each adjustment with its source, and the superior or inferior rating. Rejected sales stay in the file with the reason. The maximum offer worksheet has these columns ready to print.
Parcels with thin sales
Some land has no sale that shares its use, size and access. That gap is noted before anything else, and the search moves outward to nearby areas that compete for the same buyers, with a line on why each one competes.
Fannie Mae accepts contract offerings and current listings as supporting data (B4-1.3-08). The Yellow Book says listings generally cannot be relied on as comparable sales, and gives nonbinding offers and options little or no weight except where they set limits of value (section 4.4.2.4.6). A similar parcel that stays listed for months with no buyer marks a ceiling on the subject's price, and it goes into the file as a listing, never as a sale.
Where the sales are thin and the money at stake is large, a state-certified appraiser who works that county can prepare a formal opinion of value, for a fee.
From a range to a price
On the example parcel the range runs from $45,000 to $55,000, and nothing has been subtracted from it yet. The maximum allowable offer starts from $47,500 and takes the buyer's costs and margin off it line by line.
Sources
- Interagency Land Acquisition Conference, Uniform Appraisal Standards for Federal Land Acquisitions (the Yellow Book), 2016 edition, published by the U.S. Department of Justice. Sections 1.3.1.5 (note 42), 1.4 (note 48), 1.5.2, 1.5.2.2, 1.5.2.3 (notes 57 and 58) and 4.4.2.4.6.
- Supreme Court of the United States, Olson v. United States, 292 U.S. 246, decided April 30, 1934, via the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School.
- Fannie Mae, Selling Guide B4-1.3-08, Comparable Sales, version of June 4, 2025.
- USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, Land Values 2026 Summary, released July 31, 2026, page 4.