LandandFarm.com is the leading website for rural and acreage land listings as measeured by Alexa and Compete traffic. In the last couple of weeks, they have changed their pricing dramatically to allow property sellers and brokers unlimited advertising for a $49.95/month. This price is lower than the $75/month they charged for just 10 listing ads under the previous pricing scheme.
The website has a network of other sites like eLandUSA.com and a monthly classified add magazine that features many of the properties on the website. LandandFarm.com was purchased last year by Loopnet.com. I have been waiting for some changes to the site or business model since the purchase, but this new pricing structure is the first big move so far.
The previous pricing model charged for single ads, packages of 10, 30, and custom amounts. The other big three land listing websites (LandWatch.com, LandsofAmerica.com, and LandFlip.com) all charged a monthly fee for unlimited listings. The advantage to LandandFarms.com’s previous pricing strategy was that better properties appeared on the website and usually only active listings were on the site. The other three did not charge more for more listings, so their sites usually have a larger selection of properties but not necessarily more of the quality listings. There is also no incentive for the broker to remove expired or sold listings under an unlimited pricing plan.
I anticipate the change was made at LandandFarm to convince long time advertisers to stay on board despite a terrible land market. It will be interesting to see if Loopnet.com adopts a similar strategy for their premium listings service for commercial listings in the face of a terrible commercial real estate market. Currently Loopnet’s premium listings are priced based on the number of premium listings a broker has on the site.
