How is a farm priced?
A farm is priced as an opinion of what the market would pay for several kinds of ground sold together: cropland, pasture, woodland, and the farmhouse with its buildings. Each part is read on its own terms, then the whole is weighed as one place. The use value a county records for a farm in land use is a tax figure, not a price.
Two values on the land book, and neither one is a sale price
Pull the assessment record for a farm in a county's land use program and you find two figures for the same ground. Va. Code 58.1-3236 requires that "land book records shall be maintained to show both the use value and the fair market value of such real estate."
The use value is the number the tax is computed on under use value assessment, while the land stays in its qualifying use, and the assessor considers the recommendations of the State Land Evaluation Advisory Council in setting it. It measures what the ground is worth for farming or forestry under the program. It is not trying to measure what a buyer would pay, and it does not travel with the deed as an asking price.
The fair market value beside it is the assessor's figure for the same land at market. It is closer in kind to a price, but it is an assessment made for taxation on the county's schedule, not a judgment about one farm offered for sale to buyers this season.
The buildings sit apart from both. The same section says every structure on land in a qualifying use, and the farmhouse with the land under it and the land used with it, is valued, assessed and taxed by the same standards as other taxable structures and real estate in the locality. The land under barns, sheds, silos, cribs and greenhouses, and under ponds, dams and streams, still counts in the area of the qualifying use; the land under and used with the farmhouse does not. What either figure on a particular land book means is a question for the county's Commissioner of the Revenue.
A farm is several kinds of ground under one deed
The Census of Agriculture's own categories are a useful way to take a farm apart, because they separate the kinds of ground a farm is made of.
- Harvested cropland
- Land where crops were harvested or hay was cut, plus Christmas trees, orchards, vineyards, berries, nurseries and greenhouses.
- Cropland used only for pasture
- Grazed ground that could have been cropped without additional improvements. The census counts it apart from permanent pasture.
- Permanent pasture
- Grazable land that is neither woodland nor cropland pasture.
- Woodland
- Natural or planted woodlots or timber tracts, cutover land with young growth, and woodland pastured.
Working terms shade the census words. A field called tillable is one that can be worked for a crop, and pasture is ground kept for grazing, whether or not it could be cropped. How far apart those two sit in a buyer's mind is the subject of why the split between tillable ground and pasture matters.
Each part of a farm puts a different question to the price
A buyer does not look at a farm as a single acreage times a single number. Each piece brings its own question, and the answers do not add up in a straight line.
- The open ground. Whether the fields can be worked, how much is grazing only, and what the fencing and water will carry.
- The woods. The value of standing trees is commonly called stumpage value, and it depends on species, size and quality, which is a forester's measurement. How it is reached is set out in how standing timber is valued.
- The farmstead. The house, its yard and its drive, which the county already assesses apart from the farm use.
- The barns and outbuildings. What, if anything, a building adds is worked through in whether barns and outbuildings add value.
- What is recorded against it. A recorded conservation easement ends some uses of the land, and how far that moves the number is its own question at does a conservation easement lower the price.
The parts also pull on each other. Where the water is shapes how a back pasture can be used, a subject of its own at does a spring or creek add value to a farm, and Extension counts road building and access among the factors a timber buyer weighs, so a farm road that reaches the back fields bears on the woods behind them. That interaction is why the whole is weighed as one place after each part has been read.
Weighing the whole: an opinion of value built from the ground up
On a farm, the reasoning behind a number covers more ground than it does on a homesite.
The five-factor read of access, utilities, topography, soil and zoning is set out in how land is read before it is priced. A farm adds parts a homesite does not have: how the acres divide between crops, grazing and woods, what the buildings are good for, where the water is, and whether the land book, a farm lease or an easement changes what a buyer receives.
What an owner sends for an opinion of value on a farm, and what comes back, is set out under a free valuation of a farm.
What the federal land value report covers, and the county line it stops at
A published per-acre figure is the obvious thing to test a price against. USDA's does not reach the county level.
USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service released its Land Values 2026 Summary on July 31, 2026. It reports farm real estate, cropland and pasture values by state, and it places Virginia in an Appalachian region with Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. It is not a county report, so it cannot say what an acre of pasture in Carroll, Grayson or Floyd County brings, and no per-acre figure from it is repeated here.
A state figure blends ground from every part of Virginia. A price for one farm rests on that farm's own ground and on recorded sales of land like it, which is the work an opinion of value does, and which a licensed appraiser does separately when a lender needs an appraisal.
A farm's fields, woods and buildings, priced as one place
Send the county, the acreage and a rough split of fields, pasture and woods. Lowell will read each part and come back with one number and the reasoning behind it. No cost, no obligation.
Got it. Thank you.
We'll be in touch shortly with an honest read.
Questions this raises
Does the use value on my tax bill set a floor for the price?
No. Use value is the figure land use taxation is computed on while the ground stays in a qualifying use, and the assessor considers State Land Evaluation Advisory Council recommendations in setting it. It measures the land's value for that use, not what a buyer would pay, so it neither sets a floor nor a ceiling on a sale price.
Is the farmhouse priced separately from the land?
For taxes it is already separate: Virginia assesses the farmhouse, its site and the land used with it like other real estate, outside the land use area. In a sale, the house is one part of the whole place, weighed alongside the fields, woods and buildings. Whether the house can be kept while the farm sells is a separate division question.
Why can't a farm be priced from a statewide per-acre figure?
The USDA Land Values 2026 Summary reports farm real estate, cropland and pasture values by state and by region, with Virginia in its Appalachian region. It does not report counties, so its Virginia figure blends ground from every part of the state. One farm's price rests on its own mix of ground, buildings, water and access, and on recorded sales of land like it.
Where this page's facts come from
Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.
- Va. Code 58.1-3236, valuation of real estate under the ordinance; the land book shows use value and fair market value Virginia General Assembly
- Va. Code 54.1-2010, exemptions from appraiser licensing Virginia General Assembly
- 2022 Census of Agriculture, Appendix B: general explanation and census report form USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
- Land Values 2026 Summary (released July 31, 2026) USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
- Forest Landowner's Guide to the Measurement of Timber and Logs (420-085) Virginia Cooperative Extension