The No-BS Guide to What Bare Land Is Actually Selling for Per
Acre

By Justin Head | Ozarks
Land Report | Updated October 2026 · Data through September 30, 2026. Updated monthly as new closings post.

Buying or selling land in Franklin County? Start with our Franklin County farms and land page.

Here’s the number, right up front, because that’s the whole point of
this report:

What
is bare land worth per acre in Franklin County, Missouri?

Three-year median (August 2023-September 2026): $7,639 per acre across 74 qualifying closings (call it $7,650)
2026 year-to-date median: $9,265 per acre across 17 qualifying closings through September 30, 2026, approximately 1,051 acres and $9.02 million in volume
Zone medians: $6,429-$10,983 per acre, depending on
where in the county the ground sits
Full dataset: 74 qualifying closed sales from August 1, 2023 through September 30, 2026, totaling approximately 5,181 acres and $41.9 million in volume

These figures describe qualifying transactions reported in MARIS
under the report’s stated screening method. They are not a census of
every transfer of land in the county.

Across the 74 qualifying transactions under the screen described below, sale prices ranged from approximately $4,100 to $20,000 per acre.
No algorithm. No portal estimate. Just closed transactions drawn from
the MLS record.

If you’d rather have an estimate than real data, Zillow is thataway.
If you want to know what your ground would actually bring, and where
this market has been heading, keep reading.

Prefer a copy for your files or your coffee table? Download the full report as a PDF.

Seventy-four qualifying closings over three years, and the top zone median runs about 71% above the bottom one. A single per-acre number for
“Franklin County” is close to meaningless. Which end of the county
you’re standing in is most of the answer.

Why AI often gets your
land’s value wrong

I hear it almost weekly now. A seller calls me and says, “Well,
ChatGPT says my farm is worth $16,000 an acre.” Or Zillow says. Or
Perplexity says. And they’re often wrong, sometimes by a lot. Here’s
why, and it’s not because the machines are dumb. It’s because the data
they’re fed is contaminated in three specific ways:

1. They often can’t reliably separate the dirt from the
improvements. Say a 50-acre farm with a $350,000 house and a
$75,000 shop sells for $800,000. A simple price-per-acre calculation
records that sale as $16,000 per acre. It wasn’t. The dirt in that sale
was worth maybe $375,000, about $7,500 an acre. The rest was lumber,
concrete, and copper wire. Closed-sale records do not reliably allocate
the purchase price between the land and the improvements, and public
portals generally do not provide a dependable land-only allocation. An
automated answer built from those records can therefore overstate
bare-land value. In this county the error runs large in absolute
dollars, because both the dirt and the houses on it are worth real
money.

2. Missouri has no statewide requirement that real estate
sale prices be publicly disclosed. That leaves public valuation
tools with incomplete price data, especially for rural land. Asking
prices are not closed values, and an automated tool may remember the
wish instead of the result.

3. An algorithm has never walked your farm. It
doesn’t know your east 40 was select-cut five years ago. It doesn’t know
the “road frontage” is a shared gravel easement with no maintenance
agreement. It doesn’t know whether electric is at the corner or $40,000
away. On bare land, those things can materially change value. I’ve
written about most of them, including utilities,
road
agreements, and creeks
and water rights, because they’re where land value actually
lives.

This report applies the same objective screen to every transaction:
Farm or Land & Lots, at least 30 acres, and zero reported bedrooms
and bathrooms. A blank bedroom or bathroom field is treated as zero. For
purposes of this analysis, those transactions are referred to as
“bare-land” or “bare-dirt” sales. The screen substantially reduces
residential influence, but it cannot guarantee that every tract was
completely free of buildings or other improvements. Same filter, same
method as my quarterly Ozarks land market reports. I pull these by hand
because I want the real answers for my clients.

What three
years of dirt say: up every single year

Line up all 74 closings by year and the direction is not subtle:

Year	Sales	Median $/acre	Weighted $/acre	Range
2023 (Aug-Dec, partial)	6	$6,523	$6,304	$4,500 – $6,949
2024	19	$7,000	$8,350	$4,732 – $20,000
2025	32	$7,785	$8,048	$4,091 – $19,760
2026 (through September, partial)	17	$9,265	$8,575	$4,269 – $14,605

Median price per acre for bare 30+ acre tracts in Franklin
County: $6,523 (2023, partial year), $7,000 (2024), $7,785 (2025),
$9,265 (2026 through September). The median rose in every period, roughly 42% from the partial 2023 period through September 2026.

The median rose about 7% from the partial 2023 period into 2024,
another 11% into 2025, and about 19% into 2026, for a gain of roughly 42% across the whole stretch. Franklin never posted a down period in
this dataset.

Two cautions on that. The 2023 and 2026 rows are partial periods, and
2026 rests on 17 closings, so the top of that climb describes an
observed sample rather than a settled market level. And the
acreage-weighted average has been flatter than the median throughout,
running between about $8,000 and $8,600 since 2024, which says the
larger tracts in this dataset have not repriced as fast as the smaller
ones.

Owners who purchased comparable bare ground before 2024 may already
have benefited from the market’s repricing. If you’ve been sitting on a
2022 opinion of your land’s value, it’s stale in the other direction,
and in this county it may be stale by a wide margin.

The five price zones of
Franklin County

“What’s an acre worth in Franklin County?” is really five questions.
The following zones summarize the complete August 2023-September 2026
dataset.

Zone	What it is	Sales	Median $/acre	Range
Pacific and Villa Ridge	Metro-facing ground in the county’s east end, along the Meramec and the I-44 corridor; the highest zone median in the dataset	14	$10,983	$6,109 – $16,779
Union, Washington and the river towns	Open farm ground around the county seat and north toward the Missouri River; the second-highest zone median, and the highest single closing in the dataset	19	$9,901	$5,460 – $20,000
Sullivan and Springbluff	Timber and mixed ground on the county’s southwest side; contains the lowest single closing in the dataset	17	$7,499	$4,091 – $10,296
Gerald and the Gasconade line	Farm and timber ground along the county’s western edge; the tightest price range in the dataset	11	$6,563	$4,500 – $10,638
St. Clair and Lonedell	Timbered and recreational ground along the county’s south edge; the lowest zone median in the dataset	13	$6,429	$4,269 – $17,022

Here is the headline for a Franklin County seller: ground in the Pacific and Villa Ridge end carries about a 71% premium over the St. Clair and Lonedell area. The five zone medians span about $4,550 per acre. That is not a rounding difference, it is two different markets that happen to pay taxes to the same courthouse, and the gradient runs roughly east to west, with the timbered south edge at the bottom.

Every one of these zones rests on ten or more closings.

Two footnotes, because transparency is the product here. (1)
Zones are assigned by MLS market area, then community and ground type
within it. Union, Washington and the river towns groups the county-seat
market with the Missouri River communities to its north because they
trade together on open farm ground. (2) Nine qualifying closings carry MLS market-area codes named for school districts that cross into neighboring counties, and three more are coded to the Gerald market
area, which sits near the Franklin-Gasconade county line. All are
located in Franklin County.

What tract size does to
price per acre

The following tiers summarize the complete August 2023-September 2026
dataset:

Tract size	Sales	Median $/acre	Range
30-50 acres	34	$8,281	$4,500 – $19,760
50-80 acres	22	$7,836	$4,732 – $20,000
80-120 acres	9	$6,080	$4,091 – $14,605
120+ acres	9	$7,202	$5,195 – $9,901

In this county, smaller does bring more per acre: the 30-50 acre tier
produced the highest median and the 80-120 acre tier the lowest, about $2,200 per acre apart. The 120-plus tier interrupts the line by coming
in above the 80-120 tier, and both of those tiers rest on nine sales
each. These are simple groupings rather than controlled comparisons.
Acreage alone did not set price per acre, but in Franklin County it
tracks more closely than most sellers expect.

The 2026 market at a glance

Seventeen qualifying bare-land transactions closed through September 2026, representing approximately 1,051 acres and $9.02 million in total sales volume.

The median sale price was $9,265 per acre while the acreage-weighted average was $8,575 per acre, the median running the higher of the two.
Individual closings ran from approximately $4,300 to $14,600 per acre.
The seventeen sales spread across all five zones, four each in the Union and river-town, Sullivan, and St. Clair zones, three in Pacific and Villa Ridge, and two in the Gerald area. Seven of the seventeen went under contract inside 60 days.

How fast does
bare land sell in Franklin County?

Time to contract (final listing)	Sales
7 days or less	13
8-14 days	7
15-30 days	3
31-60 days	11
61-179 days	21
180 days or more	12

The other tail is long. Twelve sales required 180 days or more, and
the longest exceeded six years. Marketing time can reflect price,
access, property condition, seasonality, relisting strategy, and other
tract-specific factors. The data show a wide range of exposure times,
but they do not establish why any particular property took longer to
sell.

One opinion from the field, clearly labeled as such: in my experience
walking this ground, price is the single biggest lever on marketing
time.

How this report was built

This analysis covers 74 closed MLS transactions from August 1, 2023
through September 30, 2026. Qualifying transactions were limited to
properties classified in the MLS as Farm or Land & Lots, containing
at least 30 acres, and reporting zero bedrooms and zero bathrooms, with
a blank bedroom or bathroom field treated as zero. Duplicate or
overlapping records representing the same transaction were removed. A
later resale of the same ground was counted as a separate transaction,
and the statistics were calculated using the acreage and closed-sale
information reported in the source records.

For purposes of this report, a “qualifying bare-land transaction” is
a closed MLS sale classified as Farm or Land & Lots, containing at
least 30 acres, and reporting zero bedrooms and zero bathrooms in the
MLS record.

This screening method is intended to reduce the influence of
residential improvements, but it does not establish that every included
tract was completely free of improvements. Some properties may contain
fencing, utilities, wells, driveways, ponds, outbuildings, cabins, or
other improvements that were not reflected in the MLS bedroom and
bathroom fields. MLS information may be incomplete or entered
inconsistently. Information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

A few more details, in the interest of full transparency. All 74 transactions are located in Franklin County; nine of them carry market-area codes named for school districts that extend into
neighboring counties, and three are coded to the Gerald market area,
which sits near the Franklin-Gasconade county line. Zones are assigned
by MLS market area, then community and ground type within it. Where
overlapping listings represented the same transaction, the sale was
counted only once, so no acreage and no dollar volume is counted twice.
Time to contract reflects each property’s final listing period. Seven of the 74 closings show no marketing period in the MLS record. They are
included in every price statistic, but a property that was never
marketed cannot be said to have gone under contract in zero days, so the time-to-contract figures cover the other 67. Using cumulative days across relistings instead, the median increases from 55 to 71 days, and 13 sales rather than 12 required 180 days or more. This report is
limited to what was reported in MARIS. A transfer that was never entered
in the MLS does not appear here at all, and one that was entered only
after the fact does.

The annual, zone, tract-size, and time-to-contract tables report only
aggregated market statistics. No property addresses, MLS numbers,
photographs, listing remarks, agents or brokerages are identified.

Based on information from Mid America Regional Information
Systems, Inc. for the period August 1, 2023 through September 30, 2026.
Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

So what’s your land
worth?

Somewhere in those tables, and in this county the zone you’re in
narrows it more than anything else. From there it comes down to the
things no algorithm can see: open versus timbered, how it was cut and
when, legal access versus handshake access, utilities at the road or a
quarter mile away, water, neighbors, and how the property hunts or
grazes. With a $4,550-per-acre spread between the top and bottom zone medians, guessing wrong about where your ground sits in this market is
an expensive mistake in either direction. Those final adjustments are
walked, not calculated.

I’ll give you the real number, and I’ll show you the comparable sales
and methodology behind it, the same way this report shows you the
market’s actual ranges and trends. No charge, no pressure, and if the
honest answer is “hold it and let it grow,” that’s the answer you’ll
get. Start here: What’s my land
worth?

Frequently asked questions

What is an acre of land worth in Franklin County, Missouri in
2026? Based on the 74 qualifying MLS closings through September 30, 2026, involving tracts classified as Farm or Land & Lots, containing
at least 30 acres, and reporting zero bedrooms and zero bathrooms in the
MLS record, bare land in Franklin County shows a three-year median of $7,639 per acre, with individual closings ranging from approximately $4,100 to $20,000 per acre. In the 17 qualifying closings that posted in 2026, the median was $9,265 per acre. Ground in the Pacific and Villa
Ridge end has the highest zone median, while the Gerald area and the
county’s south edge generally fall in the lower half. These figures
describe qualifying transactions reported in MARIS under the report’s
stated screening method. They are not a census of every transfer of land
in the county.

Are Franklin County land prices going up? In this
dataset, every period was higher than the one before it: a median of
$6,523 per acre across the partial 2023 period, $7,000 in 2024, $7,785 in 2025, and $9,265 across the 17 closings that posted through September 2026, a gain of roughly 42%. Two cautions: the first and last rows are
partial periods, and the acreage-weighted average has run flatter than
the median since 2024, which suggests larger tracts have not repriced as
quickly as smaller ones.

Why can Zillow be wrong about my land’s value?
Zillow itself states that vacant land is not eligible for a Zestimate. A
portal page may still display asking-price, tax, prior-sale, or
user-submitted information, and for rural land those records may not
reliably separate land value from houses and other improvements.
Missouri also has no statewide requirement that real estate sale prices
be publicly disclosed. A closed-sale analysis built on a stated,
consistent screen, shown along with its methodology and its limits, is
therefore more useful than a portal estimate.

Why did ChatGPT or Perplexity give me a different
number? AI tools may summarize public listing and portal data
that do not reliably separate improvements from land or asking prices
from actual closings. They’ve also never seen your timber, your access,
or your utilities. Use them to learn concepts, not to price a specific
farm in a state without comprehensive public sale-price reporting.

What makes one Franklin County farm worth $6,400 an acre and another $11,000? Mostly which end of the county it sits in. The Pacific and Villa Ridge zone median ran about 71% above the St. Clair and Lonedell area, and the five zone medians span about $4,550 per acre. Within a zone,
access, utilities, timber condition, openness, and overall usability
decide the rest, and tract size matters here too: the 30-50 acre tier
produced the highest median in the dataset and the 80-120 acre tier the lowest, about $2,200 per acre apart.

Which part of Franklin County has the most expensive
land? The Pacific and Villa Ridge end. Its median of $10,983
per acre is the highest of the five zones, roughly 71% above the St. Clair and Lonedell area, and its acreage-weighted average comes in even higher, at $11,399
per acre. The single highest closing in the dataset, at $20,000 per
acre, sits in the Union, Washington and river-towns zone rather than in
Pacific, so the east end leads on the typical sale rather than on the
outlier.

How long does it take to sell bare land in Franklin
County? Across the 67 qualifying closings with a recorded marketing period, the median time to contract was 55 days, and 34 of the 67 went under contract within 60 days. Twenty went under contract within two weeks, and 12 required 180 days or more. Counted on cumulative days across re-listings instead, the median moves from 55 to 71 days. Marketing time can reflect price, access, property condition,
seasonality, relisting strategy, and other tract-specific factors, and
the data do not establish why any particular property took longer to
sell.

How do I find out what my specific land is worth?
Get a valuation from someone who has both the closed-sale data and boots
that have walked ground in this county. I provide that as a free,
no-obligation breakdown, with the comparable sales shown, not
hidden.

Buying or selling land here? Visit our Franklin County farms and land page.

Explore the Complete Bare Dirt Report Series

See closed-sale land-price data for all five counties served by Ozarks Land Report:

What is bare land worth per acre in Franklin County, Missouri?

Why AI often gets your land’s value wrong

What three years of dirt say: up every single year

The five price zones of Franklin County

What tract size does to price per acre