MCLEAN, VA – Gladstone Land Corporation has announced that it won, through public auction, the right to acquire a 331-acre strawberry farm in Salinas, California for approximately $17.0 million. This works out to approximately $51,359 per acre.
The property is located in a premier agricultural region in Monterey County, has four wells on site with ample water and excellent soil. According to a press release, the current tenant on the farm is one of the nation’s largest shippers of fresh strawberries.
“We are very pleased to win the auction to buy this farm,” said David Gladstone, Chairman of the Company. “With the continued growth of our portfolio and increase in borrowing facilities, we are able to take on larger transactions, as evidenced by this acquisition potentially marking the third farm purchase greater then $13 million that we will have closed in the past four months.”
As we previously reported, the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (“Farmer Mac”) recently extended Gladstone a line of credit valued at a long-term total of $75 million, which the company plans to use to finance this acquisition as well as to acquire more farmland. This acquisition is expected to close in early January 2015.
On that point, Gladstone added, “We continue to see a number of excellent opportunities on the near-term horizon that we hope to be able to take advantage of.”
Currently the company owns 32 farms, comprised of 8,039 acres in 5 different states across the U.S., valued at approximately $191 million.
