What 730 Closed Land Deals Tell Us About the 2026 Market

By Drew Haney · Founder, Rooster Capital · May 2, 2026

We’ve funded 848+ land flip deals across 34 states. The 730-deal snapshot below is enough data to stop guessing about market conditions. Here’s what the aggregate actually shows.

What 730 closed deals tell you about the land business

We’ve funded 848+ land flip transactions across 34 states. The 730-deal closed-and-priced subset below is a useful sample. Here’s what the aggregate data actually shows about land flipping in 2026 — the parts that matter for operators making decisions today.

1. The median margin held up better than expected

Going into 2025, a lot of operators worried about margin compression. Acquisition prices were softening, but exit prices were softening faster — that’s the pattern that crushes operators in soft markets.

What actually happened across our 2024–2025 deal set: median margin stayed in the 55–65% range (sale price as a multiple of acquisition cost). Slightly down from the 60–75% peak we saw in 2022, but still healthy. The headline “margin compression” story was overdone.

2. Days-on-market lengthened significantly

This is where the actual softness shows up. Median DOM went from ~75 days in 2022–23 to ~120 days in 2024–25. Not catastrophic, but it changes the math: longer holds mean more carrying cost, slower capital recycling, and operators who optimized for “fast in, fast out” got squeezed.

Operators with multiple disposition channels (Land.com + Facebook + email list + broker network) ate fewer DOM days than operators relying on a single channel.

3. State concentration is real

The 730 deals aren’t evenly distributed. Roughly 60% are concentrated in 8 states: Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Those states have:

• Predictable title processes
• Active end-buyer demand for recreational/rural parcels
• Reasonable tax rates and short closing timelines
• Strong wholesaler/operator networks already in place

States that lag in our data: Northeast (high tax, complex title), West Coast (high prices, low margin), Northern Plains (low end-buyer demand). Operators in these regions are doing fewer deals at higher prices on average.

4. Average deal size has crept up

2022 average acquisition: ~$18K. 2025 average acquisition: ~$31K. Two reasons:

1. Smaller cheap-land plays are harder to source — the easy targets have been worked over by the operator boom of 2020–2023
2. Operators who survived the boom and built capital are moving into bigger plays where competition is thinner

5. Operator profile shift

The fastest-growing operators in our network now are not new entrants. They’re experienced operators who survived the 2024 softness and are scaling capacity now that conditions have stabilized. New entrants are still showing up but at a lower rate than 2021–22 peak.

What this means for operators in 2026

• Don’t panic about margin. The medians are still healthy. The narrative is worse than the data.
• Plan for 120-day holds. Underwrite with conservative DOM. If a deal only works at 75 days, don’t do that deal.
• If you’re scaling, focus on the 8 high-volume states. Operator infrastructure is better there.
• Bigger deals are easier to make work than they used to be. Less crowded competitively. But they require more capital — another argument for JV funding.
• Multi-channel dispositions matter more than ever. Single-channel operators are getting squeezed.

Full data study with charts and methodology: What 730 land deals reveal about flipping in 2026.