In Central Florida, the analysis shows the average asking price for orange groves is $9,805 per acre, up 55% from $6,409 in 2004. Grapefruit groves are priced at an average $8,192 per acre, up 81.3% from $4,518. Owners of improved pasture land are asking an average $6,426 per acre, up 78.1% from $3,608. Unimproved pasture land is going for an average $4,133 per acre, up 82.3% from $2,267. The survey was authored by Prof. John E. Reynolds of the university's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

"I'm not surprised," Dean Fritchen, a senior broker in the Winter Park office of Coldwell Banker Commercial NRT, tells GlobeSt.com. "I am getting several calls a week now from owners in outlying areas asking me to come by and give them an idea of what their land might be worth." Fritchen adds "many of these folk are people who generally didn't think of selling their land until now."

Fritchen tells GlobeSt.com Ocala in Marion County, Apopka in Orange County and Volusia County areas "seem to be of interest" to investors, based on recent phone calls he has fielded. "They realize this stuff [the land] isn't getting cheaper as it grows older," Fritchen says. "The Good Lord only made a certain amount of it and when it's gone, it's gone."

In recent metro area land sales, Daryl M. Carter, a trustee of Carter-Highway 484 Land Trust, sold 360 acres in Marion County to Golden Oak Farm LLC for $6 million cash. The price equates to $16,667 per acre or 38 cents per sf. The property is on the north side of County Road 484, three miles east of Interstate 75 and three miles west of Belleview.

In a second transaction in Sumter County, Carter, as trustee of the same land trust, sold 645 acres to U Joint Acquisitions LLC for $9.2 million cash. The price equates to $14,264 per acre or 33 cents per sf. The property is Wildwood, bounded on the north by the Florida Turnpike, on the east by US 301, on the south by the town of Coleman, and on the west by the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad.

In east Orange County, outside Orlando's city limits, Orlando Pickett 2 LLC and Luk Yeung Inc. paid $4.86 million, or $309,554 per acre ($7.11 per sf), for a 15.7-acre tract at State Road 50 and Lake Pickett Road. The buyers plan to develop a 150,000-sf office and retail complex on the site.