Sell your land with the company that invented the multi-tract auction.

Our Areas of Specialty

As a full-service auction company, Schrader can professionally market all real estate and equipment assets. Over the years, we've developed deep expertise in several key markets. Our long-term focus in these areas allows us to deliver unmatched experience and insight.

As creators of the M3 system, we are the national innovators of the open-forum multi-tract real estate auction. We apply that same innovation and strategic thinking to every auction we conduct.

Farm Land

With over $400 million in sales annually Schrader leads the industry in farmland auctions. Based in an agricultural community and staffed by experienced professionals, we understand the land and the people who work it. We'll help you assess value, choose the right sale strategy, and explore 1031 Exchange opportunities when applicable.

• Deep agricultural roots and expertise
• Accurate property valuation and strategy
• 1031 Exchange consultation when applicable

Timberland

Schrader has sold thousands of acres of timberland in the last several years alone. Whether your property has already been timbered or is a sanctuary of shade, we know how to reach buyers who recognize its value, and we can offer timber separately. Having worked with international paper-product companies in multiple states, no property is too large or too far away.

• Thousands of acres sold nationwide
• Options to sell standing timber separately
• Experienced with international timber and paper companies

Recreational

With today's high demand for recreational land, Schrader's multi-tract system has allowed small- and large-acreage buyers to compete for their own piece of serenity and adventure. With local, regional, and/or national exposure, these properties receive maximum attention to create maximum demand. By separating wooded acreage from other land, recreational buyers need to bid only for what they desire and only against other like-use bidders.

• Attracts small and large-acreage buyers
• Local to national marketing reach
• Articulated separation of land types for more targeted bidding

Commercial

Schrader handles all aspects of commercial sales: inventory reduction, equipment liquidation, platted lots, standing structures, appraisals, and intellectual property. Our award-winning marketing team ensures your property reaches the right audience with strong visual impact.

• Equipment liquidation and inventory reduction
• Platted lots and standing structures
• Appraisals, intellectual property, and more
• Corporate-level visual marketing

Farm Equipment

With around 200 equipment and personal property auctions a year, Schrader knows farm equipment. Our expert staff of appraisers and auctioneers along with our mobile office setup ensure smooth operations and top market value.

• Single seller dispersals and consignment sales
• Mobile office set-up for seamless onsite operations
• Full clerking network and customer service area
• Timed online, virtual, and live sales

The Maximum Marketing Method (M3): A Schrader exclusive

Only Schrader offers the M3 Auction System, because we are the company that invented and perfected it. The M3 System achieves the highest possible value by:

• Offering the property in multiple tracts to broaden the pool of bidders.
• Allowing bidders to bid on individual tracts, combinations of tracts or the entire property in an unrestricted process that promotes greater competition for each tract, leading to higher prices.

M3 permits virtually infinite possibilities. When we sell 40 tracts of land, there are more than 980,000 different possible ways to sell the property. This unrestricted process promotes greater competition, which in turn creates higher prices for our sellers.

What makes the M3 program different?

Schrader's results have led other companies to offer their own "multi-parcel" or "multi-tract" programs. The name is easy to adopt; the method behind it is not. Here is what sets the M3 System apart:

• We know more. We introduced M3 more than three decades ago, and we have been perfecting our systems the entire time. We have closely guarded our proprietary methods so that our unprecedented results are available only to Schrader customers.
• We work harder. We study your land in painstaking detail, spending as much time as it takes to fully understand it. Depending on the property, we will view and photograph it from the air and from ground level. We become experts on the soil, the wildlife, the timber, the history, the contours and any other factors that can help us market the property. Sellers frequently comment that we know their property better than they know it themselves.
• We optimize the division into tracts. While our competitors may propose tracts based on a map and a quick ride around the property, our exhaustive research allows us to organize the tracts in a way that gets the best results on auction day.
• We use superior auction day methods. We developed and copyrighted software to efficiently compute the best way to sell a multi-tract property at any given moment during the auction. The program ranks the different possible ways to sell the property in descending order from the highest total price.
• We allow Internet bidding. We have integrated M3 with an Internet auction system that allows remote bidders to participate online.

“It is my view that there have been three important auction innovations in this century: 1) Rex Schrader's system for multi-parcel real estate auctions, 2) William Vickrey's second price sealed bid auction for which he received a Nobel Prize, and 3) Sheldon Good's pooled condominium auction in which the winning bidder acquires the right to choose. Of these three, the Schrader system represents the most profound innovation.”

Technology built for multi-tract auctions

Online bidding

Schrader has made significant investments in its digital bidding tools to optimize bidding flexibility for potential buyers. We developed our own in-house software specifically designed to allow easy online bidding on a multi-tract auction of any size. Bidders can attend the auction in person and bid live, or bid online if they are non-local, with a live operator on standby if anyone runs into technical issues.

Graphical Bidding Viewer

The Schrader Graphical Bidding Viewer™ (SGBV) is patent-pending software that lets every bidder know instantly whether the tract or tracts they are bidding on are in a winning position. During the auction, those in attendance can look up at a large, full-color aerial of the property with each tract numbered. Bidders in a winning position see, in real time, their tracts filled in with their assigned color, so everyone can see how the property would be sold at any given moment.

Digital mapping

Schrader uses GPS and GIS technology, combined with its marketing expertise, to identify provisional auction tracts within days rather than weeks. That shortens the lead time to auction and saves up-front costs, and it gives buyers customized aerials of the individual tracts with preliminary acreage and boundary information before the auction. The corners, boundaries and acreages of newly created parcels are established by a professional land surveyor after the optimal tract divisions and combinations have been identified through the auction.

Video, photography and marketing

Our full-service video department shoots your property on the ground and from the air for inspection dates and for the auction page. A full-time professional photographer captures high-resolution ground and drone photography for brochures, ads and online. Our fully staffed marketing department, winner of over 60 national and international awards, handles every aspect of promoting your auction.

Awards

“The recognition is nice, but the real importance is that it recognizes the quality of our work in marketing upcoming auctions and getting results for our sellers. We take pride in every aspect of our promotion.”

Marketing excellence

• 5-time recipient of the National Auction of the Year by the National Auctioneers Association
• 2 first-place national awards in the 2024 National Auctioneers Marketing Competition
• 2024 National Auctioneers Association Auction of the Year finalist
• 150 first-place awards for national advertising excellence since 1993

Industry leadership

• Top Agricultural Auction Company 2024, AGRI Business Review
• Deal of the Year 2023, The Land Report, and Agriculture Deal of the Year in 2014 and 2016
• Multiple $50M+ transactions
• Agents and staff hold leadership roles within the Auctioneer Association and Realtors Land Institute

Guaranteed exposure for every auction

Each auction we conduct is featured on its own dedicated page within our website, enabling us to track page views and provide comprehensive traffic reports to sellers. Each auction is also highlighted on the Schrader homepage, so visitors directed from print advertising, direct mail or other channels find it immediately. With over 3.38 million hits across our site each month, every auction benefits from substantial, guaranteed exposure.

Meet the marketing team

Leslie Basinger

Marketing Team Leader, Graphic Designer

Ryan Carper

Digital Production Manager, GIS Mapping Specialist, Graphic Designer

Jason Fest

Photographer, GIS Mapping Specialist

Lindsey Mendenhall

Graphic Designer