Schrader Expands Michigan Presence on the Strength of 32 Sales in 18 Months
Columbia City, Ind. — May 2026 — Schrader Real Estate and Auction Company has conducted 34 auctions in Michigan since November 2024, including 15 real estate sales totaling roughly 1,100 acres across ten counties — a body of work that now stretches from Berrien County on the Indiana-Michigan line to Sanilac County on the shore of Lake Huron.
The growth has tracked a Michigan farmland market that is leading the country. The American Farm Bureau Federation reported that Michigan farm real estate values rose 7.8% in 2025 to an average of $6,800 per acre — the sharpest one-year increase of any state in the nation. USDA NASS data show Michigan cropland values up 8.2%, a top-three result. Behind those figures: a state record-pace corn crop projected near 179 bushels per acre and a record soybean crop near 52 bushels per acre in 2025, with 27 of Michigan's counties posting year-over-year increases in non-irrigated cash rent.
That is the market Schrader has been working in — and the volume reflects it.
Two sides of the state, two long-running teams
On the western side of Michigan, the work is led by Ed Boyer of Union, MI and Ted Boyer of Edwardsburg, MI — both decades-tenured Schrader agents whose territory sits a short drive across the state line from the company's Indiana headquarters. Their fingerprints are on most of the southwest Michigan calendar: the Clark RE auction in Berrien County (100.5 acres, 11 tracts), the Millard RE auction in St. Joseph County (81.5 acres, 3 tracts), the Bishop, Coville, Pace, Young, and Kwiatkowski farm equipment auctions across Cass, Kalamazoo, and Ottawa Counties, and the recent Hop Head RE sale in Berrien County (77 acres, 2 tracts).
On the south-central and eastern side of the state, the expansion is more recent. Jon Shaw, who joined Schrader a few years ago, now anchors a calendar that runs from Hillsdale County through Lenawee and into the Thumb. Kevin Jordan, CAI, holds the firm's Michigan real estate broker license — the designation that allows Schrader to list and sell real estate in Michigan under one roof.
The proof is in what the market is paying
Headline statewide averages are one thing. What sellers actually receive on auction day is another. In December 2025, the Stoney Acres RE auction — 122 acres offered in seven tracts in Hillsdale County — closed at $7,598 per acre, well above Michigan's statewide farmland average and a number that does not happen by accident. It happens when a property is broken into the right tract sizes, when the buyer pool has been built in advance of auction day, and when the auction is executed in a professional manner.
Ten counties, one team
The eighteen-month sales footprint now includes Berrien, Cass, St. Joseph, Kalamazoo, Calhoun, Branch, Hillsdale, Lenawee, Ottawa, and Sanilac Counties. The work spans real estate, farm equipment, and personal property — sometimes in the same sale — and is supported by Schrader's in-house brochure design, in-house mailing operation, and proprietary multi-tract bidding software, the same infrastructure used on the company's eight-figure auctions across the country. Our team looks forward to continued growth in the state moving ahead.
For information on the upcoming Moeller (Sanilac County, June 25) and Gentry (Branch County, June 30) farmland auctions, or to discuss listing a Michigan property, contact Schrader Real Estate and Auction Company at 800-451-2709 or visit schraderauction.com.
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