I was quoted in this morning’s Arizona Republic in an article on a solar “land rush”.

John Reeder, a member of the Solar Acquisition Group at Sperry Van Ness Real Estate Advisors in California, said most of the sellers he deals with are in distress themselves or have taken the land back in foreclosure.

"We offer these owners the potential to exit from the property years in advance of any housing recovery," he said.

Reeder looks for tracts of several thousand acres that have water rights, are near existing power-transmission lines and preferably have been used for agriculture. Land that has been altered for agriculture generally poses fewer environmental concerns than land in its natural state, he said.

My first response is that I wouldn’t exactly call this a land rush.  I would say that it is a very targeted site selection exercise.  There are a lot of owners of land out there who are going to be disappointed to find that the surge in solar activity doesn’t impact their land values at all; not every piece of desert land is made equal for solar development.

The Solar Acquisition Group is a team that we have put together recently that really just formalizes something we had been working on for over a year.  If there is anybody out there interested in the Solar Acquisition Group, be sure to hit me up via the contact page on this site.  You can download our materials with this link.

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