Own land in Alaska you’re ready to be done with? We buy it direct, and we pay cash. A lot of folks we work with hold a remote tract they inherited or staked years ago, moved away, and can’t move it through a normal listing. Private, non-Native land is under one percent of the whole state, so buyers are thin on the ground out here. We’re the buyer, not an agent. You fill out the form, and we send a fair cash offer, usually within 48 hours.
Haystack Land Company is known for transparency. No shady clauses or last-minute surprises, just a fast and fair offer!
We make competitive cash offers in 48 hours and close fast with upfront deposits.
We handle all the paperwork with no closing costs and no realtor commission.
No repairs, cleaning, or improvements needed. We buy land fast!
1. Submit your land for sale.
Fill out the form here and submit your property.
We pull public land records, borough data, topography, and recent sales of similar tracts nearby to work out what we can pay you for your Alaska land.
2. Get a cash offer in 48 hours
We’ll call or email to walk you through our offer on your land. Once we agree on a number, we draw up a purchase agreement and buy your land direct. Most offers go out within 48 hours of getting your property details, and we close on your schedule.
3. You get paid quickly.
After you sign, we handle due diligence, and the deposit goes to the closing attorney or title company that runs the title search and closing. Most sales wrap up in 30 to 45 days.
We buy land all over Alaska, and we pay cash. Most of what we look at is rural and hard to sell the normal way. Maybe it’s a cabin tract you staked, an off-grid lot, or a piece you picked up at a state sale and never used. Plenty of it has no road yet, or you can only get to it by plane. That’s just how land works up here, and it doesn’t change our answer. Back taxes owed to a borough won’t stop us. Neither will a title tangled up among heirs, or a tract you’ve never actually set foot on. If it’s Alaska land, tell us about it.
Alaska is owned differently from any other state, and that shapes the whole market for land here. Around 61 percent of it belongs to the federal government, one of the highest shares in the country. That’s the national parks and wildlife refuges, the Tongass and Chugach forests, military ground, and the petroleum reserve on the North Slope. The State of Alaska holds another 28 percent or so from its statehood grants, and Alaska Native corporations own about 44 million acres, roughly 12 percent, which counts as private land. Once you set all of that aside, there isn’t much left. Private land outside the Native corporations comes to less than one percent of the state, and every tract a regular owner can sell comes out of that thin slice.
That’s also why so much private land here is remote, sitting a long way from the road system. Here’s the part that surprises out-of-state owners: Alaska has no statewide property tax. Only organized boroughs and incorporated cities charge one. Much of the state falls in what’s called the Unorganized Borough, where there’s no local government to levy a tax at all, so a lot of rural land carries no yearly property-tax bill. There’s no state income tax either, no statewide sales tax, and no estate or inheritance tax. That changes the math on holding a piece you’re not using.
Water rights work in the seller’s favor up here too. Under the Alaska Water Use Act, a granted water right is appurtenant, which means it rides along with the land to whoever buys it, unless the state signs off on separating the two. That’s the opposite of how it works in a lot of Western states. When it comes to price, what really moves the number is the access, the region, and whether the title is clear.
“Working with Andrew at Haystack Land Company was an excellent experience. He went above and beyond to ensure my land was sold, handling every step of the process with efficiency and professionalism.”
Kelly T, verified Google review
When people sell land in Alaska, they’re usually choosing among three ways to do it. You can list it yourself, hire an agent, or sell straight to a cash buyer. Doing it yourself saves you the commission, but then the marketing, the vetting, and the closing paperwork are all on you. Out here that’s a hard road, because a remote tract just doesn’t draw many buyers to begin with.
An agent takes that work off your plate, but most of them sell houses in town. Fly-in land two boroughs away isn’t what they do, and the commission on raw land runs high, often 6 to 10 percent. A rural piece can sit on the market a year or more before anyone makes an offer, and you keep paying to hold it that whole time.
We’re the third option. Haystack Land Company buys with cash, so there’s no commission and nothing to list. We take care of the title work, the closing costs, and the paperwork. In most cases you’ll have a fair cash offer within 48 hours, and the sale closes in 30 to 45 days.
“We initially were in contact with Robert with Haystack. He maintained contact throughout the process which was so appreciated. Also communicated with the owner, Andy, who also kept us well informed of everything start to finish.”
Robyn G, verified Google review
A few things trip up owners selling Alaska land, especially from out of state. Here’s what to watch for.
A lot of owners assume they owe property tax when they don’t. Alaska has no statewide property tax at all. Only the organized boroughs and incorporated cities charge one, so if your tract sits in the Unorganized Borough and outside any city, it probably has no yearly property-tax bill. The state also skips income tax and has no estate or inheritance tax. Before you decide it costs too much to keep holding your land, find out what you’re actually paying to hold it.
This one trips people up. In a lot of Western states you have to file paperwork to move a water right along when you sell. Alaska runs the other way. Under the Alaska Water Use Act, a granted water right is appurtenant, so it just transfers with the land to the buyer unless the state approves splitting it off. Water here is a public resource, and normal household well use usually needs no permit. So don’t handle an Alaska water right the way a seller in Nevada would.
Having legal access on paper, along a section-line easement, doesn’t mean a road or even a trail was ever built, and the state isn’t obligated to build one. Anyone buying needs to know how you actually get to the land. Pull a current title report while you’re at it. Back taxes owed to a borough, an old lien, or an heir still listed on the deed can hold up a closing until it’s cleared.
A road-connected tract in the Mat-Su Valley and a fly-in tract out in the Interior aren’t worth the same, even if they’re the same size. Don’t price yours off a number you saw for some other piece of land. What moves the price is the access, the region, and whether the land’s been surveyed. Sales of similar tracts near yours will tell you far more than any statewide average.
Selling to a direct cash buyer like us is the fastest way, plain and simple. There’s no listing to put up, no showings, and no waiting on a buyer’s mortgage to come through. You fill out the form with your tract’s details, we look into it, and we get a fair cash offer to you, usually within 48 hours. We pay for the title work and the closing costs, and most sales close in 30 to 45 days, sometimes less than 30 days. Speed matters here more than almost anywhere, because a remote or fly-in piece can sit on the open market a year or longer. We take it as-is, the way it sits today.
There’s no single number for the whole state, because so much of it rides on access and where the land is. A road-connected piece in the Mat-Su Valley or on the Kenai Peninsula goes for a lot more per acre than a fly-in tract in the Interior or a water-access lot down in Southeast. Whether it’s been surveyed, whether you can legally and physically get to it, and how close it sits to a town all push the number up or down. Honestly, the best guide is what similar tracts near yours have sold for, not any average. Send us the details and we’ll give you a straight cash number.
If what you want is speed and a sure thing, selling to a direct cash buyer is usually the best fit for Alaska land. An agent can do fine with a house in town, but most of them don’t deal in remote land, and the commission runs 6 to 10 percent. You can sell it yourself and save that fee, but then the marketing and the paperwork land on you, with not many buyers around for an off-road tract. A cash buyer takes it as-is, handles the closing, and pays fast. It really comes down to whether you’d rather hold out for top dollar someday or be done in 30 to 45 days.
Alaska has no state income tax, so the sale itself isn’t taxed by the state. There’s no statewide sales tax and no estate or inheritance tax either. What can come up is federal capital-gains tax, and that depends on your basis, how long you owned the land, and your own situation. We buy land, we don’t give tax advice, so run your specific numbers by a CPA or tax professional before you sell. We can tell you what we’ll pay you. A tax pro can tell you what you’ll actually keep.
No, those days are gone. Homesteading ended in Alaska back in 1986, so you can’t claim free federal land anymore. These days the land comes from one of two places, the private market or the state. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources still sells raw land to regular people through over-the-counter sales, sealed-bid auctions, and a remote recreational cabin-staking program, though a few of those are open only to Alaska residents. That whole pipeline takes years to work through, from staking to lease to survey to purchase, and plenty of owners who went through it end up wanting out faster than they got in. That’s the land we buy.
Yes. Any U.S. citizen can buy private land in Alaska, and you don’t have to live in the state to do it. A lot of Alaska landowners are down in the Lower 48. Non-residents can buy on the private market and through some of the state land-sale programs, though that remote cabin-staking program is only for Alaska residents. And if you already own a tract here and just want to sell it, where you live makes no difference to us. We buy from in-state and out-of-state owners the same way, handle the closing from a distance, and pay cash.
Yes, you can, and we buy inherited tracts all the time. How quickly it goes depends on how the land came to you. If the previous owner recorded a transfer-on-death deed under Alaska’s Transfer on Death Act, the land passed to you outside of probate, and a clean sale can move fast. If there was no such deed, the estate usually has to clear probate first before the title is clear enough to sell. We’ve been through it both ways. Send us what you’ve got and we’ll tell you where things stand and what we can pay.
Often you don’t. Property tax in Alaska is a local thing, and a lot of rural land isn’t inside any taxing borough or city. The state charges no general property tax of its own. Organized boroughs and incorporated cities do charge one, but roughly half of Alaska is the Unorganized Borough, with no local government there to assess anything. So a remote tract outside any city may have no annual property-tax bill at all. If your land does sit inside a taxing borough, check for any back taxes before you sell, since those come out at closing.
Selling land in Alaska doesn’t have to drag out. Whether your tract sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the Kenai Peninsula Borough, the Fairbanks North Star Borough, the Municipality of Anchorage, the City and Borough of Juneau, Ketchikan Gateway Borough, or way out in the Unorganized Borough with no road to it, we’ll take a look and make you a fair cash offer. We’re the buyer, we cover the closing costs, and we handle the paperwork. Alaska land is squarely in our buy box. Fill out the form and we’ll get you a number.
“Andy Rouse and his team are very professional, efficient and reasonable to work with. Every discussion about the sale of the property was thoughtful and I never felt pressured.”
Carol C, verified Google review
