Sell Farmland and Invest in Income Producing Property?

[Mike Staheli]

Im hoping you guys can help me out here.  We have family farmland of about 20 acres right in the heart of a booming housing market.  I have  interested parties who could pay cash as we would not subordinate the land due to the unforeseen future.  The raw land value is worth about $100K-$120K/acre depending on how much fill and work needs to be done.  My idea that I'm going to present to the family is to sell the land and 1031 it into rental units.  I ran the numbers and we would get only about a 5.5% return or about $10,000/month. General consensus from the family is that we should do it with the least amount of risk. Could you think of a better way to do this? Thanks in advance for you advice!