I think is a little more complicated than that.
Put yourself in the shoes of a lender.
I come to you and I say, you know my business (here it is the first flag for TATF)banks are not stupid, they know what is going on with their largest clients.
Imagine how smart bankers are that they got the biggest rescue package in the history of human kind.
I tell you as my banker, here is a piece of the farmland that I want as collateral for $XXX adn the machinery I want to buy is insured and is also the collateral for you, but look as you know the trees in the land are no mine, I have contracts out for 25 years for the ownership of the trees.
For you as a bank, this farmland de facto has not value until those contracts are expired.
There is not clear immediate liquidity, a bank will have a hard time to justify the loan near raw market value; in a situation like that you should expect to receive a very small amount with a very large collateral and probably at above market rates.
As long as trees keep been sold, good forest land with liquidity is still a good asset at market prices, and there is the other hole in the ground.
Raw land market might be dead, but it is not at the buyer's price, same with trees. I can say that there are buyers the problems is that sellers do not like what they hear as the offering price.
Personally, I have not had problem getting loan commitments from lenders and loans to put offers in the table, my problem has been the increase in lower quality collateral and the increasing rates for bridge-loans. Reason why I dropped more deals than ever.
