Answers · Comparing Your Options
Should I finance equipment through the dealer or borrow against my land?
For new equipment, take dealer financing — captive lenders like John Deere Financial run promotional rates, sometimes 0–3%, that no land-secured loan can touch, and the debt is non-recourse to your dirt. Land equity makes sense for used equipment, private-party purchases, or bundling several needs into one facility.
Captive equipment lenders subsidize rates to sell iron; that subsidy is real money and you should take it. Dealer paper also matches term to asset life — 5–7 years on a machine that depreciates on the same curve — and keeps your land unencumbered for the borrowing that only land can support. Encumbering 160 acres to buy a $180,000 tractor is bad collateral management even when the math looks close.
The gaps in dealer financing are where land equity earns its place: used equipment at auction, private-party sales with no captive lender attached, packages a dealer will not finance, or a credit profile the captive declines. In those cases, a loan against land you own free and clear turns equity into operating capacity — one facility, one payment, funds usable across equipment, improvements, and working capital.
One discipline if you go the land route: match the payoff plan to the equipment's earning life, not the loan's maximum term. Land-secured money is patient, and patience is exactly how equipment debt outlives the machine it bought.
The Turnrow angle
Honest answer: dealer promo rates beat us — take them. Turnrow's cash-out lane fits the auction buy or the bundled need dealer paper cannot reach, without tax returns and inside a month.
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