{"id":3127,"date":"2011-12-23T10:30:05","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T17:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=3127"},"modified":"2011-12-23T09:23:38","modified_gmt":"2011-12-23T16:23:38","slug":"reporters-notebook-how-to-get-information-in-a-non-disclosure-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2011\/12\/23\/reporters-notebook-how-to-get-information-in-a-non-disclosure-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Reporter’s Notebook: How to Get Information in a Non-Disclosure State"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Molly Messick \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p>

In Idaho's tight-knit community of real estate brokers and buyers, no one would share Charlie Bryan's name with a reporter. Drive past his office, though, and there it is, on the sign.<\/p><\/div>\n

While reporting our recent story<\/a> about Idaho farmland prices and investor interest in cropland, I ran across a quirk of Idaho law that posed a bit of a challenge: sales prices aren’t public information.\u00a0 Idaho is one of ten states that are known, in the real estate business, as “non-disclosure states.”\u00a0 For a better understanding of what that means, I called up the Idaho State Tax Commission’s Property Tax Policy Supervisor, Alan Dornfest.<\/p>\n

Dornfest says “non-disclosure” is a bit of a misnomer.\u00a0 It’s not that Idaho prohibits disclosure.\u00a0 It’s that the state doesn’t mandate it.\u00a0 “There is no disclosure law,” he said.\u00a0 “We simply don’t have a requirement, like most states do, for one of the transactors in that land sale, or building sale, or whatever it was to tell a government entity the sale price.”<\/p>\n

In other words, if you walk into a county assessor’s office hoping to get a sense of recent farmland sales prices, you might find something useful (people can choose to give the information, after all.)\u00a0 But, given that farmers are\u00a0known for their taciturnity, you probably won’t find much of anything.\u00a0 Klaren Koompin, one of two brothers behind a large-scale Power County operation called Koompin Farms, said the recent sales records he’s seen disclose very little.\u00a0 “Usually the amount is listed as ‘for sums rendered,'” he said.\u00a0 And the highest-price sale he knows of?\u00a0 You won’t see it on file.\u00a0 “Four-hundred and eighty acres that sold for $10,000 an acre, you could not find that at the courthouse,” he said.\u00a0 “But it happened.”<\/p>\n

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