Common Mineral Owner Questions and Answers in 2024

As a mineral owners, it can be difficult to find reliable and trustworthy information about your mineral rights.   At US Mineral Exchange, our goal is to provide accurate information that a mineral owner can rely on.

After spending years helping mineral owners sell mineral rights, there are a number of common mineral owner questions and answers.  We have compiled all of these questions below to help you gain a better understand your mineral rights.  Whether you decide to sell mineral rights at US Mineral Exchange or not, the questions and answers below should be a valuable resource.

Find the section below that best describes your question:

Most Common Questions

There are many different factors that will affect the value of your mineral rights. All of these factors will play a role in determining the value of mineral rights. Here are just a few of the factors that will affect mineral rights value:

  • State & County
  • Location within the County
  • Whether the property is producing royalties
  • Whether the property is leased
  • Oil and Gas Prices
  • Surrounding Production
  • Lease Terms
  • Mineral Rights Buyers

The truth is that it’s extremely difficult to determine the exact value of mineral rights until they are put up for sale. When you sell mineral rights and get the property in front of a large audience of buyers, it allows the market to determine the true value of your property. For additional information regarding the value of mineral rights, please read the articles below:

Estimated Mineral Rights Value

Market Value of Mineral Rights

If you want to sell mineral rights for the maximum value possible, the only way to do this is get the property in front of a large audience of buyers. Why is that important? When you get your property in front of a large network of mineral rights buyers, they will compete against one another to pay the highest price. This allows you to carefully evaluate each offer that comes in and then determine which offer best meets your needs.

The most common mistake a mineral owner makes is accepting the first offer they receive. Many mineral owners are afraid that they will lose out if they don’t accept the offer in their hand. The reality is that you can often get substantially more by shopping your property around and finding the buyer who is willing to pay the highest amount. Don’t be pressured into quickly signing anything or selling before you are ready. Your mineral rights may be extremely valuable and you want to make sure you get the maximum value when you sell mineral rights.

You basically have two options when it comes to selling mineral rights. You can either:

1) Choose to sell mineral rights yourself. This will require you to search out individual buyers on your own and hope that you find the one who can pay the highest amount. In addition, you will need to be careful that you are working with a reputable buyer.  This is called the shotgun approach and we strongly recommend against this.

2) Choose to sell mineral rights with US Mineral Exchange. Our company is 100% dedicated to helping mineral owners sell mineral rights for the highest possible price. We only work with reputable mineral rights buyers and we have a massive network of buyers who make offers on properties.  We will help ensure the best price and also make sure everything goes smoothly every step of the way.

Want to sell mineral rights? Fill out the free consultation form and we’ll be in touch: Free Consultation

If you received an offer to sell mineral rights, that’s great news! It means there is demand for your property and there will likely be other buyers who are also interested in making an offer on your property.

The first thing you should do is ask for the offer in writing. A reputable company would be willing to put the offer in writing and give you some time to evaluate the offer. With one offer in hand, you now have a starting point for how much your mineral rights are worth.

The next thing you should do is contact US Mineral Exchange and provide any documentation you have available. Let’s pretend that you received an offer to sell mineral rights for $5,000/acre. Once you list at US Mineral Exchange, you’ll get offers from other buyers which will help you determine if $5,000/acre is a fair price. You may get a few offers in that all fall under $5,000/acre which tells you that the offer is a good one and you should accept it. However, nearly all mineral owners find that after listing at US Mineral Exchange they get offers that are significantly higher than the initial offer they received.

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Mineral Rights Value

If you are currently receiving monthly royalty checks, it’s much easier to determine the value. The value of royalties is typically based on the monthly amount you receive from your royalties. As a general guideline, you could expect to get anywhere from 4 years to 6 years times the average amount you receive each month.

Use the calculator below to quickly get an estimate of the value of royalties:

Keep in mind that the range of values provided above may be significantly less than the true value if there is additional drilling opportunities for your property. Many mineral owners receive multiple offers when they list royalties for sale.

If you specific questions about your property, contact us using the free consultation form below. We speak with mineral owners every day about their specific property and help them get a better understanding of the value they will receive when selling mineral rights.  Please provide us with your last 3 months of check stub detail if you get royalties OR your lease agreement and order for payment if your property is currently leased.

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When you want to find the value of your home, you just head over to Zillow for a quick estimate. Unfortunately there is no Zillow of mineral rights. The reason is that mineral rights value is typically kept private when a sale occurs so there is no public information to pull from.

It is extremely important to understand that there are no comps in the mineral rights market.  No two properties are ever the same and the value will never be the same.  There are too many factors that affect mineral rights value to do comps in this industry or get an accurate appraisal.

There are a few reasons why it’s so difficult to find out the value of mineral rights:

Location: Your location will have a huge impact on the value of mineral rights. There is no way to give a specific value for mineral rights without knowing the exact state, county, and even the location within the county. Even then, every buyer values a property differently.

Oil and Gas Prices: With the recent decline in oil and gas prices, mineral rights value has been affected. While buyers realize that the price goes up and down, they do pay close attention to the price of oil and gas when making a decision to purchase mineral rights.

Timing: The price of oil and gas, geopolitical issues, new information about production in the area, and many other factors affect the value. We have seen many mineral owners who declined offers because they believed the value would increase over time. A drop in oil and gas prices or a few bad wells drilled in their area and they can no longer get offers anywhere near what they received in the past.

Individual Buyers: Every buyer is going to value a property differently. In fact, the difference between what one buyer offers and the next can be significant. One buyer may believe a property is worth $5,000/acre and the next believes it’s worth $8,000/acre. You want to make sure you find the buyer who is willing to pay the highest value.

Limited Information: One of the main reasons it’s so difficult to value mineral rights is that the information is not public. There is no way to know what properties are selling for unless you were directly involved in a specific mineral rights sale.

All of these items make valuing mineral rights very difficult. Your best bet is to fill out the free consultation form below and we can talk about your specific property. While we can’t give you an exact value, we can help you estimate the value of your mineral rights and then sell for maximum value.

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Short answer:  Typically $0 to very little!

If you have non-producing mineral rights, it means that your mineral rights are NOT currently producing and you do not receive royalties.  Mineral rights buyers do not like to purchase non-leased / non-producing mineral rights.  The reason is that there is no upside in most cases.  If you property has no active lease and you don’t get royalty income, they are stuck holding the mineral rights for years or even decades.  They may never get their money back which makes mineral rights that are non-leased / non-producing very speculative.

In general, we do not list non-leased / non-producing properties at US Mineral Exchange. Typically the value of non-leased / non-producing acreage is in the range of $0 to $250/acre depending on the state and county. We do make rare exceptions for clients who have a substantial (250+ net mineral acres) amount of non-leased / non-producing acreage, have a recently expired lease, or have offers in excess of $50,000. Please contact us if you are unsure about what the potential value might be and we can point you in the right direction.

Selling Mineral Rights at US Mineral Exchange

When you sell mineral rights at US Mineral Exchange, we need some documentation.  Similar to selling a home, you want to present your property to market in the best way possible.  Please review the required documents to list page.  Once you have your documentation pulled together, contact us for a free consultation.  We’ll review your documentation and discuss the next steps in the process of selling mineral rights.

If you want to sell mineral rights for the highest possible value, it’s important to have documentation that proves your ownership. Buyers will be significantly more interested in your property if they have some documentation to review.   Depending in the situation, we need different documentation.   Check out our required documents to list page for more information.   Below is a quick summary of what we need:

If you receive royalty income:

  • Check Stubs –  We need to see full copies of your 3 most recent check stubs.  This is NOT the summary or total payment amount.  It needs to be the full detail showing the wells you are being paid on, revenue interest, etc.  If you do not have copies, please contact the operator who is paying you royalties to obtain copies.
  • Existing Offers –  Please provide us with your best offer in writing.

If your property is leased, but you do NOT receive royalty income:

  • Lease Agreement –  We need to see a full copy (all pages and addendum’s) of your lease agreement.  An expired lease agreement also works if you don’t have an active lease agreement.   A proposed leased is also acceptable.
  • Order for Payment –  Some documentation (bank statement, order for payment, letter agreement, etc) showing the amount you were paid in total and per acre when you signed your lease agreement.
  • Existing Offers –  Please provide us with your best offer in writing.

Extra Credit (optional but helpful):

  • Mineral Deed
  • Previous Year(s) 1099
  • Division Orders
  • Tax Documentation

The more information you can provide the better!

Nothing!

There are absolutely no cost to list your property. We operate using a success-based fee. Meaning that if we cannot get your property sold, you owe us absolutely nothing. All offers we present to you are net of our commission. If you accept an offer presented, the buyer or the buyers closing agent pays us our commission directly at closing.

No.  Unless we find you an offer you want to accept you do not have to accept any offer to sell mineral rights you receive through US Mineral Exchange.

Many mineral owners have an offer in hand when they find US Mineral Exchange.  The worst mistake you can make it accepting the offer in hand!  You will likely be leaving thousands of dollars on the table.  In addition, you leave yourself open to shady buyers who will take advantage of you.   Before you accept an offer, it is extremely important to get your property in front of thousands of mineral buyers.  You want all the buyers in the market to compete for your property.  You would be shocked how much more you will receive!

We require you to list your property for a minimum of 30 days.

The reason we require 30 days is that listing for less than 30 days does not give buyers enough time to evaluate properties. Buyers prefer US Mineral Exchange because the listings we post are from mineral owners who are serious about getting their property sold. Committing to list your property for 30 days shows buyers you are serious, and in turn, means more buyers will evaluate your property and you’ll end up making more money!  The only reason a property stays listed for longer than 30 days on our platform is because the starting bid price is too high.

At US Mineral Exchange, we take privacy very seriously! Our system was designed so that none of your information is available publicly online. Only registered buyers can see the details of your property. We manually review each and every buyer that signs up at US Mineral Exchange to ensure they are a reputable mineral rights buyer before they can access our system.

Please check out our in depth what to expect after listing article which thoroughly explains the process.

It really depends on your specific property.  However, the majority of properties are under contract within 30 days.   The typical time frame to start receiving offers is 1 to 3 weeks.   In some areas where there is very strong demand it can happen as quickly as 1 week and for other areas it can take up to 3 weeks.

Free Consultation

Whether you are thinking about selling mineral rights, want to know more about the value of your mineral rights, or anything else related to your mineral rights ownership, we are here to help.

Simply fill out the free consultation form below.  We will quickly be in touch to help answer your questions.

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Common Questions

The more information you can provide about your property the better!  We can give you a better idea about the value of selling mineral rights if you provide more information.  The most important thing we need is for you to answer the questions and provide your state and county.

If you have the required documents to list, providing those is extremely helpful!

Absolutely not!  When you inquire at US Mineral Exchange we will not be putting any pressure on you to sell.  We will help answer any questions you have whether you are interested in selling or not.

We typically respond to inquiries in less than 12 hours and usually within hours of submitting the contact form. At US Mineral Exchange our goal is to be available to mineral owners as a resource so we pride ourselves on quickly replying and communicating with mineral owners.

At US Mineral Exchange, we take privacy very seriously. We will NEVER sell your information or use it without your consent. When you send us documentation or tell us about your property, that information does not go outside our company without your consent. Even when you list a property for sale on our website, we strictly control who has access to the information about your listing so that only legitimate buyers will be able to see property details.

Many mineral owners make the mistake of getting an offer and quickly selling.   They then accept an offer far below market value because they felt pressure to sell.   There is nearly always a better price available.

Imagine you were selling a home.  Would you get the best price from a random person who walks up and makes you an offer?  No way!  Now imagine you list the home on the MLS where thousands of potential buyers know your house is for sale.   The key to getting the best price is competition.  Our guide to selling mineral rights explains everything.

The reason that so many mineral owners decide to sell mineral rights at US Mineral Exchange is access to our large network of mineral rights buyers. Our goal is to help you get top dollar for selling mineral rights by getting your property in front of a huge audience of buyers. This allows buyers to compete against one another which ensures you get fair market value for selling mineral rights.

There are absolutely no cost to list your property.  When you locate a buyer by listing your property with us, we are paid a commission directly by the buyers closing agent. This means you never have any out of pocket expenses ever.  We only get paid if we can get you a better price than the current offer you have in hand.

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