This paper investigates the role of information and search cost in the price formation in thin farmland markets. We adopt a hedonic pricing model under incomplete information to analyze a comprehensive data set with more than 10,000 transactions between 2014{2017 in the Eastern German state Saxony-Anhalt. Estimation employs a two-tiered stochastic frontier to capture deviations from the ecient price due to search costs asymmetrically distributed between buyers and sellers. Relating these costs to the degree of professionalism, we nd institutional sellers relying on public tenders to achieve the lowest losses from being information decient. For buyers, we nd informational advantages in particular for farmers that are also tenants, while non-tenant farmers have only advantages for large transactions.