Much attention has been given in recent years to the conversion of substantial amounts of rural land to urban uses. A variety of policies designed to encourage the retention of rural open space have been either proposed or implemented by many state and local governments. Because the decision to convert land to urban uses is generally a private decision in response to market forces, an understanding of these market forces should facilitate better policy development and implementation. This paper reports on a research project designed to explore the forces affecting rural land prices in areas where the rural land market is significantly influenced by the demand for land for urban or suburban uses. Publicly available data on transfers of rural land were analyzed, using a multiple regression model, to both identify and quantify the importance of factors affecting rural land prices.