Land values up 33% in 2012

AVERAGE land values in the county rose by 33% in 2012 compared to the previous year. The average price paid for an acre of land last year was €8,660, up from €6,528 in 2011.
According to The Irish Farmer Journal’s annual land price magazine, last year in Clare 2,059 acres were offered for sale, up from 1,826 acres in 2011.
Of the 50 farms offered for sale, 26 were parcels of under 40 acres and 22 were parcels of between 40 and 99 acres.Of those 50 farms, 56% were for sale by private treaty while 44% were by public auction. A total of 27% of the farms were sold under the hammer.
Journalist Joanne Fox, author of the Land Price Report 2012, said the agricultural land market in 2012 had shown the first signs of recovery since the sudden land price collapse in 2006.
She told The Clare Champion factors that heavily influenced the price paid for land around the country in 2012 included the quality of the land offered for sale, the demand in the area for land, the amount of land on the market in any one area and the all-important issue of access to finance.
Ms Fox said a belief that land prices had bottomed out is encouraging farmers to invest in land rather than having money on deposit.
Substantially more land came on the market in 2012, due in part to the increased confidence in farming and also an element of forced sales. She pointed out, nationally, the price of agricultural land increased to just under €10,000 an acre.
Ms Fox said there was a very wide variation in the price of land in Clare, with a 48-acre parcel at Darragh selling for €140,000, or 42,917 an acre, at auction while at the other end of the scale a 14-acre parcel of land in Dysart sold at auction for €209,000, or €14,929 an acre.
There was a standout parcel of land offered for sale when the 245-acre Tinarana estate, on the outskirts of Killaloe, was sold by private treaty.
“Bigger farms were a rare commodity in County Clare. With the exception of Tinarana Estate, only one other farm of more than 100 acres was offered for sale by private treaty in the county in 2012,” she added.
While the majority of sales in Clare continue to change hands by private treaty, some sales were completed at auction in 2012. Sixty-two acres of good quality grazing land in Kilkee sold for €375,000, or €6,048 an acre, while 27 acres of good quality land in the Quin area sold for €335,000 or €12,407 an acre.