Friday, January 15, 2010
SALES of Irish farmland fell significantly in 2009 for the third year running, but there should be a levelling off by the end of this year, according to independent global property consultants Knight Frank Ireland.
In a national agricultural land price survey, carried out annually by the company, (formerly Ganly Walters) and published yesterday, it was found that in the past 12 months prices have fallen nationally by as much as 43.3% on average.
The national average price paid for farmland in 2009 was €9,678 per acre. This represents the drop of 43.3%, based on the average price of €17,081 being paid per acre for sales in 2008 (excluding the Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow region).
Last year also saw a much larger drop than that for the previous year. Sales in 2008, with an average price of€21,145 paid per acre for the entire country, fell nationally by 16.8%.
However, the percentage drop of 43% year on year is slightly better, rising to 34% for 2009, when one particular sale of a 1,540-acre estate at Fanore, Co Clare, sold for €1.157 million is taken out of the equation. Without this sale, the national average price paid rises from €9,678 to €11,236 per acre in 2009.
Farmland prices declined significantly countrywide, but nowhere as much as in the Dublin/Kildare/Wicklow region, where prices dropped on average by as much as 56.6%.
For the first time in the 17 years since the survey was first undertaken by Ganly Walters, now Knight Frank Ireland, there were no recorded land sales at all in County Dublin. This total lack of sales would account largely for the huge 56.5% year on year drop in the Dublin/Kildare/Wicklow region.
In Dublin and surrounding counties Kildare and Wicklow (which are analysed separately because of the significantly higher prices paid for farmland in this region), the average price paid was €10,920 per acre in 2009, down from the previous year’s €25,210 per acre.
Robert Ganly, head of Country and Residential at Knight Frank Ireland, said a major contributing factor to the marked decline in the average price per acre in this premier region is that there were no recorded land sales in Co Dublin for, as far as it knows, the first time in 17 years and probably much longer.
The entire country on average fell slightly less, with prices €9,678 per acre in 2009, down from the previous year’s average of €17,081 per acre, representing an overall reduction of €7,403 per acre compared to a drop of €14,290 per acre in the Dublin/Kildare/Wicklow region.
Mr Ganly said that the overall decline in farmland prices over the last two to three years only mirrors the general decline across property markets in Ireland and internationally.
"The high prices that were paid for agricultural land up to 2007 were mainly non-farmer driven and it is our belief that the market has now stabilised", he said.
Mr Ganly said access to credit has had a major impact on the market over the past 12 months but the decline in land prices should level off in 2010.
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