All eyes on top land sale
The year has been a very interesting one for Tipperary farm land. According to a recent survey, more land came up for public auction in the Premier County than did in the whole of the rest of Munster, writes
Sales under the hammer in Tipperary alone accounted for over 60% of the total number in the province.
Normally, Cork is the one to lead the charge in this regard and the lack of supply of good land on the market is a constant complaint amongst Tipperary auctioneers and the farming community alike.
Public auctions became ever more popular throughout the year and there were some extraordinary results, with the stand-out event coming in September when a 119-acre portion of a 130-acre farm in the Golden Vale sold for €17,650/acre at auction in the Cashel Marts.
It will be very intriguing, therefore, to see how well this 63-acre piece of ground will fare going into the New Year. Located just outside Thurles in South Tipperary, it contains a mixture of agricultural land (approximately 57 acres) and industrial-zoned land.
The entire holding is to be sold as one, however, with no splitting up of the two distinct sections.
The interesting thing will be to see who buys it: A farmer who will sell on the commercial chunk at a later date?
“Yes,” says selling agent Vincent Ryan of Thomas V Ryan Auctioneers in Thurles, “or it could be the other way around — someone looking for a commercial piece of land and who will sell on the bulk of it to a farmer.
“From an agricultural point of view, if you take the location alone, it’s ideal — just outside of town. At the moment, there are about a dozen horses on it. It needs to be reclaimed, re-seeded and re-worked but if someone got their hands on it, it would make for a very attractive holding.”
The property is located just off the N62 about half a kilometre from the southern side of Thurles itself and close to the Thurles Golf Course. The agricultural part is separated from the industrial parcel by a narrow river. It enjoys great road frontage and can be accessed via the Mill Road or through the Archerstown Industrial Estate. There aren’t any outbuildings or buildings of any kind on the property and the river is the only source of water on it so far.
This industrial estate forms part of an industrial property scene zone that has been sluggish of late by all accounts. The pick-up since the downturn has been a curiously slow affair outside of particular locations and sectors, but industrial growth such as we’re witnessing at the moment eventually comes around to affecting all sectors and areas and it’s a reasonable expectation to predict things to finally pick up on that front after the doldrums of the last decade.
Meanwhile, there is no doubting the level of demand for agricultural land in South Tipperary.
“It has been a good year for us,” says Mr Ryan, who presided over a number of eyebrow-raising sales during the course of the years, including the €2.2 million sale of a 217-acre farm last June. “Everything we had, we sold. There are still a lot of disappointed under-bidders around.
“We’ve had a decent response already,” admits the agent, “even though all we’ve done so far is put it up on the Internet.”
The guide price is €500,000. At around €8,000/acre, it’s a level that reflects the need for quite a bit of work to be done on the land. It is also an attractive entry price that could just pull in some of those disappointed under-bidders from the year’s activity. The cherry on top is that they will be likely to find plenty of buyers for the industrial section over the coming few years.
