42-acre Wexford farm jumps 82% in price in eight years

The farm consists of a mixture of tillage and grass in an area brimming with progressive farming of all types.

Last featured on these pages just two weeks ago, a 42-acre farm near Gorey in County Wexford had a successful public auction last week on Wednesday, December 7.

For sale with Quinn Property from their office in Carnew, County Wicklow, the Gorey-based auctioneers were selling the farm in the townland of Loggan; just over the county boundary in Wexford and approximately 10km from Carnew.

The farm consists of a mixture of tillage and grass in an area brimming with progressive farming of all types and the decision was made beforehand for the auction to be an online one – a staple of the auction scene since the Covid Lockdown. In this case, there were seven interested parties, who had registered in advance.

“We had it guided at around €10,000 per acre, or about €400,000 or €450,000,” says David Quinn of Quinn Property. “On the day, bidding started at €300,000. We had about six active bidders at the beginning and the bids came in pretty quickly and it was suddenly at €500,000.”

Having already exceeded the price expectation, there was a short recess and before the bidding resumed, the farm was declared as being on the market.

“We had three bidders then in the race,” says David. “They brought it up to a figure of €565,000, or €13,800 per acre.”

“It was a good strong result,” says David, “because some of the land ran quite high and it hadn’t got road frontage – only a right-of-way lane access, so it was a very strong result.”

“We had sold that land in 2014 for €310,000, so it was a great increase in those eight years. It shows you how the market has changed.”

The farmland accumulated a value giving it an 82% inflation rate over eight years. It was purchased by a dairy farmer from North Wexford, the selling agent says.