Welcome to the Irish Farmers Journal Agricultural Land Price Report 2019. This is the 13th report we have compiled in as many years and it is an invaluable product for farmers and rural families.
Since 2007, the Agricultural Land Price Report has charted the highs and lows that came with the Celtic Tiger and the subsequent “bust”.
“The boom is back” is a phrase that has been heard again in recent years, as unemployment levels reached record lows. In terms of agricultural land prices, this may be evident in counties that share a border with Dublin, but outside of that, the record highs of the time are not being reflected in our average values.
Average price
The average price of land in 2019 was €8,971/ac, the Irish Farmers Journal can exclusively reveal. This is 1.1% less than 2018, which means that prices have hovered around the €9,000/ac mark for five years now.
Main observation
However, the main observation from 2019 is not the price, but the level of supply on the market. There were just 1,662 agricultural properties recorded on the market last year, down 20% on 2018.
This goes to show that there were huge concerns about Brexit and beef prices from sellers, in particular, who held off on putting their land on the market.
Long-term leasing has also become a popular option for landowners, as Lorcan Allen reports.
The results presented in this report were gathered from 783 land sales in the Republic of Ireland, mostly over a five-week period at the start of the year.
The report compares and contrasts prices across the Republic of Ireland in the main.
Peter McCann compiled the Northern Ireland section of the report and has compared prices with those in the Republic of Ireland as well.
The average price in the North in 2019 also slipped slightly, by 2.2% to £9,956/ac (€11,342/ac).
UK prices
This year’s report reflects more than just Irish land prices and I am delighted to have the input from Savills’ UK rural research team members Angus Locke and Ian Bailey.
They provide a helicopter view of land prices in England, Scotland, Wales and, indeed, the world.
This was my first time compiling the Agricultural Land Price Report and I could not have done it without the help of both my colleagues and the estate agents across the country who trusted the girl with the strange name calling them from the Irish Farmers Journal in Bluebell.
There were huge concerns about Brexit and beef prices from sellers, in particular, who held off on putting their land on the market
I only began working as property editor last November and had very little time to get to know people in the business before working on this report.
So I would like to thank my predecessors, Shirley Busteed and Anthony Jordan, who built up the relationship between the Irish Farmers Journal and auctioneers across the country. I would also like to thank all of the auctioneers who took time out of their day to speak to me and share their experience and information.
I would like to thank my colleagues, who help with this publication every year.
Firstly, I would like to thank Andy Doyle, who not only produces the data in a more interpretable format, but who also deals with many other queries that pop up from time to time when writing this report.
I would also like to thank Eleanor McBennett, who gathers the information on land sales advertised throughout the year with the utmost efficiency.
Last but not least, I would like to thank the production team, who do an absolutely stellar job of turning this information into an attractive report.
To the contributors – Lorcan Allen, Peter McCann, James Staines, Rose Keating, Amii McKeever, Angus Locke, Ian Bailey and Declan McEvoy – thank you for all your insights and support.
Read more
Land report 2019: uncertainty dominates the market sentiment
This is a subscriber-only article
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