The total area of agricultural land that has been offered up for sale in NI during 2025 is 5% lower than last year.

Records compiled by the Irish Farmers Journal show that 12,994 acres of land was publicly advertised for sale this year, which is 717 acres less than in 2024.

Overall, there were 469 agricultural properties on the market during 2025, which means the average lot equated to 28 acres in size.

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Across the total agricultural area in NI, the acreage publicly offered up for sale equates to just 0.62% of the overall grassland and arable area.

Tight supply

At that rate of turnover, a given area of land will only be advertised for sale once every 161 years.

Local auctioneers point out that the extremely tight supply of land that becomes available to buy is a major factor underpinning the robust land market in NI.

Counties

Looking at individual counties, the biggest change in 2025 was seen in Derry where the area offered up for sale rose by 45% to 2,659 acres.

However, figures for the county are heavily influenced by the 1,075ac Eglinton Estate which came on the market back in June 2025.

When that single property is removed from the calculations, the remaining acreage for sale in Derry is actually 13% lower than the 2024 total.

In Tyrone, the area publicly advertised in the county rose by 30% this year to reach 2,928 acres and there was a 4% rise in Antrim where 2,983 acres were for sale.

There was a sharp drop seen in Down where the total area on the market fell by 41% to 2,010 acres.

A similar reduction of 37% was seen in Fermanagh, with 1,129 acres for sale in the county.

In Armagh, there were 1,285 acres publicly advertised for sale which is down 15% year on year.

Land type

The figures in our dataset only cover land that was advertised for sale in newspapers and online, so private transactions are not included.

Likewise, the outlined figures only includes land which can be described as arable grade, suitable for silage or good-quality grazing.

However, a separate set of records for hill ground and rough grazing shows that 3,601 acres were advertised for sale in NI during 2025.

The figure represents a 46% jump on the year previous and is mainly down to larger blocks of land being offered up for sale.

Our figures show there were 33 separate lots of hill land publicly available to buy this year, which makes the average property 109 acres in size.

It compares to 31 parcels of hill land averaging 80 acres in size last year.