This article is from page 55 of the 2008-01-22 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 55 JPG
has learned.
According to new figures made available for the first time last week, the average price paid for farm land in Clare, Donegal and the counties of Connacht was just €15,293 per acre in 2007.
While this represents an increase of €1,206 on the 2006 average, it is still well below the national average per acre for farm land of €20,367.
This is according to the national
agricultural land price survey, which is carried out each year by the Irish office of Knight Frank.
On a national level, the price of farmland stabilised this year despite the difficulties experiences in many sections of the property market.
The national average price per acre was down €415 or 1.9 per cent on av- erage compared to 2006.
Despite the drop, indicators sug- gest that 2008 could see a return to increasing prices for farm land.
‘There was a welcome rise in farm incomes in 2007 and those farmers who sold land for development, road building in recent years will continue
to be keen to buy other land to farm in its place,” said Knight Frank part- ner and Head of Ireland Residential, Robert Ganly.
“If the volume of land sales in- crease with a moderation of demand, then land prices are likely to stabilise or decrease by just a single digit per- centage overall in the coming year.
“Looking ahead, farmland prices through 2008 and beyond will be in- fluenced by a wide range of interna- tional and domestic factors and will perhaps only partly reflect trends in the general Irish property market.”
The survey also found that the amount of farmland sold nationally
last year dropped, following on from 2006 which saw no increase in the number of farmland sales on the pre- vious year.
In total there were 154 reported sales in 2007, representing a 41 per cent decrease from the previous year’s 261.
The total area of land sold in 2007 was 9,933 acres, a decrease of 30 per cent on the previous year.
The survey also showed that the av- erage plot size was down last year to 64.50 acres from 54 acres in 2006. This was a continuation of a previous trend, as plot size was also down in 2006 from the previous year.