Introduction

This publication presents estimates of Agricultural Land Prices for both arable land and permanent grassland per acre at a State and regional level. In interpretation of these figures, allowance should be made for the fact that only a small amount of agricultural land is sold each year. In addition to this, certain agricultural land transfers are excluded from the data (see exclusions for more information). For example, the volume of eligible land (i.e. all agricultural land sold minus excluded transactions) sold in 2016 was only 0.3% of the total agricultural land detailed in the most recent CSO Farm Structure Survey (FSS2013).

Methodology and Data Sources

Administrative data from the Revenue Commissioner’s Stamp Duty Return is used to calculate the median and mean price of land sold. To determine the land type description of the land sold, data matching is carried out using the Stamp Duty Return (SDR) data, Property Registration Authority of Ireland (PRAI) data, An Post Geo-Directory and the Census of Agriculture 2010 (COA). The stamp certificate number is used to match the SDR data to the PRAI data in order to acquire the X and Y co-ordinates related to the property. Using the Geo-directory data, the XY co-ordinates are matched to the small area code which is added to the SDR data. Finally the SDR data is matched to the COA data by the COA Small Area code and the land type associated with the sale is attached to the sale data.

Exclusions

As the statistics relate to land sold purely for agricultural use, the following transactions are excluded from the statistics:

• Transactions for non-agricultural purposes e.g. lifestyle buyers, construction sites, land identifiable as forestry etc.
• Transactions with monetary compensation attached to the land e.g. the sale or gift of land to charities or approved sporting bodies
• Any transactions with entitlements related to the land e.g. entitlements to Basic Payment Scheme are associated with the land and can be transferred when the land is sold
• Any land sold with a dwelling attached to the land
• Any inheritance transfer e.g. transfers of property to spouse, a descendant, civil partner or cohabitant
• Any commonage which is described as such in the PRAI data
• In addition to these exclusions, properties sold for under a threshold of €100 are excluded

Revisions

There are a few reasons why agricultural land price data may be revised in following years:

Stamp Duty Returns

The year of transaction for agricultural land transactions is taken from the execution date listed on the stamp duty return. The legal deadline for submitting stamp duty returns is within 44 days of the date of execution of the transaction. However, in some cases, returns are submitted later than this date and as a result more data becomes available in the following year.

Pending Registrations

To ensure that accurate data is used in agricultural land price statistics, only data which is listed as complete by the Property Registration Authority is used to calculate agricultural land prices. As a result, some property transactions which take place in the reference year may still be awaiting completion for a variety of reasons and therefore cannot be included at the time but may be available with the following year's data.

Definitions

Median Price per Acre: Median price is the value directly in the middle when the transactions are sorted in order of price per acre. By taking the median price, the final figure is less susceptible to being skewed in one direction or another by extremely large or extremely small values, giving a better idea of the typical price of one acre of land in Ireland.

Mean Price per Acre: The mean price per acre was calculated by dividing the total value of the land sold in each region by the total land sold in each region.

Value of Land Sold: The total amount of money spent on agricultural land.

Volume of Land Sold: The total area of agricultural land sold.

Arable Land: Land worked regularly, generally under a system of crop rotation.

Permanent Grassland: Land used permanently (for five or more years) to grow herbaceous forage crops, through cultivation (sown) or naturally (self-seeded) and which is not included in the crop rotation on the holding.

Commonage: Commonage is defined as land in which multiple tenants hold an undivided share in the property and have a distinct and separate interest in that property. The land is not physically divided so no one person owns a particular part of the property. That is to say, it is communally owned and operated and third parties must treat the co-owners as a single unit for transactions in respect of the land. Commonage land transactions are not included in the figures.

NUTS2 and NUTS3 Regions

The regional classifications in this release are based on the NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units) classification used by Eurostat.  The NUTS3 regions correspond to the eight Regional Authorities established under the Local Government Act, 1991 (Regional Authorities) (Establishment) Order, 1993, which came into operation on 1 January 1994. The NUTS2 regions, which were proposed by Government and agreed by Eurostat in 1999, are groupings of the NUTS3 regions. The composition of the regions is set out below.

Border Midland and Western NUTS 2 Region