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Background Notes

Background Notes

CSO statistical release, , 11am
Frontier Series Output

This release is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources.

Introduction

This release presents estimates of Residentially Zoned Land prices per acre at State and regional level. In interpretation of these figures, allowance should be made for the fact that only a small amount of Residentially Zoned Land is sold each year. In addition to this, certain Residentially Zoned Land transfers are excluded from the data (See Exclusions for more information).

Methodology and Data Sources

Administrative data from the Revenue Commissioner’s Stamp Duty Returns is used to calculate the median and mean price of land sold. To determine the type of land sold, data matching is carried out using the Stamp Duty Return (SDR) data, Property Registration Authority of Ireland (PRAI) data and the MyPlan.ie data.

The stamp certificate number is used to match the SDR data to the PRAI data to acquire the X and Y co-ordinates and the area of the land. The XY co-ordinates are used to match to the MyPlan.ie data to define the zoning of the land sold.

Exclusions

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

  • Transactions for agricultural purposes, 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 land sold with a dwelling attached to the land
  • Any inheritance transfers, e.g. transfers of property to spouse, a descendant, civil partner, or cohabitant
  • Any commonage land, which is described as such in the PRAI data
  • Land not zoned as residential or mixed use
  • Transactions where more than 50% of the land was not zoned for residential or mixed use

Limitations

The value and volume of transactions in this release do not include all Residentially Zoned Land sales. Only transactions where the land area could be verified at the time of sale are included. Verification rates are higher in recent years compared with earlier ones. As a result, comparisons across years, such as the number of transactions, total land area sold, and overall value, are not reliable, since differences are largely driven by the ability to verify land area.

MyPlan.ie does not include up-to-date zoning plans for all 31 local authorities. Where updated plans were unavailable, the most recent expired plans were used instead. This may have led to the exclusion of some transactions involving Residentially Zoned Land if zoning designations had changed between plan versions.

 At the time of analysis:

  • Updated plans were available for 22 local authorities
  • Some five authorities had partially updated plans
  • A further four authorities were missing the most recent plans entirely

These gaps in zoning data may affect the completeness and accuracy of the analysis.

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 Residentially Zoned Land in Ireland.

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

Value of Land Sold: The total amount of money spent on purchases of Residentially Zoned Land where the land area could be verified.

Volume of Land Sold: The total area of Residentially Zoned Land sold where the land area could be verified.

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.

NUTS3 Regions

The regional classifications in this release are based on the NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units) as set in the Commission Regulation (EU) 2016/2066. The NUTS3 regions correspond to the eight Regional Authorities established under the 2014 Local Government Act (Regional Authorities). The composition of the regions is set out below:

  • Border (Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Monaghan, and Sligo)
  • Dublin (Dublin)
  • Mid-East (Kildare, Louth, Meath, and Wicklow)
  • Midlands (Laois, Longford, Offaly, and Westmeath)
  • Mid-West (Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary)
  • South-East (Carlow, Kilkenny, Waterford, and Wexford)
  • South-West (Cork and Kerry)
  • West (Galway, Mayo, and Roscommon)

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