The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today, 10th February 2022, published the Agricultural Land Prices 2020. This publication presents key indicators on Agricultural Land sold in the state in 2020.

The report also includes revision to the results for previous years 2013 to 2019. These revisions reflect a more complete picture of agricultural land sales.

When the series was introduced in 2017, the analysis was confined to transactions which were confirmed as completed on the Property Registration Authority (PRA) system. Transactions marked as pending at the end of the relevant year were not included in the calculations. On further examining data relating to pending transactions, the CSO has decided to include both completed and pending transactions in the yearly analysis. The effect of this change is further described below.

Overview

During 2021, the CSO reviewed the scope of the data used in compiling the Agricultural Land Prices release. This release uses data from a number of administrative and statistical data sources, to compile the annual series on land prices. The data sources and how they are linked for this statistical analysis, are described in further detail in the publication background notes located here: Background Notes

One of the principal datasets used is the PRA data on property transactions. Upon first analysis of the 2020 data, the CSO noted that the number of completed transactions on the PRA dataset was much lower than expected in a typical year and the PRA confirmed that this was due to the impact of COVID-19 on the processing of transactions.

The PRA dataset contains an XY location co-ordinate for each property, which enables the linkage with other datasets. Linking with the Revenue Stamp Duty data using this location co-ordinate enables the CSO to distinguish agricultural land transactions from other property transactions. Previously, only transactions that were marked as completed by year-end were included in the analysis. This is because location co-ordinate, which is necessary for the analysis is only finalised on the PRA system when a transaction is confirmed as completed.

Following further examination of the 2020 and previous years' data and after consultation with the PRA in relation to the data, the CSO has found that the accuracy of the location co-ordinate for non-completed (pending) transactions on the PRA system is sufficient for the purposes of calculating Agricultural Land Prices. Accordingly, the CSO has decided to include both completed and non-completed (pending) transactions in the analysis for the full Agricultural Land Price series from 2013 to 2020. This change means that more transactions will be used in calculating the series, improving both the quality and the coverage of the Agricultural Land Price statistics.

To ensure coherency between the 2020 publication and previous years, the CSO is revising all previous years' figures to be in line with this new methodology. The comparisons between the previous data and the new data can be found below.

Impact of the Changes:

The summary of the revisions for previous years can be found below in Table 1. While the number of transactions included in the calculations has increased, in turn resulting in higher value and area of land included in the series, the median price of land has remained relatively stable.