Jane Mayne
Raymond Potterton achieved excellent value in today’s property sale at Philpotstown, Dunderry, Navan, Co. Meath, with the final bid coming in at €2 Million – a great result of €15,385 per acre.
Auctioneer Steven Barry comments that, “It’s a good price and it’s probably a sign of the times. It’s €2M, so it’s over €15,000 an acre. Interest was from agricultural and investment sides, so it had a broad appeal and it probably got a price that it deserved.”
This he attributes to various factors, which drew bids from across the country: “It is an excellent farm in the heartland of Meath, a couple of minutes from the M3 motorway and Navan. It would be no more than 5km from the M3 Motorway and maybe 7kms from Navan. So, it’s in an excellent location. It was 130 acres that had a significant scale, and it was a very, very attractive farm and probably 100 acres of it was receded into good grassland. Also, mature boundaries, which normally are a very good sign of the quality of the land, with top quality trees throughout and 1.8 kms of road frontage.”
“So, it was a significant farm in a good location and we had national interest in it. It’s pretty much a jewel of a farm really to be honest. There were people interested in it from all the provinces,” he says.
“Agricultural properties are obviously selling well, and that’s for numerous reasons, everything from nitrates to good commodity prices, and milk and beef and lamb, and the push for more land to dissolve nitrates and get derogation is a significant factor. It’s coming at a time when there is actually a high price being paid for milk and the other commodities.”
He adds: “Also, you cannot ignore the fact that there are attractive tax breaks with land that there are not in other investment mediums, and it’s very attractive to buy a good farm, set it up as your pension, rent it out on a lease and receive almost tax-free income I suppose. There are also inheritance benefits to it.”
Are surrounding properties in Meath fetching similar prices? “From time to time, but I would say that most land in Meath is north of €10, 000 an acre, and probably significantly north of it,” he says.
“We’ve another auction next week, on 27 September, with 17 acres on the edge of Athboy. It is actually a really, really attractive field, all in one field, and adjoining the development boundary of Athboy so that might be an interesting auction for everyone to watch as well.”
See here for the upcoming Castletown, Athboy, Co. Meath auction.
“Castletown, Athboy is a very good, strong village, and a big trading village in West County Meath on the M51. The land fronts the M51 and it is adjoining high class residential development, so it is not only an agricultural asset with all the benefits that agricultural assets have, and it might see rezoning in future to a higher land use value up to include residential.”
Are online auctions adding value to the auction process?
“Yes, we’re doing the hybrid model, which is in room and online and I think without doubt you can say it has been a welcome addition, no different to selling cattle. If you want to bid you can sit at home in the comfort of your own living room and maybe have no eyes on you and bid to what you feel is the right level of the farm and you don’t know who you’re bidding against or you might know who you’re bidding against but you don’t want to know.”
“So absolutely, it has opened up another dimension in the auction room which has definitely strengthened the auction process and made it in a way even more transparent. It was always the most transparent way to sell property in the most open, fairest way but in fact it’s probably enhanced it now and it’s definitely from a vendor’s perspective and a buyer’s perspective it is the way to do business.”
One notable factor the auctioneer has seen emerge recently is the age of buyers: “A very welcome trend that we’ve noticed this year is that we’re selling farms now to people who are significantly younger than we have been in the last number of years. So young farmers are definitely back buying land. I’ve had a couple of cracking auctions where buyers were in their 20’s and 30s and that is a welcome sign.”
LSL Auctions, LSL News.