Almost 33,000ac of agricultural land was sold in Ireland in 2017 for a total value of €161.1 million, the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show.

This represented a median price of €6,626/ac, or a mean price of €4,883/ac.

The volume of land sold in 2017 – which dropped by 2.9% compared to 2016 – amounted to 0.3% of all the available agricultural land in Ireland, the CSO added.

The mean transaction size equated to 20.7ac last year, an increase of almost 1ac compared to the previous year, figures show.

Image source: CSO

Land type

Meanwhile, the CSO noted that arable land made up 3.65% of the total agricultural land sold in Ireland last year – but it accounted for 7.58% of the total value of agricultural land sold.

The median price for arable land in 2017 was €10,507/ac, while the median price for permanent grassland was €6,390/ac.

Image source: CSO

Outside of Dublin, the CSO found that the most expensive price per acre of arable land was in the midland region – with a median price of €11,124/ac in 2017. On the other end of the scale, the lowest price per acre for arable land was in the south-east region, with a median price per acre of €9,672/ac.

The highest median price per acre of permanent grassland was located in the mid-east at €9,301/ac, while the lowest price per acre for permanent grassland was in the west region at €4,424/ac.

The largest difference in median price between arable land and permanent grassland was in the border region, where arable land cost €3,548 more per acre than permanent grassland, the CSO added.

In terms of the number of transactions, the west recorded the highest amount for permanent grassland in 2017 with 432. The highest number of arable land transactions was noted in the mid-east, with 36 completed last year.

Understandably, the highest volume of permanent grassland was sold in the west in 2017 – amounting to 9,070ac. The region with the largest area of arable land sold in 2017 was the mid-east with 484ac.

Image source: CSO

Figures show that the mid-east had the highest value of arable land sold in 2017 – with a total value of €5.11 million – and the west had the highest value of permanent grassland sold – with a total value of €25.64 million.