11 February 2022
By Mary Bermingham
mary@TheCork.ie
Opinion Piece – I’ll never own a house, but at least I can buy an acre of land and say “this is mine”
I have resigned myself to never owning property. We are currently living in a period of massive inflation. I am – fairly – young so I graduated into the aftermath of a recession and it’s been a battle since then to try and save while also renting. So, I was delighted to see that my innate Irish yearning to own some form of property can be satisfied in some fashion. How? I can instead buy an acre of rural land. Yes an actual acre. I had never dreamed of this until a CSO press release came to my attention today, see below.
Did you know? An acre of land costs just €6,992 per acre*
Being realistic, my plot might be quite rural, and I wouldn’t be able to build a home on it due to a lack of rural connections to get planning permission, and – more importantly – a lack of construction funds! but still, I would be able to visit it and till the soil, and become a ‘property owner’ of sorts. Naurally there would be some auctioneers fees, and legal fees, but I imagine the task could be completed for let’s say €9,000?
Below: Press release from the CSO
This week the Cork based Central Statistics Office (CSO) published a new report entitled ‘Agricultural Land Prices 2020‘. It contains the *median figure of €6,992 per acre. Commenting on the release of Anthony Dawson, a Statistician, said:
“[The] publication shows that there was a noticeable decline in the volume of land sold in Ireland in 2020 with 29,031 acres of land sold at a median price of €6,992 per acre compared with 61,997 acres of land sold in 2019. The most expensive region to purchase agricultural land was in the South-East (Wexford, Carlow, Kilkenny and Waterford) where 2,093 acres of agricultural land sold for a median price of €10,645 per acre. The West (Galway, Mayo and Roscommon) was the least expensive region to purchase land where 6,412 acres of land sold for a median price of €4,625. The South-West (Cork, Kerry) was the region where the least volume of land was sold with only 605 acres of land sold in 2020. Agricultural Land Prices for 2020 were compiled using an updated methodology which mean more transactions have been used in calculating the series, improving both the quality and coverage of the land price statistics. Previous year’s data have also been updated to reflect this methodological improvement.”
