A real estate firm’s report on the price of farmland has high praise for the hikes that happened in Chatham-Kent recently.
The annual Re/Max Farm Report discusses the cost of agricultural land in various municipalities across the nation, including here in Chatham-Kent.
The report said strong demand for high-quality land led to prices jumping by as much as 100% in some parts of C-K.
It said the 2013 price per acre here ranged from $5,000 to $16,000, but the prices range from $7,000 to $22,000 this year.
Rick Strain, a local Re/Max agent well versed in farm property transactions, doesn’t think property prices will continue to increase.
“It can’t go too much more,” he said. “It’s stabilizing. In fact, there’s a bit of a lull. But we’ve got people what want it (farm property) and can’t find it.”
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Strain said recent years of excellent crop yields contributed to the rise in per acre prices locally. That shows that the land is being purchased and used for farming here, which is not the case around London and Toronto.
“The land there is being scooped up more for development than farming,” he said. “Not a lot of farmland around here is being used for development. We have plenty of vacant industrial land for that.”
Strain said most of the local agricultural land purchases are from one person to another.
“The majority around here right now is farmer to farmer or a new generation of farmers coming in and starting off with 50-75-acre parcels to get started,” he said.
The authors of the farm report believe local land will continue to remain strong, as demand won’t evaporate.
On either side of us, farmland prices fell. In Essex County, that’s attributable to the closure of the Heinz plant in Leamington. This year they are selling from $7,000 to $11,000 per acre for land that sold for $11,000-plus a year ago.
In western Middlesex, the price per acre dropped to $8,500 per acre this year from $12,000 in 2013.
