Southwest Victorian auction sees new record set for farmland

A farm near Coleraine has sold for a new district record price — which is more than $1000 an acre above previous sales.

This small farm at Tahara sold at auction last week for $3.5 million.

A southwest property sold at auction last week for $7400/acre or $18,278/ha on the hills at Tahara, just south of Coleraine, beating previous auction prices for the region by almost $1000/acre.

The 191.5ha (473.2 acres) “Rovie” property was purchased for $3.501 million by a local farming family looking to expand their farming enterprise, according to auctioneer Heath Templeton, Southern Grampians Livestock & Real Estate.

It was the first time the property in the tightly-held district had been on the market since 1966 and included a four bedroom homestead.

The land was described as being able to run 18DSE/ha and infrastructure included a two stand woolshed, single phase power, sheds, sheep and cattle yards.

Mr Templeton said he had expected the farm to sell for around $7200/acre, following the high level of interest before the auction.

“Four or five bidders were knocked out earlier, I think they’d expected it to make more like $6500/acre,” he said.

“It would be a record for the area.

“There was interest from neighbours, people from the South East of South Australia and Western Australia.”

Mr Templeton said if commodity prices stayed high and interest rates stay low, the current rates for farmland “don’t look too bad”, but on the flip side, if rates moved by say two per cent, “they could start to look dear”.

“Bigger or existing farmers can probably handle it but for younger people or new entrants into farming, these prices are undoubtably making it very hard,” he said.

It wasn’t only demand for Western District farmland that had shot up rapidly in recent years.

His agency had also sold a record number of homes in the past 12 months.

“In the Southern Grampians (council area) in the past 12 months we have sold 342 properties, more than double years before, so it is not just farms” he said.

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