South-west Victoria has recorded a decrease in the median price per hectare, for the first time in 10 years, a new report has found.
The 2024 Rural Bank Australian Farmland Values Report found the median price in south-west Victoria for 2023 was $19,161 per hectare.
This result marked the first time farm land value had declined since 2013.
The national report found that Australian farmland values have now recorded a full decade of unbroken growth.
While 2023 saw a rise in the national median price, capping off an extraordinary period for farmland values, it also marked a shift in the market as the pace of growth slowed considerably.
“The key drivers of farmland values look set to remain in a holding pattern in 2024,” Rural Bank head of agribusiness development Andrew Smith said.
“It is increasingly likely that the market will now see a plateau in farmland values,”
The report shows the past 10 years have seen the national median price for Australian farmland triple, rising by 201 per cent at a compound annual growth rate of 11.6 per cent.
This rate of growth is well ahead of the longer-term 20-year CAGR of 8.4 per cent.
For south-west Victoria, the fall in prices followed a 34 per cent growth rate in 2022.
The number of transactions for the region declined in 2023, with 286 sales , a year-on-year fall of 23 per cent.
The downward trend in median price per hectare for the south-west region came on the back of a strong decline in transaction volume in the higher price range of $20,000 plus per hectare.
An increase in the total proportion of medium price range transactions contributed to the marginal decline in median price per hectare in 2023.