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High country farming - Source: ONE News -
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Real estate agents say about 40 dairy farms - average size 147 hectares and producing 904kg of milk solids/ha - were sold in the three months to July.
For the same period last year, 89 dairy farms sold, and in 2007 there were 100 sales over that three months.
The median price in the 2009 June quarter was $3.429 million, compared with $4.2 million in 2008.
Nationally, the average price was equivalent to $41/kg of milk solids or $35,000 per hectare and was a "good result", said Real Estate Institute rural spokesman Peter McDonald.
"It's good to see the season finish on a consistent note," McDonald said in a statement.
He said that "disappointingly" there was reduced turnover of properties across the rural sector, with 229 sales for the current period compared with 601 in the three months to July 2008.
There was a drop in the number of sales in all districts except for Northland, where the number of sales rose from 31 to 33, but the median price slipped to $660,000 from $1.66 million in July 2008.
McDonald said sales were "buoyant" in Canterbury, with 35 farms sold in the three months to July 2009, but they were down from 118 in the same period last year, and the median price for the quarter dropped from $1.55 million to $1.3 million over the same two years.
Thirty properties sold in Waikato (76 in 2008) and in Southland sales slumped from 94 in July last year to 17 last month.
Nationally, the median sales price for all farm types dropped from $1.8 million in July last year to $1.2 million in the three months to July 2009.
In the shorter term, McDonald said median prices rose in eight out of 14 regions, if the three months to June 2009 was compared with the three months to July 2009. In Taranaki, this comparison rose from $528,500 to $813,500, but the region was still a long way down on its July 2008 figure of $1.35 million.
Wellington recorded only three farm sales for July 2009, but its median price soared from $1.1 million in 2008 (when nine farms sold) to $3.1 million. Nelson, where sales numbers were down to just four properties, had a median of $1.1 million, compared with a median of $1.7 million for 23 farms at the same time last year.
"The figures still have a long way to get back to the peak of the market in July 2008 when the national average was $1.8 million," McDonald said.
The rural lifestyle market continued to hold firm with the median sale price in the three months to July 2009 at $420,000 compared with $421,250 in the three months to June 2008. Turnover was also solid, with 1393 sales in the three months to July 2009 compared with 1,105 lifestyle properties at the same time last year.
McDonald said it would be interesting to see how the market shaped up in spring, and that a lot would depend on the exchange rate for the New Zealand dollar, which influences the prices farmers receive for commodities.
