Forestry sector steps up interest in land market
With sheep farming facing an uncertain future because of pessimism for the sector in a post Brexit world, one avenue for producers is to sell their farms.
And who would be interested in buying such properties?
The answer according to Evelyn Channing of land agents, Savills, are those individuals and organisations in the woodland and forestry sector.
Speaking yesterday in Edinburgh, Ms Channing illustrated the influence the forestry sector now has in the Scottish land market by highlighting four diverse properties that had been up for sale in the past 12 months.
These were a sporting estate in Perthshire, a hill sheep farm in the Borders, a woodland estate in Ayrshire and arable land in Aberdeenshire.
In all four properties in differing parts of the country, Ms Channing said the strongest interest came from buyers intent on developing forest or woodland enterprises on them. The buyers outbid farmers looking to buy or expand their existing land holding and the forestry enthusiasts also topped bids from potential “lifestyle” buyers.
Ms Channing believed the current interest in buying land to plant or nurture trees was not a short lived blip but would be sustained for some time. 0 The forestry sector has purchased four diverse properties across the country in the past 12 months
“For every pound already invested, there is another six to ten pounds ready to come in,” was how she saw the present situation, adding that the Scottish Government support for more land under trees was significant.
Charlie Dudgeon, her colleague at Savills, stressed that the buyers were not just interested in commercial forestry growing “wall to wall” Sitka spruce.
“We have a range of clients looking for different properties. They range from environmental organisations keen to preserve and promote heritage types of trees, to clients with money from the city looking to own trees because of favourable taxation.”
He believed there was more money around the land market than at any other time that he could recall in his working lifetime.
While one-quarter of all
land sales transacted by Savills last year went to buyers out-with Scotland, foreign interest in buying land for forestry was not significant he stated. Commenting on the farmland market in 2018, Channing described it “steady”. Values in England had gone down slightly but there had been a rise in farmland value in Scotland.
She added that there was greater polarisation in values with land suitable for growing potatoes and based in certain areas extracting bids well into the teens of thousands of pounds while other land could often be difficult to shift at one-third of that level.
Overall, the land market is quiet in this pre Brexit period, but Channing stated that she expected it to liven up once the political route forward is settled.