Buyers keen to purchase land for environmental reasons have pushed up prices in the South West, according to a property firm.
Estate agency Carter Jonas said so-called 'biodiversity buyers’ have emerged over the past 12 months, looking for farmland suitable for activities such as tree planting.
Latest figures reveal that arable land in the South West sold for an average of £9,750 an acre this year - an annual increase of 14.7% - while pasture achieved an average price of £8,000 per acre, up 10.3%.
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According to Carter Jonas partner David Hebditch, this new type of buyer is underpinning land values.
“Parcels of woodland in particular have increased in value considerably,” he said. “And smaller blocks of land have also attracted a premium.
“Plots of one or two acres, on the edge of a village, for use as pony paddocks or simply just to protect the amenity of a village, are in high demand right now.”
Mr Hebditch said such plots can attract figures as high as five times their agricultural value, working out at around £20-50,000 per acre.
The majority of the new 'biodiversity buyers' are being driven by "personal interest" rather than government policy or potential income generation, Carter Jonas said.
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Meanwhile, Londoners keen to move out of the city and purchase property in the country are driving demand for lifestyle properties with land attached, particularly in hotspots such as Castle Cary and Bruton in Somerset.
Carter Jonas said a deal for Little Pennard Farm, with 176 acres near Shepton Mallet, was "quickly agreed" after being launched in October at a guide price of £3m.
Arthur Chambers, partner at Carter Jonas, said it is unlikely there will be a "huge flood" of property to the market in the spring, unless any new motivating reasons for selling emerge.
“There is a lot of discussion at the moment about the Basic Payment Scheme being replaced by Environmental Land Management Schemes and what this will mean in practice,” he said. “The general feeling is that it will mean more work for less money, but we still don’t have the exact details.
“There is also talk about the proposed government scheme to pay older farmers to retire. I’m not seeing any evidence that there will be huge uptake of this at the moment – the government underestimates the sentimental attachment farmers have to their farms, which have often been in their family for generations.”
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