Farmland values drop in Okanagan and stay flat Thompson-Nicola: report
The selling price of Canadian farmland grew by 11.3% last year.
BC was the only province where farmland values dropped and they fell by 3.1%.
There was a limited supply of irrigated farmland for sale in the Thompson-Nicola region and prices there were stable, according to report released by Farm Credit Canada, March 12.
The picture was much worse in the Okanagan.
“An influx of buyers from other regions bought properties in the Okanagan area, so demand remained strong,” the report said. “Yet, these factors did not prevent the Okanagan region from registering an average decrease in values of 4.5%.”
The report said BC has the highest farmland prices in the country, led by the South Coast at $112,200 per acre.
Okanagan farm land averaged $32,500 per acre, while prices in the Thompson-Nicola region averaged $24,100 per acre.
On the positive side for sellers, pastureland in the Thompson-Nicola region increased in price by 3%. No mention was made in the report about pastureland in the Okanagan.
READ MORE: Why Kelowna pays way over assessed value for land it buys
The BC decline in farmland prices comes after a decade of increases with the highest in 2021 at 18.1%.
Canada has also seen farmland prices go up each year for the past decade with this year’s 11.5% rise falling just short of last year’s 12.8%.
The biggest increases nationally were in Saskatchewan at 15.7% and Quebec at 13.3%.
In BC, the South Coast saw the largest drop of 19.3%, while the Cariboo-Chilcotin saw an 8% increase.
The full report can be seen here.
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