Property

Emma Pritchard. The Church of the Holy Apostles in Copmanhurst is widely admired and loved by many, having served the Copmanhurst community and surrounding districts for more than a century. Strong family connections and lifelong memories have been formed, along with an intense interest in its history and preservation. And it has also generated plenty of interest in the property market.

The McKenna family behind Midfield Meat Group has acquired the Wanderribby feedlot and grazing and farming property in South Australia, four years after the vendors initially put the asset to the market with hopes of as much as $10 million. South Australia’s third-largest feedlot, the 2,311-hectare Wanderribby has been used as a custom feedyard, feeding for three main clients, including at times Coles and Woolworths supermarket contracts, and the yard utilised in the past as a live export depot.

A large dryland cropping farm on Eyre Peninsula in South Australia has entered the market after being held by one family for four generations. Telusa, the 988-hectare property, is located in the Cleve Hills, 21km north of Cleve and 164km north east of Port Lincoln and has been in the current owners family since the early 1900s.

Australian agricultural land prices are set to continue to climb for at least the next five years – with the sharpest growth to 2023 – Rabobank says in its newly-released annual Agricultural Land Price Outlook.

Continued thirst for pubs, particularly in regional Australia where demand has increased by 135%, has pushed yields down further, according to Real Capital Analytics. Benjamin Martin-Henry, RCA’s head of analytics, pacific said despite rolling lockdowns across much of Australia over the last 18 months, property investors have shown a remarkable interest in acquiring pubs, with transaction volume on course to eclipse previous highs.

The world-famous Daintree National Park has been handed back to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people, part of 160,000 hectares of land in Cape York that is again in the hands of traditional owners following an agreement with the Queensland government. The planet’s oldest rainforest joins Uluru and Kakadu as UNESCO world heritage sites under management of First Nations people.

Hume Coal has moving to quickly sell what is the largest landholding in the South Highlands region after its plans for a $533 million coal mine were knocked back by the Independent Planning Commission (IPC). The Australian subsidiary of Korean steel giant POSCO is hoping for over $60 million for the 1,308-hectare landholding, seven kilometres from the town of Moss Vale.

Historic grazing properties in South Australia’s Barossa have sold for around $15 million to producers outside of the region looking to expand. The properties included the 2,549 hectare Red Creek property at Keyneton, and the adjoining Karinya Station at Moculta, spanning 2,047 hectares.

The Club Motor Inn has been sold for $4.5 million, nearly 18 months after owners the Narrabri Bowling Club entered into voluntary administration ... Narrabri lies in the heart of the Namoi Valley, around six hours’ drive and 568 kilometres north west of Sydney, in what is an agricultural and administrative centre that is being transformed into one of the state’s largest gas mining regions.

Mining magnate Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Agriculture has sold Nerrima Station for more than $30 million, and a further two pastoral stations Ruby Plains and Sturt Creek ... The 203,000ha Nerrima Station, 480,000ha Ruby Plains and 316,000ha Sturt Creek in Western Australia’s Kimberley region were put on the market after Hancock Agriculture and S. Kidman & Co revealed in November last year plans to sell its pastoral holdings comprising eight properties spanning 1.9 million hectares.

Fund manager Gunn Agri Partners has picked up an avocado orchard in northern NSW, looking ahead to higher retail prices for the popular fruit after this year’s massive harvest. The group has paid $11 million for the orchard despite avocado prices plunge from as much as $4 to just $1 each this year as strong seasonal conditions in Western Australia particularly created a bumper crop ... Gunn Agri bought the asset for a European institution with a mandate to invest in permanent Australian crops assets.

Scott Bates and family of Wallumbilla have paid $15.5 million for the fully exclusion fenced Plevna Downs East in south west Queensland, with the Augathella property selling at a record rate of $2,474 per hectare.

Australian cattle property investment firm Packhorse Pastoral Company has opened its second fundraising as part of plans to buy $1.5 billion worth of rural agricultural land and build mass-scale land regeneration with carbon upside.

According to the latest ANZ Agri InFocus report, rural land value growth has been outperforming national residential property value growth by a 3% average for the last five years. While the ABS has found that rural land has increased in value by more than 30% in the three years to June 2020.

The pub on Casino’s busiest roundabout is up for sale. No one is saying how much it is expected to sell for but Hotel Cecil is on the market ... In 1919, the Cecil was cut into pieces and dragged by a bullock team to its current site on Centre St. This is the first time in 45 years it has been on the market.

“There is a terrible lack of rental accommodation in town at the moment and this is something we have identified to see if we can do something about it,” says Cook Shire mayor, Peter Scott. “We’ve been talking to super funds and investment companies about the prospect of investing money into the blocks and building them for rent.”