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Pom de terre: how the Brits snap up our agricultural land
RURAL PROPERTIES
Fiona Cameron
November 26, 2005
BRITISH buyers have begun a new wave of investment in Australia's rural properties, according to a specialist rural agent who targets their business.
Englishman Philip Jarvis opened his firm at Armidale in the New England region of NSW a year ago, largely to meet demand from his compatriots and other overseas buyers seeking a stake in the Australian bush.
Jarvis says political changes in Britain -- not the least of which was last year's ban on fox hunting -- were prompting more Brits to look to countries like Australia for a rural lifestyle and investments.
"Immigration from the UK to Australia has more than doubled in the last four years," he says. "It's gone from 9000 a year to 19,000.
"They're not all farmers, but it's indicative. A recent poll in the UK said more than 50 per cent of British people, given the option, would like to leave the UK, and their most popular destination was Australia."
Figures tabled in the Queensland Parliament recently confirm the trend. Britons topped the list of foreigners who bought land in that state last year.
Foreign interests spent $671 million on Queensland real estate in 2004-05, and Britons accounted for $166 million of that, or 390,721 hectares.
The latest push down under comes as British farmers feel the hip-pocket pain from the European Union's moves away from a subsidy-based rural economy to a production-based one.
With high land values in the UK, agriculture is becoming less viable, Jarvis says.
"Europe now buys its Weeties from the Ukraine as opposed to the UK."
Under the Common Agricultural Policy, subsidies to British farmers are being gradually withdrawn.
"Now, the average UK farmer spends more time shuffling paperwork to get his European Union and other government subsidies than he does actually chasing cows or tilling the soil," says Jarvis.
"So this guy suddenly goes, 'Ouch, we've got to make all our money in the not-too-distant future from what's in the paddock and not from shuffling paper'."
Jarvis believes British buyers in Australia are generally "very savvy, with a zero tolerance for loss", and have a keen eye for potential capital gains.
Many Brits buying in Australia already have interests here, ranging from "the traditional landed gentry" to corporates and wealthy families, and many also continue to hold land in Britain.
Jarvis says inquiries from the US have also risen in the past three months. Americans are particularly attracted to Australia's "clean and green" image, in the wake of their own country being shut out of Japanese and Korean beef markets because of mad cow disease.
Jarvis grew up in an agricultural and equestrian family and moved to Australia a decade ago to marry the daughter of a "fifth-generation grazing family", whom he met in London. The couple now run a cattle property near Armidale.
Before that he spent eight years in the British army, doing tours of duty in Northern Ireland, Germany, Central America and Eastern Europe.
In Bosnia, he worked in media relations, leading groups of journalists through the war zone. Jarvis also spent time "standing outside Buckingham Palace in a big black furry hat".
In July, his firm Philip Jarvis & Associates negotiated one of the biggest rural deals in NSW this year, the $9.2 million sale of Cobrabald River Station at Walcha. It drew more interest from Britain than anywhere else, Jarvis says, but was eventually sold to Queensland sheep graziers Snow and Narelle Wales.
Jarvis says that in recent years British investors targeted New Zealand, but now many see the country as overpriced. But their investment in Australia has always been cyclical and the latest wave was just "history repeating itself".
"It's nothing new," says Jarvis. "Vestey and Astor were here 100 years ago. Who still owns the biggest sheep flock in Australia? Clyde Agriculture, which is owned by the (British-based) Swire Group."
But the British realised that in comparing rural economies of the first-world, Australia's was one of the few production-based economies, as opposed to the subsidy-based rural economies of Europe and the US.
"It's not as though we are being invaded by armadas of Poms and Americans, and it is not as though their interest is going to have any significant effect on the value of land," he says.
"But you will see a slight change in the balance of ownership."
RURAL PROPERTIES
Fiona Cameron
November 26, 2005
BRITISH buyers have begun a new wave of investment in Australia's rural properties, according to a specialist rural agent who targets their business.
Englishman Philip Jarvis opened his firm at Armidale in the New England region of NSW a year ago, largely to meet demand from his compatriots and other overseas buyers seeking a stake in the Australian bush.
Jarvis says political changes in Britain -- not the least of which was last year's ban on fox hunting -- were prompting more Brits to look to countries like Australia for a rural lifestyle and investments.
"Immigration from the UK to Australia has more than doubled in the last four years," he says. "It's gone from 9000 a year to 19,000.
"They're not all farmers, but it's indicative. A recent poll in the UK said more than 50 per cent of British people, given the option, would like to leave the UK, and their most popular destination was Australia."
Figures tabled in the Queensland Parliament recently confirm the trend. Britons topped the list of foreigners who bought land in that state last year.
Foreign interests spent $671 million on Queensland real estate in 2004-05, and Britons accounted for $166 million of that, or 390,721 hectares.
The latest push down under comes as British farmers feel the hip-pocket pain from the European Union's moves away from a subsidy-based rural economy to a production-based one.
With high land values in the UK, agriculture is becoming less viable, Jarvis says.
"Europe now buys its Weeties from the Ukraine as opposed to the UK."
Under the Common Agricultural Policy, subsidies to British farmers are being gradually withdrawn.
"Now, the average UK farmer spends more time shuffling paperwork to get his European Union and other government subsidies than he does actually chasing cows or tilling the soil," says Jarvis.
"So this guy suddenly goes, 'Ouch, we've got to make all our money in the not-too-distant future from what's in the paddock and not from shuffling paper'."
Jarvis believes British buyers in Australia are generally "very savvy, with a zero tolerance for loss", and have a keen eye for potential capital gains.
Many Brits buying in Australia already have interests here, ranging from "the traditional landed gentry" to corporates and wealthy families, and many also continue to hold land in Britain.
Jarvis says inquiries from the US have also risen in the past three months. Americans are particularly attracted to Australia's "clean and green" image, in the wake of their own country being shut out of Japanese and Korean beef markets because of mad cow disease.
Jarvis grew up in an agricultural and equestrian family and moved to Australia a decade ago to marry the daughter of a "fifth-generation grazing family", whom he met in London. The couple now run a cattle property near Armidale.
Before that he spent eight years in the British army, doing tours of duty in Northern Ireland, Germany, Central America and Eastern Europe.
In Bosnia, he worked in media relations, leading groups of journalists through the war zone. Jarvis also spent time "standing outside Buckingham Palace in a big black furry hat".
In July, his firm Philip Jarvis & Associates negotiated one of the biggest rural deals in NSW this year, the $9.2 million sale of Cobrabald River Station at Walcha. It drew more interest from Britain than anywhere else, Jarvis says, but was eventually sold to Queensland sheep graziers Snow and Narelle Wales.
Jarvis says that in recent years British investors targeted New Zealand, but now many see the country as overpriced. But their investment in Australia has always been cyclical and the latest wave was just "history repeating itself".
"It's nothing new," says Jarvis. "Vestey and Astor were here 100 years ago. Who still owns the biggest sheep flock in Australia? Clyde Agriculture, which is owned by the (British-based) Swire Group."
But the British realised that in comparing rural economies of the first-world, Australia's was one of the few production-based economies, as opposed to the subsidy-based rural economies of Europe and the US.
"It's not as though we are being invaded by armadas of Poms and Americans, and it is not as though their interest is going to have any significant effect on the value of land," he says.
"But you will see a slight change in the balance of ownership."
