Farm Real Estate Market Developments

Extract: This study presents a brief history and analysis of the trends in the farm real estate market of central Wellington County, Ontario, since early settlement days. It develops a series of annual market prices from 1853 on, through the collection of sales data from land registry offices of farmland transferred at "arm's length". To the extent that an annual price is the mean of 25 sales on average, price is a reflection of acreage, tillable-area and improvement differences among farm properties sold in that year. It is thus a price representative of the locale, the organization and the state of development of farming at the time, and the willing-buyer/willing-seller condition.