"Rural retreat values head south"

Jonathan Chancellor, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 December 2005

AS SOME continue to escape from the city, hobby farm values are generally rising across the state, but on the South Coast, some are up and some are down.

The hotelier Justin Hemmes's 40-hectare retreat Bellawongarah, near Berry, jumped 12 per cent to $528,000 in a Lands Department valuation, taking it close to his $575,000 purchase price in 2002.

The actress Toni Collette's 10-hectare Broughton holding, near Kiama, was valued by the department at 20 per cent higher at $598,000 but well short of the $890,000 she paid in 2002.

Other properties in the district to suffer include Harley Hill, near Berry, where on an eight-hectare property bought this year for $1.5 million had a 10 per cent drop in land value from $841,000 to $756,000.

There was a 6 per cent drop for a 16-hectare Broger Creek holding, near Berry, from $750,000 to $705,000. It had last traded at $1.125 million last year.

Bridge House, a 35-hectare holding in the Kiama district at Carrington Falls, rose in value from $376,000 to $752,000.

The Valuer-General, Philip Western, said yesterday that the state's median land value had risen by about 4 per cent.

The median value of residential land increased by about 2 per cent. Excluding a principal place of residence, land tax is payable on properties valued at more than $330,000 unless they are used for rural business production.

Farms in the Southern Highlands, which historically have been the state's dearest hobby farms, were up, often by 10 per cent, in the latest valuations.

Farm values in the Upper Hunter and Tamworth districts rose by up to 32 per cent in the past year. Dunnadee, a 670-hectare Gunnedah farm, recorded a 33 per cent rise in its land value from $459,000 in 2004 to $610,000 in 2005.

At Scone, a 187-hectare property rose 32 per cent in value from $748,000 to $987,000.

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