Red-hot market for Australian farmland leaving first-time buyers locked out

Just like the residential housing market, Australia’s farmland property market is running hot, with a string of recent sales leaving onlookers “gobsmacked” at the amount of money changing hands. 

For the past two decades, the value of farmland has been on a steady rise, with specialist lender Rural Bank calculating the compound average annual growth rate at 7.5 per cent.

That is roughly the same as returns on the Australian Stock Exchange, and better than the 4.4 per cent growth in the residential property…