Almost all the largest cattle stations are owned by companies due to the high amounts of capital required to run them. The biggest have a dozen or more people living and working on them. That\u2019s a lot of housing to provide and maintain and a lot of wages to pay, especially when seasonal conditions or income\/expense situations cause a negative cashflow for an extended period\u00a0.<\/p>\n
The higher and more reliable the rainfall and the better the soil, the smaller the size of the properties (so the towns are closer together and larger). Per hectare or per acre this land costs a lot more to buy but you need less of it to make a living.<\/p>\n
Regardless of whether you\u2019re talking north or south, large or small, well over $1 million AUD is needed to buy a farm or station large enough to reliably support one family through good times and bad, anywhere in Australia.<\/p>\n
In addition to this substantial operating capital is required as a hedge against the inevitable run of bad seasons, prices below the cost of production and fluctuations in exchange and interest rates.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately now most rural land is priced at real estate values that are well above what they would be valued at as strictly businesses. As someone born and bred on Cape York Peninsula said to me, \u201cA good way to make a small fortune up here is to start with a large one.\u201d<\/p>\n
In recent years rural property prices have increased way beyond the income that can reasonably be expected to be generated by agricultural activity – this is due to several factors:\u00a0cashed up superfunds seeking diversified investments, cashed up city residents buying hobby farms and investment properties, with a view to\u00a0good long term capital value increases, and \u00a0increasing foreign ownership.<\/p>\n
There are many companies listing rural properties for sale on websites. To get an idea of current cattle station sale prices, visit Elders<\/a> or Landmark<\/a>. Sales and auction listings of large Australian cattle stations are quite often mentioned in the Blog, also.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Almost all the largest cattle stations are owned by companies due to the high amounts of capital required to run them. The biggest have a dozen or more people living and working on them. That\u2019s a lot of housing to provide and maintain and a lot of wages to pay, especially when seasonal conditions or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,10,68],"tags":[100,166],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4063,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions\/4063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}