Ireland’s 20 wealthiest families are over eight times more likely to inherit land, new CSO figures show.
Of these wealthy households, 33 percent inherited land, while among the least wealthy 20 percent only 4 percent inherited land. The median value of the land inherited by the top 20 percent is €317,200.
New data from the 2020 Household Finance and Consumption Survey also showed that just 7 per cent of Irish families have ever received an inheritance or gift of land.
The value of land as an asset remains a contentious issue, recently brought back into the limelight with the introduction of the new Residential Property Tax (RZLT).
Commenting on the RZLT, Rose Mary McDonagh, IFA Farms Chair, stressed that most farms could be seen as ‘rich in assets but poor in money’.
“The average agricultural wealth in 2021 has been estimated at €885,000, of which land and buildings account for 87 percent. However, the average farm income was less than €35,000, with large variations depending on farm size and operating system,” she said.
“Farmers are private landowners who use land for food production and earn an honest living. Farmers own land to farm, not hoard it as an investment. This undeniable fact must be recognized.”
The RZLT is calculated at 3 percent of the market value of the property within its scope.
The CSO statisticians also revealed that of the 36 per cent of households in Ireland that received intergenerational inheritance transfers, 57 per cent received money, 23 per cent inherited or gifted their home and 19 per cent received land. The transfer type with the highest value was land with a median time value of €176,300. Brian Cahill, CSO statistician in the Department of Income, Wealth and Consumption (ICW), said the median of all intergenerational wealth transfers was €80,200.
Households in the eastern and central regions were more likely to expect an inheritance or gift, with one in four households reporting this expectation, compared with 18 percent of households in the southern region and 13 percent of households in the northern and western regions.
Older households were more likely to have received a transfer of wealth at some point, with 46 percent of households where the reference person was aged 55 to 64 received at least one inheritance or gift, compared with 27 percent of households where the reference person was younger was 35 years.
transfer value
The mean transfer value for households in which the caregiver was under 35 years old was 15,000 euros, while the value for those over 65 was 109,600 euros.
Four out of 10 households in which the reference person had a college degree or higher received an intergenerational transfer, compared to three out of 10 households in which the reference person’s highest educational attainment was elementary school or below.
The net worth of households that received an intergenerational transfer was €334,100 compared to €133,100 for households that did not receive a transfer.
Households were most likely to receive transfers from their parents, accounting for 70 percent of inheritances or gifts.
https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/news/irelands-richest-families-over-eight-times-more-likely-to-inherit-land-42231430.html Ireland’s wealthiest families are over eight times more likely to inherit land