This document was added or updated on 06/04/2016.

FEATURE ARTICLE: CONSISTENT GRIDS OF LAND VALUE


INTRODUCTION

This release presents the first time land data has been published in grid format by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Two grids of land value for a small part of South Australia have been developed as part of this first Land Account for the State. The grids display Total Site Value for 2006 and 2011 derived from South Australian (SA) Valuer-General (VG) data using 1 kmē grid cells (Figure 1). They cover the Adelaide & Mount Lofty Natural Resource Management (NRM) region and the following Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2) regions: Mount Barker, Mount Barker Region, Nairne, Goolwa - Port Elliot, Strathalbyn, Strathalbyn Region, Murray Bridge, Murray Bridge Region. Hereafter this region is referred to as the study region.

The grid format enables consistent, repeatable comparison of land values over time and between jurisdictions - this is difficult to achieve when comparing traditional property boundaries which vary greatly in size and shape. Grids offer other advantages including outputs that are simple to integrate and compare with other outputs produced on the same grid. The grids were built from SA VG data by apportioning the site value from cadastral properties to an overlaid grid. This approach has assumed the distribution of land value within individual properties is homogenous. Where appropriate, data has been suppressed to prevent the release of any information that may identify any individual or organisation.

Land values presented in the grids are not directly comparable to the figures published in Tables 1-6 in the Downloads section. The grids present site value for each grid cell including both rateable and non-rateable land, while the Land Account tables only present rateable values. In addition Tables 1-6 were weighted to align with figures published in Australian System of National Accounts, 2013-14 (cat. no. 5204.0), while the grids present unweighted VG data.

CHANGE IN LAND VALUE

The City of Adelaide dominates the study region with the highest land values in 2006 and 2011 (Figure 1). Between 2006 and 2011 increases in land values to the north and south of the city align with the development of new suburbs in these areas. Figure 2 presents the change in land value between 2006 and 2011 as a 1kmē grid. In the 5 years from 2006 to 2011 land in the Greater Adelaide Capital City Statistical Area (Figure 2) increased in value from $97 billion to $157 billion. Land value growth in and around Adelaide City clearly outpaces other areas in which land use is less intensive. Figure 2 also identifies some areas where land values have decreased.
Figure 3 provides a closer look at land value changes in Adelaide City. Regions in and around central Adelaide, and a band of suburbs to the south and west of the city all included grid cells with a land value increase of more than $150 million between 2006 and 2011. The Statistical Area 2 regions that experienced this magnitude of growth in land value across a large proportion of their area included Walkerville, North Adelaide, Norwood, Unley-Parkside and Edwardstown.



The development of land value grids enables integration with other data in a grid format. The Federal Department of Agriculture produced a National Scale Land Use (NLUM) grid for 2005-06 at the same 1kmē resolution as the land value grids. NLUM is based on ABS agricultural commodity data and satellite imagery and offers an alternative source of land use information to the VG data used in the primary land account tables for this publication. Table 1 presents a summary of 2006 land values classified by primary land use classes from NLUM 2005-06 for the study region.

Primary Land Use Description	Site value 2006 $ million	Area(b) hectares	Site value per hectare $/ha
Intensive Uses	88 770	104 500	849 500
Production from Dryland Agriculture and Plantations	9 607	505 100	19 000
Conservation and Natural Environments	2 882	86 000	33 500
Production from Irrigated Agriculture and Plantations	1 583	54 400	29 100
Production from Relatively Natural Environments	400	6 800	58 900
Water	256	6 600	38 800
No Data	94	300	313 400
(a) Site values are unweighted and include rateable and non-rateable land.
(b) Area has only been included for grid cells with non-null land values.

'Intensive Uses' (which includes residential land) account for the greatest land value in the study region at $88.7 billion in 2006. Across the region the average value of 'Intensive Uses' is $849,500 per hectare. The second highest value land use in the study region was 'Production from Dryland Agriculture and Plantations' at $9.6 billion, however across the region the average value of this land use was the lowest at $19,000 per hectare.


FORMAT

The land value grids for 2006 and 2011 are available in the downloads tab in compressed GeoTIFF format. GeoTIFF format is a Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). It is a raster graphics file format that is widely supported by graphics software. The Geo extension to the TIFF format is a metadata storage format which allows georeferencing information (datums, ellipsoid, coordinate systems, map projection) to be embedded within the TIFF file. This metadata allows Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software, such as MapInfo, ArcGIS or QGIS, to correctly interpret the location of the image and compare the image with other spatial referenced data.

The GIS files are aligned to the National Nested Grid (NNG) standard for Australia in an Australian Albers Equal Area projection.