Land ownership and land transactions in Bavaria (BayLand)

Background and Objective

Purchase prices for agricultural land in Bavaria are the highest in Germany and have more than doubled in the past ten years. The Bavarian Parliament is discussing how this development can be influenced. What legal options do the legislature and the administration have to make it easier for farmers who need land to gain access to it?

On behalf of the Bavarian State Government, we are preparing an expert report in which we analyse the development in the last years and identify possible courses of action.

Approach

The project is based on a catalogue of questions under the title "Bauernland in Bauernhand" (Farmland in Farmers' Hands) of the Bavarian State Parliament, which are aimed at the following topics:

1. Possibilities for farmers to expand their land base,
2. Dvelopment of the ownership of agricultural land over the last ten years,
3. Intra-farm market values and general market values of agricultural land,
4. Acquisition of agricultural land as a purely financial investment and options for limiting this,
5. Options for strengthening the right of first refusal under settlement law,
6. Options to improve access to land for young farmers, start-ups and local farmers,
7. Approaches to counteract the dynamic price increase of agricultural land.

In the BayLand project, the questions are dealt with in an interdisciplinary manner from the perspectives of agricultural economics and jurisprudence. The legal aspects are dealt with by our cooperation partner at the Berlin School of Economics and Law.

Data and Methods

For the analysis of purchase cases, buyer types and purchase prices of agricultural land, data from the Bavarian recording system for agricultural land transactions for the years 2019 to 2021 are analysed. Official statistics and real estate market reports are used to illustrate the medium-term development.

For the question of how ownership of agricultural land has developed, owner data from the Official Real Estate Cadastre Information System (ALKIS) are analysed in a sample of municipalities.

Questions about the approval procedure in agricultural land transactions and possible starting points for improvements are addressed with the help of an online survey of the approval authorities and in-depth expert discussions.

In a legal comparison, possible solutions in laws and drafts of other federal states and Austria are worked out.

Results

The expert report has been published as Thünen Report 99.

An English summary of the results is presented in Thünen Project Brief 2022/36a