TWO Top End cattle stations expected to fetch more than $100 million have come onto the market, bringing almost 15 per cent of the available pastoral land in the Northern Territory up for sale.
Wallco International's 1 million-hectare Killarney aggregation and the Underwood family's 722,000-ha Bunda/Riveren aggregation have been offered – each likely to be sold for more than $50 million. But valuers say it will be difficult to know what the properties will sell for, given the supply/demand equation.
A dearth of transactions since the 2009 takeover of Consolidated Pastoral by British private equity group Terra Firma has left valuers struggling to work how far values have slipped since boom time prices of 2008, The Australian Financial Review reports.
However, cattle baron Sterling Buntine sold his Amburla Station at a respectable value last week, giving vendors some hope.
Mr Buntine, whose wealth is estimated by BRW's Rich List at $385 million, sold the station just outside Alice Springs last week for $6 million to local cattleman Tony Davies.