Queensland Farmers Federation calls for a change in the timing of rural property valuations

The Tablelands Regional Council has put forward a motion to the Local Government Association of Queensland conference in Gladstone next week to have the State Government change the frequency for the issuing of land valuations for rural local government areas to every three years.

QFF chief executive officer Jo Sheppard said the organisation was very supportive of that proposal.

"Property values are obviously very closely tied to rates and property values and rates have been going up across the state," she said.

"But there's been volatility in terms of farmers not being able to predict or budget for the trajectory of what their rates over the next 10 years might be because of the volatility.

"So when the valuations are done every year, there are not enough sales in some rural areas to make an accurate valuation of certain properties.

"So we feel if valuations are done every three years it gives the opportunity for valuers to actually make their assessment based on at least a volume of sales which we think is a lot fairer and will help reduce some of the peaks or volatility in terms of annual valuations, particularly in those areas where there may not have been enough sales and it's a best guess desktop type of exercise."

Ms Sheppard said there had also been so much change in terms of land use with carbon farming, solar and wind farms, and mining activity that how rural properties were valued was becoming even more complex.

"And we need at least three years to be able to see what some of these impacts are going to be in terms of future valuations," she said.

Ms Sheppard said some opposing arguments were that the volatility was taken out if annual valuations were done and that was true for areas which had a lot of sales year on year.

"But as we know that's not always the case in rural areas so I don't think that's a valid argument," she said.

"Year on year valuations, yes, you will have an annual result so potentially you might smooth out the peaks and the troughs, but that's only if there's a volume of sales in that area to actually support a good assessment process."

Ms Sheppard said another point to support three-year valuations was that over the past couple of decades valuers with rural experience had become rarer and rarer.

"The capacity in the (Valuer General's) department of expertise in rural valuations has also decreased so doing valuations of rural properties is very onerous when we're actually faced with a shortage of rural valuers at the moment," she said.

"And from an industry's perspective, that could present a situation where you might have even more inaccuracies."

Ms Sheppard said she was really pleased the motion from the Tablelands Regional Council was going forward to the conference so councils could debate the issue and arrive at a decision.