The Eurostat-OECD compilation guide on land estimation represents the first comprehensive overview of conceptual and practical issues related to the compilation of the balance sheet item ‘land’ in the national accounts.

At its thirty-ninth and fortieth sessions in February 2008 and February 2009, the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) adopted the System of National Accounts 2008 (SNA 2008) as the international statistical standard for national accounts and encouraged Member States, regional and sub-regional organisations to implement the standard and support all aspects of the implementation of the updated SNA 2008. The SNA 2008 guidelines were produced under the joint responsibility of the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the statistical office of the European Union (Eurostat), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank (WB). Countries are encouraged to use the SNA 2008 as the framework for compiling and integrating economic and related statistics, as well as for national and international reporting of national accounts statistics.

The concepts and definitions that are of importance for the item land are scattered over many chapters and paragraphs in the SNA 2008 and ESA 2010. They are combined in this chapter and presented in a systematic way. Where necessary, this chapter describes how the SNA 2008 and ESA 2010 concepts should be applied to and interpreted for land. However, the chapter will not discuss the practical application, measurement and way of compilation and estimation. This is done in the following chapters.

A coherent and consistent classification that covers all types of land within a country is needed to adequately estimate the total value of land. However, that is not to say that the entire geographic surface area of a country is included within the asset boundary of the SNA 2008 (SNA 2008 paragraph 12.21). Only land that fits the definition of an asset should be included within the asset boundary, that is, all land on which effective ownership rights can be assigned to (an) institutional unit(s) and from which economic benefits are derived by their owner(s) by holding or using them over a period of time (SNA 2008 paragraph 1.46). While it is not explicitly stated in SNA paragraph 1.46 it is important to note that this includes allowing others to use the land.

In practice, the methods used in compiling estimates of the value of land for the balance sheet can be constrained in large part by the nature of the data available. Types of data available can be classified under two broad headings: administrative sources (cadastre maintained by a land registry office, tax authorities, or land information centre) and collection sources (population and housing census, business survey, or other type of survey data). While data sources for particular countries will vary, data may also be available from government agencies concerned with: agriculture; forestry; fishing; environment; geological survey; urban planning and land administration.

There are various estimation methods (broadly labelled as direct or indirect) used by countries to estimate the value of land depending on what sources of information are available in a given country. The estimation of land using a direct method may be viewed as a physical inventory method where the area of each parcel of land is multiplied by an appropriate price. By summing up the value of each parcel of land that is within the asset boundary across a nation, the total value of land in a given country can be obtained.

Chapter 5 described how the value of land can be directly estimated by multiplying the area of each parcel of land by an appropriate price. However, it might be difficult to collect separate (and reliable) price information for the estimation of the land without any structures or crops. One of the challenges in estimating the value of land underlying structures or crops is that often only information is available on real estate that is sold on the market (i.e. the combined value). Thus, if separate information on the price of land without structures or crops is not available then an indirect estimation method could be used.

Previous chapters have examined general principles and approaches to estimate the value of land. As discussed in Chapter 1, the coverage of national balance sheets by institutional sectors is of particular interest for economic policy analysis. There may also be a need to provide a further breakdown of the total value (e.g. by types of land, industries). This chapter looks at producing estimates for different sectors of the economy as well as for different types of land and industry.

This chapter discusses a number of specific estimation cases. Chapter 8.1 discusses some special characteristics concerning (the valuation of) agricultural land and wooded land available for wood supply. Chapter 8.2 elaborates an asset type that is closely related to land: land improvements. The compilation and valuation of government owned land is described in Chapter 8.3.

The previous chapters of this guide focused on the different approaches in which to decompose the total value of a real estate into its two basic components: the value of land underlying dwellings and the value of the construction itself. The objective of this chapter is to show the analytical implications of data on the value of land and the value of dwellings in microeconomic and macroeconomic analysis.