Take and use licences can be traded in part or in full, on a permanent or temporary basis.
Approval is subject to the constraints of the Water Act, the Ministerial Policies for Managing Take and Use Licences and any approved local management rules or plans. Approval of groundwater applications is also subject to the Ministerial Guidelines for Groundwater Licensing and the Protection of High Value Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems.
A licence holder must apply to their water corporation for their approval to tranfer their licence.
Farm dam registration licences are linked to the land and may only be transferred in conjunction with a transfer of land on which the farm dam is located.
Buyers and sellers of take and use licences generally find each other by word of mouth, newspaper ads, water brokers, conveyancers and real estate agents. Details of agents can be located in the Yellow Pages or through advertisements in local newspapers. Some agents list ask and bid prices on their public websites.
As an interim measure to help grow the trade in take and use licences, water corporations may maintain public registers of interested sellers used to help buyers and sellers to find each. Contact the relevant water corporation for details on how to access the lists of interested sellers.
There is currently a limited amount of price information for take and use licence trades. An increase in the availability of prices would enable more buyers and sellers to enter the market and make informed decisions at lower costs and with greater confidence. The table below is part of a strategy to make more price information available to buyers and sellers. The prices for take and use licences shown in this table are median prices based on data aggregated across all of Victoria, but predominantly from the Coliban Water region. The table below is only a broad ballpark estimate of take and use licence prices.
| Year | Permanent volume trade ($/ML) | Temporary volume trade ($/ML) |
|---|---|---|
| 2011-12 | $1000/ML | $160/ML |
| 2012-13 | $2000/ML | $267/ML |
| 2013-14 | $1000/ML | $150/ML |
Note: Prices are derived from a limited number of priced trades and your situation may be different.
Detailed licence trading history
You can get information on the number and volume (ML) of trades of take and use licences per Basin or GMU and according to your selection criteria below. You can also find a list of all approved transfers in a given water year.
*On 11 July 2013, the report functionality below was modified to report the correct volumes for permanent and temporary transfer types for take and use licences. There were no issues with the values for change of ownership transfer types so no fix was required for this category.
Notes and disclaimers