France and Italy
France and Italy offer two starkly different models of the forest market. France is one of the most organised and stable markets in Europe, while Italy stands out for its high degree of fragmentation and its specific regional rules.
France
In France, roughly 75% of forests are privately owned. The market is closely supervised by the state agency Safer, which holds pre-emption rights over agricultural and forest land.
If a property exceeds 25 ha, a PSG – Plan Simple de Gestion – an official management plan, is mandatory. Logging operations are subject to strict rules, and forest regeneration is compulsory.
Compensation and support: DEFI Forêt – a tax credit scheme allowing up to 25% of investment in forest regeneration or management to be recovered.
Label Bas-Carbone: a French state-certified carbon sequestration programme that allows owners to receive payments from companies for planting or regenerating forest. One important nuance – France has the Loi Monichon, which grants a 75% reduction in inheritance tax on forest properties that are managed in accordance with a plan.
Price levels: The French forest market is stable. The average price fluctuates around EUR 4,500-5,500/ha, and depends heavily on the region. Central regions (around EUR 2,500-3,000/ha). Regions with high-quality oak stands or close to cities (EUR 10,000-15,000/ha and above).
Italy
In Italy, around 65% of forests are private. The forests are often located in mountainous areas, which makes commercial use difficult but increases their ecological and tourism value. Forest management is governed by the 2018 “Forest and Forest Supply Chains Code” (TUFF). Each region – Tuscany or Lombardy, for example – sets its own logging limits and protected zones.
Compensation: Support is provided mainly through the strategic CAP – Common Agricultural Policy – plan for 2023-2027. Owners can receive compensation for conserving biodiversity and for carrying out fire safety measures.
Price levels: The market is currently very uneven. Low-value pasture/forest land in southern Italy and in the mountains fetches EUR 2,000-4,000/ha. Commercially valuable chestnut or beech forests in northern Italy cost between EUR 8,000 and 15,000/ha. Land with high added value, meanwhile – close to vineyards or tourist areas – can exceed even EUR 25,000/ha.
Spain
In Spain, private forests account for roughly 70% of the total forest area and are characterised by high fragmentation, with the average holding smaller than 3 hectares. In 2025, the Spanish forest sector faces tightened legal regulation relating to fire safety and climate change.
Rules on forest use: In Spain, forest management is set out in the national Forest Act (http://nwfp-policies.efi.int/wiki/Spanish_Forestry_Law) Ley de Montes, while practical enforcement is overseen by the autonomous regions, such as Andalusia or Galicia.
Fire safety as a priority: Since 2025, stricter requirements have been in force for clearing what is known as fuel – the term the Spanish use for shrubs and dry branches. Owners have a mandatory duty to maintain their forest in order to reduce the risk of fire.
Management plans: Private owners must have an approved Forest Management Plan (Proyecto de Ordenación vai Plan Dasocrático) in order to carry out any commercial logging or to apply for subsidies.
Spain has the concept of usus inocui, meaning that members of the public may gather wild fruit and mushrooms in a private forest, provided the owner has not put up clearly visible prohibition signs and mushroom picking is not restricted by licences for the protection of the ecosystem.
Compensation and support
Spain has introduced new taxes and support mechanisms to encourage private owners not to dispose of their forest land.
IRPF tax relief: New rules in 2025 allow forest sector businesses and forest owners to apply a special tax assessment method if their income does not exceed EUR 250,000.
Compensation for restrictions: In regions designated as “civil protection emergency zones” – following major fires, for example – owners are exempt from income tax (https://sede.agenciatributaria.gob.es/Sede/en_gb/irpf/novedades-impuesto/novedades-normativa-2025.html) on the benefits they receive. In late 2025, applications opened for an EU support fund worth EUR 11 million, intended for forest regeneration, the thinning of young stands and improving the value of ecosystems.
Price levels: The Spanish land market shows enormous variation depending on the region and on whether the land is irrigated.
Northern regions – Galicia, Asturias: for commercially usable forest land growing eucalyptus and pine, prices fluctuate around EUR 5,000-10,000/ha.
Central Spain – Castile and León: the cheapest land in the dry regions can cost from EUR 2,500-4,000/ha, but its commercial potential is low.
National average: The average price of agricultural and forest land in Spain reached approximately EUR 10,248/ha last year.
The expensive regions are the Canary Islands and Murcia, where land has a high value because of speciality crops and prices can exceed EUR 30,000-100,000/ha; forest land is usually the lowest valued on the market.
Portugal
The extremely rapid rise in land and property prices in Portugal in recent years – by as much as 40.6% between 2020 and 2025 – has created a situation in which prices in certain segments outstrip even the wealthier countries of Northern Europe.
The main reasons
The gap between supply and demand: In Portugal there is strong demand for land from both domestic and foreign investors, but a limited supply of good-quality land with its legal affairs in order.
Pressure from foreign investment: Portugal has become a “hot spot” for so-called digital nomads and for investors from the USA, Britain and Germany. This artificially drives up prices even in rural regions, which investors use for tourism projects such as “glamping” sites or the construction of luxury eco-hotels.
Fragmentation of holdings: Northern Portugal is dominated by small, historically divided plots of land, often under 5 ha. To assemble an economically viable area, buyers have to pay a “premium” for each little patch, which pushes up the price per hectare overall.
Restrictions on land use: Portugal has strict zoning rules: RAN – the agricultural reserve – and REN – the ecological reserve – which protect land from development. Land on which there is at least a theoretical possibility of building something, or which lies close to the coastal zone, costs incomparably more than, say, purely agricultural land in Denmark.
High-added-value crops: Portuguese land is often valued according to the scope for growing cork oak, vines or avocados on it, which are higher-value crops than the cereals traditionally grown in Northern Europe.
In Denmark, for example, land is expensive because of its high productivity, whereas in Portugal prices are inflated by the speculative factor of tourism and foreign residents, which turns land into a scarce commodity – and this explains the enormous rise in land prices in Portugal.