LAND VALUES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 141, 16 June 1922, Page 5

LAND VALUES.

BOOM AND ITS AFTERMATH. NO NEED FOR AIiARM. (By Telegraph. Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, this day. Dealing -with the position of country lands in his speech to shareholders to-day, the chairman of the Bank of New Zealand said instances have come under their notice of fanners, who paid unreasonably high prices for land, having been obliged to forfeit the portion of the purchase money (often running into thousands of pounds) whicn they haa paid, and to hand back the property to the vendors. Other vendors havo written off laTge sume due to them to induce the purchasers to remain on the land, and further losses, they feared, will have to be faced before bedrock is touched. He thought, however, that none of these losses need occasion alarm as to the 1 stability of the country, because the pro- ! portion of failures will 'be email. ! The productive capacity of the coun- ' try will, on the whole, not be reduced. Although in some cases properties have deteriorated, in others the carrying capacity of the land and the quality ot the. stock have beon improved. Values must be based on what land can produce in competition with other countries in the markets of the world. By judicious subdivision the number of settlers could , be largely increased with little or no further expenditure on roade and railways. The South Island had not j suffered to anything like the same exI tent as the North, as land values there I were not inflated to the same degree, and farmers there were tiding over their difficulties more easily.