LAND SPECULATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 258, 31 October 1925, Page 20

LAND SPECULATION.

- ' ■To tbe KJitor.i ' Sir.—lt is about time somebody contradicted the wild statements made by Labour candidates and soap box ora- " tor 3 about land speculation. Some of their supfiorters are led to believe that J three-quarters of the freehold land in . in the country changed hands in the | boom of a few years ago. The editor J of a Taranaki paper carefully went into the -whole thing and published the figurea. F can't give you them exactly, ! but this is what happened roughly. Dur- ] ing the ten year 3 before the (Jreat War ' the average sale of freehold land in New i Zealand waa just under three per cent per annum. During the first two years < of war it fell below two per cent, but i during the last year of the war. owing to the high price of produce, a boom started in small and medium-sized dairy ( farms, principally in Taranaki and Auckland. At the end of the war a boom in house property started all over Xew Zealand. From the time the sales were over three per cent per annum until they came back to this figure was roughly two years. During this two years' boom only about ten per cent of the freehold property of this country was sold, not quite double the normal. This is very different from the 75 per cent of the "usehold" imagination.—l am., etc., RUSTIC.