LAND VALUES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 174, 25 July 1928, Page 11

LAND VALUES.

RURAL ASSESSMENTS TOO HIGH. ADJUSTMENTS IX PROGRESS. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. Many criticisms of land valuations were heard from members when the annual report of the Valuation Department was tabled in the House to-day. The main features were that valuations were too high and revisions too tardy. The Minister of Lands, the Hon. A. D. McLeod, remarked, in reply, that he knew it was an ideal to take one standard of values for the Dominion. How to achieve it was the difficulty. There were 60,000 farms in New Zealand of over 200 acres, and if one board was appointed to fix their values it would covei, say, three farms a day, and would need 60 years to complete the whole country. Mr. Lysnar: It is not suggested that one board could do it. The Minister: If it. means more than one you will get just as many differences of opinion as you get now between valuers, honest differences regarding unimproved value. The Minister added that it was generally agreed that the unimproved value of rural lands had been placed too high in the past. His Department agreed with him on that point, and adjustment was going on. It needed care, and no attempt would be made to rush it. Otherwise, the same inequalities would arise as occurred when values - were pushed up in the last boom period owing to complaints that land was grossly under valued. Mr. Holland (Leader of the Opposition) : Will the wool boom have any effect ? Mr. McLeod replied that this was one of the troubles, but high prices might only prevail one year. Unless they worked out the value of produce over a period of seven to ten years they could not be sure of fixing a fair land value.