REAL ESTATE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 230, 29 September 1933, Page 13

REAL ESTATE.

SOUNDEST INVESTMENT. SAVINGS OF THE PEOPLE. "Those immortal ballads, Tlome, Sweet Home' and 'My Old Kentucky Home' were not written about tenements and apartments. Men never sing songs about a pile of rent receipts," said Mr. 0. F. Baker, president of the CanterburyWestland branch of the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand at Christchurch, in urging the advantages of real estate investment over other ways of utilising savings. Mr. Baker said there was one outstanding feature which must have impressed every thinking man as the result of a three years' slump, and that was the fact, impressed on us from our childhood, that there was no security on earth like the earth itself.

Real estate investment to-day, as always, remained the soundest form of investment for the savings of the people. Stocks, debentures, shares and other commercial ventures had all suffered disastrous setbacks during the past two or three years, bringing loss to thousands of investors, but right through, the holders of first mortgages had, in a large number of cases, received his interest unimpaired, while his principal was still worth 20/ in the pound.

There was over £15,000,000 tied up in the banks on fixed deposit, the fixed term of large quantities of which must reach maturity each week, and Mr. Baker suggested that those investors could contribute very largely to the coming trade recovery if they would show their confidence in this young country by returning to their first love and investing in sound first mortgage, for, be it remembered, investors lent to-day on to-day's values, which must be increasingly sound as real estate values improved, and if investors were content with a moderate rate of interest he suggested that they would both help themselves and the community in a very practical manner.

"To own one's home is a physical expression of that individualism, enterprise, independence, and freedom of spirit which go to the building up of a nation," Mr. Baker added.