LAND BOOM.

Bruce Herald, Volume LV, Issue 65, 25 August 1919, Page 5

LAND BOOM.

ENGLAND CHANGES HANDS. £20,000,000 SALES THIS YEAR/ 'British"land is changing hands at the average rate of 100,000 acres a week, and it is estimated that at the end of the year the total sales will have involved a sum of something like £20^000,000.' , „ This statement was made by a wenknown London land expert, who is intimately associated with the disposal of some of tho large estates that are being sold. 'During the past week/ he said, 'one estate alone that was offered for sale contained 500,000 acres. Another, a small one of 10,100 acres in Durham and tho West Riding of Yorkshire, was sold in 96 lots, 'and fetched £86,222; while a second, of 28,500 in Scotland ,was sold % £67,085. 'The remarkable feature of the transactions taking place is that the estates are mostly of agricultural land, and are being disposed of in small lots. In many instances they are being bought by tenant farmers andby such as munition workers, who, having accumulated some money during the war,, are setting up as small f armors. 'Syndicates, too, are buying where they can. In one recent case a small estate of a little over 3000 acres, set at a valuation of £IOO,OOO, was disposed. of to a syndicate for £150,000. It was then passed on to another syndicate for £200,000. Tho difference I will of course, como out of tho pock-! ots of the farmers, and for this reason sales to syndicates are dangerous. 1 'Tho truth of tho matter is that tho present sales are the beginning of tho fulfilment of the cry 'Britain for the British-' The land is gradually cdming into the hands of the peopleAnd the fact that tenant farmers will buy shows the movement to bo a signof the soundness and prosperity of the country. .If tonant farmers _had no confidence'in the capacity of tho land to repay: them they would not buy. 'These sales may force still further sales. Tenant :• farmers in _ districts where landowners do not give them the opportunity to buy will undoubtedly become discontented and press for Possession of their hirod land.'