DEMAND FOR PROPERTY IN SOUTHLAND.

Press, Volume XLVIII, Issue 7866, 18 May 1891, Page 6

DEMAND FOR PROPERTY IN SOUTHLAND.

If an improved demand for property (says the "Southland News") is a sign of increasing prosperity, those who are interested in Southland have reason to congratulate themselves. Inquiries for farms tor some time past have been numerous, and a large number of transactions in this class of properties have taken place, some of the lots beina portions of that splendid agricultural tract known as Gladfield, near Otautau. This estate has been cut up into a number of moderate-sized farms, and the price per acre has been fixed at a low figure to ensure sale and settlement by a desirable class of farmers. Sales, however, have not been confined to this portion of Southland, but generally all tlirough the district areas are being taken up rapidly. Government land has, as everyone must know who glances at the reoorts of the monthly meetings of the Southland Land Board, been taken up largely in moderate sized farm areas, and the fact that private laud which for long enough was a complete drug in the market, is now much sought after will show that people are beginning to realise that the wealth of this part of New Zealand is to be made out of the soil. The record of the private sales appearing below only extends back for a period of four months, and, as will be seen upon calculation, it embraces 33 farms of a total area of 6925 acres 3 roods 32 perches. Within the last year one large financial institution doing business in Invercarglll has disposed of eight farms of from 200 to 740 acres at prices ranging from £3 to £6 6s, and other firms have numerous properties under lease with purchasing clauses. Inquiries for property are received from as far north as Canterbury, where the drought wrought such havoc last year, and several Otago people have lately taken up their abode in Southland. Money, we are reliably informed, is much more plentiful among agriculturists than it has been for a very long time past ; many of them, whose properties, a few years age, were heavily encumbered, are to-day free men ; and others who, through unfortunate circumstances, lost everything they had when the general crash came, have since made a fresh start, and are now comfortably* off. More than one instance could be given of where a farmer has, during the short space of three years, emerged from the Bankruptcy Court and reached a position of independence, thanks to the reasonable price of land, good crops, and the frozen meat trade. The outlook is most encouraging, and the prosperity that is now extending over the country must, ere long, influence business in the town.