MORTGAGORS RELIEF ACT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22400, 13 May 1938, Page 6

MORTGAGORS RELIEF ACT

TO THE <EDtTCE or THE TREE*. Sir, —I shall be glad if you will grant: me space to reply to some of the critics of the Mortgagors Relief Act, and incidentally of the mortgagor. In the first place we should differentiate between the vendor-mortgagee and the individual who lent out hard cash. The latter is undoubtedly entitled to sympathy ior the loss of some

capital. He, like the farmer, in past years has been led away by the picture of a glowing financial future for all connected -with the land, and has often been ill-advised in his lending. There are many who believe that lending on mortgage should only be indulged in by national institutions such as the Public Trustee, and then only on the reducing table mortgage principle, but, unfortunately, many lenders like to have an individual splash with their capital, with too often disastrous results. If table mortgages had been compulsory in the past, it is safe to say there would not have been any need for the Mortgagors Relief Act, and its amendments. . The great point to remember in all land values is that the fertility of land generally is rapidly deteriorating, and can only be stimulated by expensive liming and top-dressing with artificial manures, which alone computed as rent, is as much or more than much land can bear, without paying any interest or rent at all. Hence the loss of capital to the mortgagees concerned. These are plain facts which are recognised by at least the younger of our scientists and scientificallytrained valuers. As regards the vendor-mortgagee, it is doubtful if he is deserving of sympathy. In most cases he sold out in boom times, either he or his agent using every artifice to extract the highest possible price out of the purchaser, and then in too many cases, when the slump came, tried to dispossess the farmer in order to put his own son on to the farm, after having taken the farmer’s lifetime savings as a deposit. Hence the Mortgagors Relief Act.—Yours, etc., MORTGAGOR. Rangiora, May 11, 1938.