Cost Of Houses

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28268, 4 May 1957, Page 3

Cost Of Houses

Sir, —“E.F.” demonstrates an example of the danger to individual liberties against which New Zealand has been warned by

a prescient English visitor in an article published by you on Tuesday. If the cost of houses were arbitrarily dependant upon a Government valuation bureaucracy would be furnished with a

very powerful weapon wherewith to control the free operation of legitimate business deals. Government valuation necessarily takes little account of such matters as (1) interior decoration and fitments, (2) aspect, <3> condition of section or other individual features by which house property acquires its true value, and as the shortage of houses diminishes each one will find its

appropriate price according to purchasers' tastes, and without the control of a paternal and disciplinarian State. —Yours, etc.. I.S.T. May 3, 1957.

Sir, —M&y I add these few words on the cost of houses. We are unfortunately saddled with two political parties who are

committed to the policy of inflation and do not have the courage to enforce measures of stability. The cost of houses, business premises, and farms, could be controlled by the simple alteration of the rating law, making the rateable value of a property at

the purchase price. No sensible person would want to pay rates for ever and a day on the extortionate prices asked today for homes, etc.—Yours, etc., „ STABILITY. May 3, 1857.