EXORBITANT RENTS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 101, 23 January 1936, Page 6

EXORBITANT RENTS

£2OOO a Year For One Room

What he called a spectacular instance of high rents in the City of London was rSvcaled by Mr. J. G. Head, past-president of the Auctioneers’ and Estate Agents’ Institute of the United Kingdom. ‘‘A moderately-sized room in the city commands the astonishing rent of £2OOO per annum, owing to its proximity to a certain door of the .Stock Exchange,’’ he said. ‘‘ln this case it was a matter of Lime saved; even a minute’s precedence in the dispatch of a telephone message was of great monetary value.” “It will certainly strike the man in the street as a high price,” agreed Mr. Head when he discussed the £2OOO-a--year room with a reporter. “It is one o£ those instances where either extreme usefulness or custom rules the rental. Custom plays a large part in city life—and rentals. “You find brokers get in the habit of going to a set of chambers and paying a certain rout when, ten yards further along the street, there will be chambers at a much lower rent. “I believe this particular room was used only for telephoning. The firm occupying it bad offices elsewhere, but it may have been used as an office.”