LAND VALUES

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 April 1928, Page 2

LAND VALUES

investors Going slow. (Special to “Star.") AUCKLAND, April 28. “The improvement in the financial position of the Dominion has not yet resulted in any marked demand for farm property, and buyers generally appear to be taking a conservative view of values.” said Mr E. Anderson, president of the Auckland Savings Bank in the annual report presented at the annual meeting of trustees yesterday. “It would be futile to attempt in this report to survey the manifold causes of the slump in farm, chiefly dairy farm, property values. No doubt in many instances failures were due directly to extravagant prices having been paid, the most helpless cases being those in which men not only paid an unduly high price for their farms, but in which their purchase included more land than they could possibly develop with the limited means at their disposal. Broad acres, as security have lost their old time popularity This has been caused partly by losses the mortgagees have experienced owing to fall of land values, and because these particular losses have been associated with the realisation •;that the value of farm security depends largely upon the personal element. The £>tate cannot be expected to accept the responsibility of finding the enormous sums required to finance the purchase and development of the agricultural and pastoral lands of the Dominion. It is evident therefore, that the bulk of producers must continue to rely in a great measure on the private investor, and also that farm mortgages cannot at present successfully compete with other classes of investments returning attractive rates of interest than land. If taxation on income derived from loans on agricultural or pastoral lands, and if valuations and actual productive value were more in accord, there is reason to believe that broad acres would regain their old time popularity.”