AMAZING AUCTION SALE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 25 August 1924, Page 5

AMAZING AUCTION SALE.

SHEEP FARM SOLD AT RATE OF 21 d PER ACRE. PRICE £SO j GOVERNMENT VALUATION £7867. The sale for £SO (not per acre, but for the lot) of an unencumbered property of 5324 acres sounds like a fairy tale or a dream, but it really happened in New Plymouth on Friday afternoon. Messrs Newton King, Ltd., offered, without reserve, to close a deceased partnership estate, a property of this area at Awakino, with access from the Mangonui Road. The land was described as freehold, on a metalled road, well watered, partly fenced, and with 900 acres felled, of which the flats in their present state would carry 60 milking cows —and a dairy factory is within easy distance (about seven or eight miles). No one seemed to want the property, and it was knocked down at £SO, or at about 2£d per acre. This becomes all the more amazing when it is realised that the Government valuation is £7867, or nearly £1 10s per acre. . Now that wool is again worth something, and it seems likely that that position will be maintained, it is excusable to be surprised at even the roughest sheep country fetching so low a price as 2£d per aero. There ought to be a catch somewhere, but the auctioneers say there is not —not even a mortgage to he taken over. —Herald.