CITY VALUATIONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21462, 8 April 1933, Page 10

CITY VALUATIONS

Through reductions ma3e by (he valuer, voluntary agreements, and orders from the Assessment Court, the aggregate rating valuations for Auckland City for 1933-3-1 are lower by £123,500 than in 1932-33. If any semblance of a stable ratio between valuations and rental or selling values is to be maintained, it is obvious that this is only a small instalment of a movement that must go further. There may be some force in the contention the valuer made to the Court that owners and agents who, a few years ago, were asking handsome prices for properties, were now suggesting they had no market value at all, in the endeavour to have rating valuations reduced. Objectors before the Court will naturally describe a property in terms different from those a salesman would use to a possible purchaser. At the same time, if high market or rental values had an influence in increasing valuations for rating purposes, there is no answer to the argument that a subsequent fall reinforces applications for reduction. The Mayor, referring to the lower aggregate this year, suggested that it created a problem for the new council to face. That is true. It is likely to become intensified in the future, and to affect a far wider area than the city alone. Fixed charges and essential services must be financed. The crude way of regarding it would be to say that local authorities would be forced to strike higher rates on the . lower valuations. Even if it simply came to this, there would be something to say for getting closer jo reality in the method of local taxation. But it cannot rightly be settled in such an easy fashion. Local bodies must remember that the circumstances which inspire demands for reduced valuations also press very heavily on prop'erty-owners, that the high level of rates is a real and formidable burden on the individual and on industry. The situation should be another incentive to zeal in the cause that should be before them always, the cause of economy in the face of times demanding it with an insistent voice.