PRESENT VALUE OF LAND IN LONDON.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5737, 4 November 1905, Page 12

PRESENT VALUE OF LAND IN LONDON.

Per the widening of Picadilly the London County Council has been for some time negotiating the purchase of a strip of land fronting Picadilly and St. Jame’s street. , - „ , The area, which is, of course, built upon, contains about 1200 square feet, and the price agreed upon to be paid for it is .£41.000. This works out at .£34 3s 4d a square foot, or the enormous sum of £1,488,300 per acre. It probably constitutes a record, hut as the sum includes compensation for disturbance the purchase cannot be compared with the prices recently paid for sites in the City. Cornhill is the highest rented spot on earth. A single room was let not long ago for between .£2OOO and a year. In the West End a small shop, with basement, fetches over .£IOOO a year in Bond street, and the remainder of the house lets at proportionate sums. The ratable value of London is about £40,000,000, of which sum .£18,000,000 is represented by the value of sites. In recent years Bloomsbury has regained some of its popularity, and rents have risen. At the Bankruptcy Court, however, depreciation of property in the immediate neighbourhood was one of the causes assigned for the failure of Mrs Francis Benfield Manson, a widow, who recently carried on the Marquis of Comw-allis Inn, in Marchmont street, Russell square. Marchmont street is a poor neighbourhood off Bussell square, and a local estate agent explained yesterday that many of the leases in this and other streets are falling in shortly. One of the large owners is the Skinners* Company. "When people do not expect their leases to be renewed," said the agent, "they lose interest in their shops and houses, and are perhaps not so careful in the people they take in on the upper floors. Once carnage folk lived in the crescent near by. Now every house is parcelled out among several families and lodgers."