BUYING A HOUSE

Southland Times, Issue 25538, 5 December 1944, Page 7

BUYING A HOUSE

Sir,—Please allow me a little space in your valuable columns to ventilate a little grievance. I was looking around Invercargill some time ago trying to find a house to rent. As I could not find one myself, I decided to see some of the land agents, and was told that the only way to get a house was by purchasing it. This I decided to do, and after being taken by the agents to a few houses I selected one that suited me. An agreement, and so on, was then drawn up and a fair deposit paid. At the same time an application was filled in for the Land Sales Committee. Now sir, this was just on six weeks ago, and that is all I have heard about the place. I spoke to my agents about it and asked them if they had received any word about the place being put through by the sales committee. They said no, and that they were powerless to do anything themselves until they received advice from the committee. I understand the committee holds a meeting once a week to deal with applications. Now, if they have a lot of applications to deal with, why don’t they hold extra meetings to overcome this problem instead of keeping one waiting for weeks for their approval? Who are reaping the benefit of this delay?—the agents,. I should say, with the amounts they hold on hand of the purchasers’ deposit money. If I had known then what I know now, I would not have paid down more than a quarter of the amount I paid, until the committee’s approval was obtained. I would very much like to know the cause of all this unnecessary delay. PURCHASER. [“Every application filed comes before the committee within two or three days of the filing, and is disposed of then and there if there is no Crown objection,” said Mr T. R. Pryde, chairman of the Southland Land Sales Committee, yesterday. “If there is a Crown objection, it is set down for hearing at a later date—approximately seven days for an urban property and 14 days for a rural property. If there is a large number of applications, it may be up to 10 days for urban and 17 to 18 for rural. The committee endeavours to give a decision on the day of the hearing. If that is not possible, it is given a day or two thereafter. If the correspondent cares to see me I. will have his application investigated.”]