LAND SPECULATORS.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13485, 3 June 1914, Page 2

LAND SPECULATORS.

A commercial writer in a Wellington paper states that in Australia, as in New Zealand, as far as one can ascertain the facts, there is no encouragement given by bankers to speculators in suburban properties acquired for cutting up into suitable blocks for reselling at substantial profit, if not at boom prices. We ("Wairarapa Age") wish it could be said that encouragement were not given to large propertyholders to acquire further estate and hold it for a rise. We have reason to think that the tightness of money in New Zealand of late has been due in no small measure to large holders, with plenty of security at their back, making demands upon the financial institutions, in order to extend the area of their possessions. They have borrowed money from the banks at five and six per cent, to make an immediate return of ten and twenty per cent, and a prospective profit in sales. But, someone Avill say, the money advanced by the banks must go into circulation. Some of it will, of course, do so. A great deal of it, however, is taken out of the country and expended in travel and luxury. It is hardly fair to small holders and business men that the financial institutions should be pla^d unreservedly at the disposal of the big property-holder. That is not the primary object of banking institutions, to our way of thinking.