TRAFFICKING IN LAND.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXV, Issue 13059, 29 April 1910, Page 5

TRAFFICKING IN LAND.

SPECULATORS REBUKED. (Per United Press Association.) ' WELLINGTON, April 28. The Commissioner of Crown Lauds (Mr J. McKenzie) administered a sharp rebuke to speculators in Crown leases to-day. In doing so he said he voiced the feeling of the Land Board. Applications are made from time to time, he said, for transfers of leases at prices greatly.in excess of the original price. When a man had put in, say, ten or twelve years’ work on his leasehold,, the Board was inclined to favourably regard the transfer, so that the outgoing leaseholder could reap the benefit of his years of work and improvement; but it was a very different matter when a man paid, say, J>4so, as had been done, for the lease of a block of land, and after holding it . for, say, three, six, or twelve months, sought to dispose of it for .£IOOO or ,£ISOO. That kind of thing would al-. ways meet with the disapproval of the Board. They would always set their faces against trafficking in land of this sort. It loaded up the incoming man, who naturally needed every shilling to develop the property, with some hundreds of pounds, for which the outgoing man gave no conoideration. The attitude of the Board today towards the practice was responsible for, some transfers being disapproved, and the consideration of a number of applications being postponed for full inquiries to be made and furnished to the Board between this and its next meeting.