THE £50,000 ESTATES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 261, 8 November 1906, Page 4

THE £50,000 ESTATES.

We have received a copy of the return furnished to Parliament giving particulars of the freehold estates in the colony of over £50,000 unimproved value. It will be remembered that Government at first refused to give the names of owners, and this information was secured only by the persistency of Mr. Baume. The point that will strike our readers most forcibly in this return is the fact that a very small portion of the land above the £50,000 limit is held in Auckland district. Apart from the Williamson Estate and Sir John Logan Campbell's property—which is, of course, suburban land —the only lands coming under the operation of the £50,000 limiting clause would be the estates held by the Assets Realisation Board. The Board has property worth about £215,000 unimproved value in Auckland and Marlborough combined, and we are not in a position to say exactly how much is located in this district. But as the total unimproved value of the freeholds in the colony that come within the £50,000 limit is set down at £5.372,000, and the outside value of land of this class fit for settlement in Auckland district would be less than £300,000, it can be seen that Auckland would be benefited to only a very small degree by the enforcement of such a restriction. As to the rest of the colony the margin of unimproved values above the £50,000 limit is about £2,000,000; and if Mr. McNab's bill becomes law, freehold property to that value would be thrown upon the market within the next ten years. But it must not be forgotten that if the State decides to sell no more land, the estates included in this schedule represent the only source from which the freehold can be obtained. In other words, as the State retires from competition, the owners of those estates will have a monopoly of freehold tenure and will be able to charge practically their own price for it when they come to dispose of their surplus. Even if we do not put it so strongly as this, we must admit that the refusal of Government to sell any more land will artificially enhance the value of existing freeholds; and this i 9 a fact to be seriously reckoned with in considering the possible effects of such a measure as Mr. McNab has proposed-