FARM PROPERTIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 3, 24 July 1946, Page 4

FARM PROPERTIES

PARTIALLY DEVELOPED NEEDED WANTED BY REHABILITATION The Rehabilitation Board’s policy regarding offers to ex-servicemen of farm properties which although in themselves economic units possess inadequate improvements, and other properties partially developed but not yet fully economic, is explained in a statement from the Rehabilitation Department. “In both cases,” says the statement, “the Board will consider the proposition. In general terms the Board will consider any farm property which will immediately provide the ex-servicemen purchaser with a reasonable livelihood and at the same time enable him to meet his charges from the outset. “Often a farm which is offered, either to the department or to an ex-serviceman, lacks housing, or perhaps farm buildings and other permanent improvements necessary to enable a man to become fully established, but is in every other way an economic unit suitable and capable of sustaining the purchase price if budgetted in the usual way. Assistance in such cases will be considered even although the provision of the needed improvements at present prices tends to increase the total cost of the proposition beyond the property’s productive capacity. In considering applications in such cases the Board—or its district executive committees—would be guided by the productive value of the farm, without taking into account the items deduced because of building deficiencies. It would, however, expect to see a reasonable margin between the purchase price and the full productive value if major improvements were essential. “Again in the case of farm properties which at the time of offering are not altogether economic but which can be made so within a reasonable period, the Board will consider applications for assistance. Provision in such cases would be: that the property at the time of the application would enable the applicant to obtain a reduced living, even although at that time it could not be regarded as a satisfactory economic unit; and, that by further work on the applicant’s part, and by budgetting expenditure over a period of say from three to four years—including reasonable advances for. economic improvements— : the property could be brought up to full economic standard.

“Loan applications on properties of this latter type are to be considered by the executive committee of the Board itself, which will have before it a recommendation on the project from the district executive committee concerned.”