LAND VALUES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 448, 5 March 1909, Page 8

LAND VALUES.

A GOVERNMENT ESTIMATE AT THE HUTT. FORCING THE SETTLER BACK. Tho manner in which tlio prices of good suburban land are forcing tho farming settlors farther and. farther away from tho town of Wellington is emphasised by tt:o prices fixed for tho Pitt Settlement at Lower Hutt. Though.the Hutt land prices, as a general rule, aro not taken very seriously just now owing to tho high figure asked, vet tho prices fixed for a Crown settlement, must become almost inevitably a standard minimum in tho district.

The prices fixed, for tho Pitt Settlement rango from £300 to over £1000 per acre. Exactly wliat this high price moans will le better realised when one remembers that factory sites on the Thames bank in London have lately been bought at about £1000 per acre. Land 20 miles from London can Le bought at £15 per acre. But hero is land 12J miles from tho metropolis of New Zealand—a new country where land is supposed t-o be plentiful—valued'by the Government (whoso policy is to encourage settlement) at tho prico of London factory sites—£looo per acre! Tho pricos here stated for London land aro bound to bo seriously doubted by our readers acquainted with Now Zealand prices. But they have tho , authority of "The Financial Times" (London) of January 7 of this year. That journal, in a contributed article on tho purchase of factory sites by firms who were forced by the new patent laws to manufacture their commodities in Britain or loso their patent rights, quoted the following as the prices paid for land

"LONDON LAND. Per Acre. a £. £ "Thames-side .... ..: 600 to 1200 Canalside ... .... 450 to 900 ( With railway access...- 500 to 900 • , No railway. access ... 400 to 700." Against these figures tho prices of the Pitt settlement will appear exceedingly nrecocious: — lowjer hutt LAND. • ' Per acre. 12J miles from Wellington, 1J miles from station, with i ' a bank to prevent flooding from tho Hutt River— £300 to £1050. , The settlement will oonsist practically of city-size sections, with all the expenses of suburban residepee and Very little of its advantages. Under these circumstances critics of tho Government find it difficult to see what good tho Pitt Settlement is going to do except to provide one more bit of loverage to the high prices of New Zealand land. It seems imminent' that the market gardeners, who have'-hitherto supplied tho Wellington market from tho Hutt Valley, .must be soon forced right out of the Valley, not before the march of residential settlement, but before the ■ progress of tho fictitious values of unoccupied land. Tho Government's land administration seems to oscillate between huge areas that are unwieldy and small areas that are too restricted. ■

The' Pitt Settlement is divided into 119 sections, and the leases are for 33 years, renewable. Applications close on April 14.