TIME AND VALUES

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 126, 25 February 1928, Page 10

TIME AND VALUES

LAND APPRECIATION SOME STRIKING INSTANCES The news that the whole of the West Coast of the South Island was purchased from the Maoris for £3OO, as reported from Greymouth in connection with the representation of the identical scene, revives memories of what is surely one of the most remarkable transactions in real estate in the world, as that part of New Zealand, with its almost limitless resources in coal and gold, must have yielded an enormon sum of money since the year 1860, and the chances are will continue to do so for hundreds of years to come, as much of its surface has merely been scratched. American enterprise and capital on the Ross Flats are demonstrating to the old West Coaster that there are other means of getting gold than panning by hand or sluicing with a big water head, and there is something ironical in the fact that the town of Hokitika is supplied with electric light by the big dredge that is digging up the gold that others left behind.

It has been related that in 1874, when the late Mr. G. B. Borlase was Mayor, the whole of the Lyall Bay-South Kilbirnie isthmus was offered to the Wellington Citv Council by Mr. J. C. Crawford for £2OO, and that the council replied that it had not the money, to expend on sandy wastes so far from the town. It is surprising how little land could be bought to-day for the sum mentioned. Later on the City Council had two opportunities of purchasing the whole of the Miramar Peninsula “for a song,” but allowed them to pass. On one of the two occasions the Mayor and Council favoured the purchase, but when the empowering Bill came forward in the House of Representatives, it was opposed by the then Premier (the late Mr. R. J. Seddon), which killed one of the fairest and best proposals ever made on behalf of Wellington and its people. Now 40ft. sections at Miramar are selling at from £250 to £3OO.

The late Captain W. R. Williams is said to have paid £750 for the whole of the Day’s Bay property, from point to point, and up to the encircling ridge. Only the other day a small section near the tennis courts was sold for £7OO —land only. “I remember,” said Mr. F. Rowe yesterday, “my father being asked to buy the corner where James Smith and Company’s warehouse now stands (the corner of Cuba and Manners Streets). In those days he had a shop there, _ for which he used to pay thirty shillings a week. The owner wanted £l6 a foot, and I remember old Mr. A. P. Stuart coming to my father and saying with an air of great wisdom—‘Do you know, Rowe, I believe that one day this land will be worth £6O a foot,’ at which assertion my father burst out laughing. He wasn’t going to buy, anyhow! Today, I suppose that land is worth anything up to £lOOO a foot.”