THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY. “Public Service.” FRIDAY, MAY 7, 1943 HOMES AS AN INVESTMENT

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3260, 7 May 1943, Page 4

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY. “Public Service.” FRIDAY, MAY 7, 1943 HOMES AS AN INVESTMENT

Mr C. D. Morpeth, as chairman of the New Zealand Investment, Mortgage and Deposit Company, had something to say on the subject of investment in house property at the annual meeting of the company that should claim the attention of our legislators. Recent articles on the subject have stressed the importance of ■encouraging home-owning from the social point of view. Mr Morpeth, taking another aspect of the question, emphasises its importance in the economy of the nation, and points out that private ownership of homes is an incentive to thrift and an antidote to inflation. Of recent years, he explains, the high wages enjoyed by sections of

the community renting State houses which could • never become their own, had been a contributing factor to inflation. Deprived of the real incentive to save that the purchase f of a home created, an everincreasing proportion of the community had money to burn, as the ready patronage of every form of diversion, sport or amusement indicated.

Ministers have declared —Mr Semple in particular—that the more private homes are built the more the Government will like it. This sounds all right, _ but what is needed is. a new attitude and a new policy on the part of the Government toward the private investor that will restore confidence in lending for housebuilding. One reason for this is pointed out by Mr Morpeth. The private lender of limited means, he sdys, dependent on the due observance of a contract, cannot to-day afford to risk lending on mortgage, the various restrictive legislative enactments having virtually closed the field to him.

This is, perfectly true. Lending for house construction used to be regarded as a safe business for investors of this class. But the law to-day is loaded against the lender, his security no longer commands the confidence it did. The result is that it is to-day much more difficult to raise money from private investors. Confidence has been shaken, and' it can only be restored by removing such restrictions as have undermined it. It should be plain that it would be very much, better for the State and the national economy that thrift and homeownership should be encouraged by measures that will set free the resources of private capital.