A Healthy Tone

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 424, 4 August 1928, Page 8

A Healthy Tone

Close Inquiry for Rural Properties

THERE is a healthy inquiry tone in the market for farm properties, and although this cannot be accepted as indicative of a quick return to stable values, it is considered to be the signal for greater confidence by money-lenders in rural securities. Two seasons of good prices, with excellent prospects ahead, have stimulated the demand for the one-man farm in the Auckland and Waikato districts.

TN recent years there has been a distinct swing of the financial pendulum away from rural investments, and toward city and suburban properties, hut a noticeable slackening off in city purchases and an offsetting appreciation in farm lands has been manifest over the past couple of months, and this has led to the belief among commercial men that in a short time tendencies will be reversed in favour of producers’ holdings. In a district so essentially a producer of butter-fat as the Auckland Province, the one-man farm of 60 to 80 acres attains a great degree of popularity, find those who deal in land

North can hope to receive no more than 6 per cent, at the outside. SYNDICATE FARMING It is true that in this district the market has not picked up to any extensive degree, and prospective buyers are still discriminating delicately upon the localities in which they propose to settle. On the other hand there is an extraordinary inclination to pay for heavily improved holdings instead of searching for less costly places without so many improvements; and the colour of hard cash is showing itself in a more tangible measure than was so a few months ago. Group farming in many of its aspects has been reported upon unfavourably by the authorities, but several syndicates have been formed tentatively with the idea of buying a large block of land in this province for subdivision and intense dairy farming. No deals have yet been made, but healthy inquiries are being reported for land at a figure round about £23 an acre. The high cost of stock is a substantial obstacle in the way of successful dairy farm extension, and many holders of land remain in possession only by sheer tenacity and hard work. Farming, iu fact, when gauged in terms of hard cash, has hitherto not been a good business proposition, and land dealers assert that very few of the properties purchased in recent years have produced a net return of 6 per cent. PLEASED WITH OUTLOOK Definite measures of profit and loss are difficult in rural businesses, and the only men who have reduced their operations to cold figures are those who have endeavoured —in the main unsuccessfully—to conduct their farms from Queen Street with the aid of a manager. Values are still extremely high, and local rates are still excessive; those who can, retain their holdings; those who must, sell at the purchaser’s figure. Demands for big properties are coming from interested investors from Hawke’s Bay, Wanganui and Taranaki districts. Valuers and dealers are pleased with the general outlook encompassed by recent transactions, however, and it is freely asserted that, with the improved standard of farming now resulting from herd-testing and modern methods, and the increased production already manifest through heavy fertilisation, the Dominion, as an entity in the sphere of supply and demand, will increase its prestige overseas, and incidentallly swell the growing returns of the primary industries. They consider that this is no time to ring the crier’s bell courting morbid reflection, but one for genuine hope in the outcome of recent market improvements.

have received many inquiries recently from young men who propose establishing a modest herd of 30 or 40 cows. Financial institutions are visibly loosening their purse strings, and money is available in some quarters at 6J per cent, up to a 50 per cent, margin on approved farm securities. In fact, recent advice from Dunedin indicates that first mortgages are being procured on farm properties at 5g per cent, and that investors from the