MELBOURNE-LAND BOOM. TOTAL COLLAPSE.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 323, 8 December 1888, Page 3

MELBOURNE-LAND BOOM. TOTAL COLLAPSE.

Amic'Ls by the R.M.S. Zealand ia on December 3, show that the long-predicted collapse in the "land boom" in Melbourne has come. One gentlemen writing to a friend in Auckland says : " The great land boom has ignorainiously collapsed, and a general nursing ol babies is now being witnessed. Colossal fortunes, which we weie told had beon mado, now only appear on paper, and the banks, like some voracioub monster, arc seizing victims in all direction.-;. Of course large sums of money have been made, but mostly by original owners who parted early in the year for cash. The speculators pure and simple have only bills to fall back upon, and those the banks will uot.iccept. at any price. One of the leadors of the boom lias deemed it prudent to forfeit not less than £62,000 hard Gash in deposits sooner than go on with payments, and bib case is that ot many others.' 1 A Melbourne paper thus summarises the position of affairs :— " Like many others, we knew that most of the land purchases of the last two years have been made by men who, in many instances, had barely enough ca?h topay thedeposits giving bills for the remainder of the purchabe money, utterly worthless unless the bills they in turn received from other purchasers were met. And these lasfc bills could nob be paid unless the bona-fufo investing public bought. The silver boom was just such an instance as the present depression, which, however, will pass over without any injury to legitimate business. Those who were '" first in it " made large sums of money, but in a vast number of cases vendors and stockbrokers were only too happy if they got a bare commission from the purchaser utterly unable to pay for his scrip. So it is happening with land sales. The original holders of the land are quickly resuming their propropevty and cancelling all bills, having mado a fair profit after all" by sticking to the cash deposit, which of course becomes profit. There are some cases whore transactions have become too, complicated, and so some few scoi'es of well-known speculators will have to disappear. The great bulk of the public so far has not speculated beyond its means, and as our contributor, Boswell, points out, individualsmust suffer, but there will be no crisis. Thei;e are, however, ca«es involving bhe commercial stability of a few large traders, otherwise perfectly solvonb who have dabbled in land beyond their means, and these may' have to retire from business. One prominent citizen in Toorak is, for instance, likely to be unable to compound privately. That the Land Boom is dead, may be gathered from the fact that a certain legislator had t'hegood sense to pay 1 off £20,000 deposits rather than complete his bargains."