THE LEASEHOLD TENURE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43322, 7 May 1908, Page 2

THE LEASEHOLD TENURE.

Land ! Land ! ! Is the cry on all sides. New arrivals and old settlers are buying and selling. Just at the present time a good deal of attention is being given to land in the vicinity of the Main Trunk line. But it is the opinion of many that the land laws in the King Country are not satisfactory. The whole of the cultivatable area is too heavily weighted with leasehold. In order to support a leasehold basis, with any degree of success there must be a fair margin of freehold; to provide security for business operations. The freehold is unobtainable, the leasehold is made as difficult to get as it is possible to make it. Maori leaseholds could be made valuable, but it takes too much time to negotiate the title, and every obstacle known to legal ingenuity is put up in order to delay and miserably hinder the issue of title to the buyer. Maories and Europeans are sufferers from this deadlock. If a man buys an L.I.P. section and suddenly has to leave the district he cannot sell to advantage as he has to go to the Auckland Land Board, and thereafter to W ellington before he can get sanction to convey. The King Country is a great asset to the Dominion, so far as area and capability of expansion is concerned, but even a sane man finds it impossible to work with a straight jacket restriction opposing him at every change. What we want is to kill off the multitude of complex regulations which affect us, and to institute easy, simple, quick, and efficient land laws, so that men can do business, then large populations! will spread over waste areas, and'prosperity will follow.