LAND SHARKS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 376, 29 April 1910, Page 5

LAND SHARKS.

THEIR METHODS. COMMISSIONKR'S SHAI'P REBUKE. By Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, April 2S. The Commissioner of Crown Lands (Mr. Jas. Mackenzie) administered a sharp rebuke to speculators in Crown leases to-day, and in doing so said lie voiced the ieeling of the Land Board. Applications are made from time to time, lie said, for transfers of lease at a price greatly in excess of the original price. When a man had put in, say, ten or twelve years' work on his leasehold, the Board was inclined to favorably regard a transfer, so that the outgoing leaseholder could reap the ■benefit of his years of work and improvement, but it was a very different matter when a man paid, say, t'4oo, as had been done, for the louse of a block of land and. after holding it for say three, six or twelve months, sought to disposp of it for £IOOO or £l.lOO. That kind of tiling would always meet with tlie disapproval of the Board. They would always set their faces against trafficking in land of this sort. Tt loaded up the incoming man, who naturally needed every shilling to develop the property, with some hundreds of pounds for which the outgoing man gave no consideration. The attitude of the Board to-day towards the practice was responsible for some transfers being disapproved, and consideration of a number of applications being postponed for full enquiries to be made and furnished to the Board between this and its next meeting.