DOMINION VALUES.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 March 1922, Page 5

DOMINION VALUES.

MR. FLANAGAN’S VIEWS, CONSERVATIVE “BOOM” ASSESSMENTS. TOWN AND COUNTRY PROPERTY. Auckland, March 26. It may be news to many a man that rural lands in some districts were valued on a basis of Is 4d per pound for butter-fat by the Valuation Department during the war boom in the prices of the Dominion’s primary products; yet this is the case, as stated by the Valuer-General, Mr. F. W. Flanagan, who is at present in Auckland. Mr. Flanagan mentioned several reasons why these prosperous country districts were valued on what was practically a 1914 basis as regards cost and price of commodities at a time when butter-fat had reached the hitherto unknown figure of 2s 6d per pound, the principal one being that he considered that buyers’ cash would be limited at the end of hostilities. He had considered, he said, that although the necessity for these products would not diminish, the demand would be limited only by the lack of ready cash in the pockets of the British public, and this in itself would cause prices to recede. Therefore the valuations of farm lands carried out in 1919-20 upon this and similar bases were logically reasonable to-day. Thus an extensive inconvenience that would have been caused by the necessity of revaluation was avoided. VALUATIONS NOT DIMINISHED. The Valuer-General did not admit that the valuations of these farm lands had diminished since the last valuation, though he freely agreed that the properties, in many instances, were unsaleable. This was caused in great measure by the tightness of money, for the lands, he agreed, were often unsaleable at any reasonable price, but that, in his opinion, did not affect the justice of the valuation figures. Many of the lands had been sold, he explained, at prices that represented as much as 100 per cent., and even in some instances 170 per cent., advance on the Government valuation, but these transactions were the result of the land speculation rife at boomtimes. In some districts the natural progress called for revaluation every four years, some did not require to be re-valued for six years, or even eight; and in one case he mentioned a Taranaki block had not been revalued for seven years, mainly because the land, when opened up, did not “strip” so well as was anticipated. THE CITY VALUES. Mr. Flanagan advanced it as a peculiar economic fact that in a great many instances town values increased while rural values were decreasing. This led to the subject of city values, and the Press representative learned that in Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland—in fact, all the populous centres—this was a fact in New Zealand. Town values were <Jn the up-grade, according as the cities increased, while rural values were going back from the boom assessments of both buyers and sellers. It was almost impossible, he declared, to assess values on a rising market, and this was the position regarding the rural lands to-day, when the market was slowly but steadily rising for all primary products except beef. But this difficulty was not applicable to the city. A tightness in the money market did not affect values of real estate nearly so greatly as was generally supposed. RISE AND FALL IN VALUES. In the cities, declared Mr. Flanagan, very small things affected valuation figures. For instance, a new building might change a neighborhood from one looked down upon to a popular place; a slum area, with its decreasing value of properties, might develop; and sometimes development and extension of a centre would change the locality of its business or its residential heart. A great many factors controlled this rise or fall in values, and it was scarcely logical to take the objections of, say, ten per cent, of property owners as a gauge of the work of the department. This ten per cent, would cover the whole of the objections, a large number of which were purely technical ones, and the majority never reached the Assessment Court. An ample period was given after the lodgment of an objection for the owner to meet the department and hear its explanations, and in the great majority of instances this conference resulted in the matter being arranged in a manner satisfactory to all. Of course, there were some instances when owners were not convinced, and these, in justice to the others, were taken to the court. Often a man would object on the grounds that a neighbor had a lower valuation than he, but usually there was at least one particular reason for this difference.