The Great Land Boom.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2965, 1 August 1888, Page 2

The Great Land Boom.

Tho Melbourne Argus gives a very graphic description of an unction sale of land at tho Athoneum recently. After alluding to the heterogeneous attendance it goes on to say;—lt is a quarter to 3, and the old aud tedious process of reading terms and conditions begins. Five minutes to 3, and' the auctioneer is demanding an offor for 157 ft of Elizabeth-street, with six buildings thereon, - beginning at Lazarus and Co.'a and ending with Andrew Bros. The depth at one end is 102 ft, at the other nearly 86ft. The average, therefore, is 94ft, ninety-four superficial feet represented in each bid. 'What will yon give ? They star t him with a thousand, and he works thein up to £I,BOO, Thirteen hundred pounds for every 94 superficial feet whioh seems to make an aore worth something more than £090,000. It is verily a great deal of money to pay for an acre of laud even in the heart of Melbourne, The actual price to be paid for the little slip of an aore sold is'iipwards of £200,000, There ought to bo applause when it is over, but there is only a suppressed sigh, for business people are not demonstrative and the purchaser appears to hand in his cheque, Then the auctioneer gets along to Fliuders-street, whero ho has a half acre block running through to Flindors-lane. Messrs Grice Sumner & Go.'a bonded warehouse is on the Flinders-street frontage, The depth is great, and there are the two frontages, but the calculation will be on 66ft. in Flinders-street alone, What will they give him ? With much persuasion £I,OOO, and ho will not take it, It only represents £IIB,OOO for tho half acre, or at the rate of £287,600 per aore. It will bring more men say, a tenth more, probably. There wore indeed competent men present who said that the bloolt -would ultimately be sold for £2,000 per foot at the least. This naturally, being so near.brmga us to a little consideration of the offer

in that cathedriihite, wbiciV coiitaiub' afairtwo acres. --'-.Tlie yaiuejif ,oalou-: lated 'on the rbaaie of the . far-down: 'Flinders-street 'blook—and /with, 1 ' its triple frontage it would beliiglier than tliat—would bo at least £520,000, but if the prices of. the ElizabQth : Btreat block were taken as a basis, it wouldexceed a million.: Perhaps it is'not worth a million. ■ Spine people who" rail at the idea of selling, the place at all laugh at the idea of half a million, but a few business men' yesterday made out a, rough sketch of the block, and proceeded to deal with it scientifically,; and to reckon up the frontages here and there, and at the end of their calculations was a sum which slightly exceeded £800,000." So, possibly, the cathedral people are quite right not to be in' a.' hurry to sell, -to let things ripen, a- little, and not •permit; any "just: robbers "'to usurp, their sanetuary,: and make a magnificent fortune, out .of the cburchßestate.';; ■ there iieybi;;was/ a. cliureh that. could : affordtoputdo wu 80 0,000/ sovereigns for a cathedral flooiv/ And. i? it trae,. or only ¥ yoars ago the-GoyernmenVmade an-6ffer : to"giye: . "equld in Melbourne—for., tliajljor liitlo lot whereon is St. miglit still be'open—and then; Why; then, the, finest site amongst : the grandest cluster of t uildiugsm Australia, and in thevery centre of the Australian capital, would be available, and ■•would'it be again refused. : The auctioneer went on; He'had done with freeholds for a while, but there was at tho corner of Bourke and Swanston Streets' a leasohbld block which he would sell at so much per foot per annum for thirty years. What seems to bo the value per annum of a foot of frontage to any street in the world ? How much for that poor foot of land then, to be paid up year by year ? The bids began at £4O, the bids went up to 18210s; and then - well, then the auctioneer withdrew it; it was not enough. Eighty-two pounds ton shillings; the price per' annum of a decent cottage or" genteel villa" hi the suburbs, was not enough for a Bingle foot frontage of this laud. A

foot of the land-a portion of the million acres Batman bought but for a few tomahawks and blankets and guns! It's very wonderful, but how far will it go, and how long will it last? The auctioneer said wo would get out to tiie suburbs after that last effort; but suburban business seemed too slow for most people after the excitement of the town, and they began to shuffle out of the hall. .