8.—17b.

48

[B. MORGAN.

23. Have you had any case of the fact of a district being heavily rated affecting the selling-value of land ?- Yes. In making your valuations you have never expressed any desire to push objectors into the Court, if it can possibly be avoided ?—No. 25. Have you received any instructions from me with regard to meeting objectors between the time objections are received and the sitting of the Court ? —We have always done what we, could to meet objectors. When objections are lodged, they are handed to the valuer for perusal. There are many cases in which he has previously carefully gone into the matter and discussed it in detail with the owner. It is not always possible to do that when going round. Sometimes tho owner is not at home, and at other times the owner will not discuss the matter with the valuer, saying that the question of the valuation is the valuer's business. As far as I possibly can, however, I meet the, owner and discuss with him what is a fair valuation. Tt is not always possible to arrive at what that valuation should be. I have had numerous instances where an owner has agreed with me that his property was worth a certain sum, which of course T made a note of, but when going through the, field-books T have found that to put that owner down at that sum would be to put him unfairly high as compared with others. 1 have always made it a strong point to try to have the unimproved value, particularly, but all values, fairly adjusted as between one and the other; and T endeavour to get fairly well acquainted with a district before I fix a value, at all, and, after doing that, I proceed to fix what seems to be a fair unimproved value. This may appear to be, difficult, but to any one who has spent a great part of his life on land, and knows all the works that are gone through, he can form a very good idea as to what the condition of that land was in its state of nature. There always are some properties very akin to unimproved, and others where it is not difficult to put a fair estimate on what they are worth ; and after doing that, T usually increase my estimate so as to be on the safe side and put it beyond any risk of mistake. Doing that in a few cases you can make a standard, and work from that up and down according to the quality of the land, distance from the railway or wharf or centres, aspect of the land, and its general characteristics. It very often happens, in my experience, that having fixed this unimproved value and then putting on what seems to be a fair and reasonable value for improvements, that the two together do not come to anything like the value that properties are selling at. In such cases I have come to the conclusion that the buyers of the properties have been paying above the then market value —that is to say, they have been paying for the improvements a good deal more than their intrinsic worth —a good deal more than we could value them at for the purposes of lending money. But they are willing to give more than the improvements are, worth, because they are going in to the farm to use them. In other cases they pay more than the improvements are woi'th through ignorance of what, the improvements have cost. Consequently, T have frequent cases in which my capital value is very much less than what the properties are selling at. This is where the unfairness comes in in reference to objectors. An objector makes out an estimate of his improvements at a certain figure. He wants to take the capital value, which is arrived at, by so-much an acre for unimproved value, and my estimate of the improvements, and from that he wants to subtract an exaggerated estimate of the improvements, and call what is left the unimproved value. If the Court allows that, the tendency is to upset the fairness of the unimproved values right through the district. Mr. Laing mentioned a sale by a man named Hope at £9 per acre, which he stated included the stock. I did not know that. The owner interviewed me after the sale, but he did not say anything about the stock. But some other blocks of this property were sold without stock for £10 an acre. The unimproved value of this property was somewhere about £4 an acre. The improvements seemed to be, in the neighbourhood of £2 10s. an acre, and I think my capital value was about £6 10s. an acre. I may say the improvements on the property came to somewhere in the neighbourhood of £1,300. The man lodged an objection and supplied a list of the improvements, making them come to £2,000. He argued that if his improvements were worth £2,000 I had set down his unimproved value at £700 more than it should have been. When he came to discuss the matter with me he had really effected a sale and was not so keen about it. T pointed out to him that if my estimate of the unimproved value was taken and his estimate of the improvements added to it, the total was a long way short of the price at which he had sold the, land. I also pointed out, to him that he had put in the, full orginial cost of these improvements, and, as Mr. Laing's evidence shows, the grassing is not permanent. 1 give this instance, as typical of many of the difficulties that we have in reference to objectors. 26. Ts not the test of the value of improvements the price by which they increase the sellingvalue of the land ?—That is so. 27. Do you know the case Mr. Druce mentioned ?—Yes. Mr. Druce was one of the very few who lodged an objection in that district. Some of the land in the Manurewa district had been sold as suburban areas, and I discounted the sales very much. It was owing to this, \ suppose, there were very few objectors, because an owner, as a rule, cannot, object, to a valuation that is less than he gave for'his land. 28. Mr. Druce referred to a road to his property ?—WJien I discussed the matter of a fair valuation with Mr. Druce he said he left it entirely to me. 1 understood from Mr. Druce that, he had a road leading to a new railway-station that had been put in, and the land was valued on the assumption that that road was there. At the Court Mr. Druce said that this road was not a road, and he repeated it to-day. I happened to be in that district early yesterday morning, and went over this very road, and there was a man working with a team of horses and a scoop on it. Tt is fenced on both sides, and is a full chain wide. Ido not know whether the man is doing the work for his own pleasure, or whether some philanthropist is doing it to present it to the people ; but there is the road. Tf it is not a road, it would be illegal for a local body to spend money on it. The road is there and I travelled over part of it. When Mr. Druce made this statement in Court I agreed to a reduction in value. Mr. Druce has also mentioned about the difference in value of two parts of the land. The land there is patchy.