Land price

“ If the fields are wanted for homes, the supply must come from a distance at greater cost, or be raised on fewer acres by more costly tillage, and will not come till the price is increased. Thus high rents, or land values, if maintained by outward forces may diminish the total product, and so affect prices. But no conspiracy of land holders can affect the price of their products so long as their lands are employed in supplying the market. ”

“ I.—In making a price on a 40-acre farm, the owner does not make two prices, one on land and one on improvements. He arrives at a flat price per acre for the entire farm, and usually asks more per acre for a part than the whole. A man who valued his land at $100 per acre, with improvements, would hardly sell 5 acres from a corner of his land, even for residence purposes, at naked land prices. ”

“ Cost of Land.—The price one should pay for land in a relatively small tract cannot be arbitrarily fixed. Those who own large farms or tracts expect to receive a bonus for the acres located along a highway as compared with an average price for the entire place. It should be possible to buy a 5- or 10-acre tract of land in the open country with highway frontage for from $150 to $250 an acre, depending on location. ”

“ The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take, but to what the farmer can afford to give. ”

“ There is no standard price per acre at all, such as appears in a modern land market, and such as exists for the land taken from the waste.
What is the reason of this remarkable contrast between the rents of pieces of land lying quite near to each other and held by the same tenants, which causes the payment for one set of holdings, the encroachments, to be adjusted uniformly to the area held, and the other, the customary holdings, to be rented apparently without any economic plan at all? ”

“ The increase in your land value depends first upon the presence, then upon the efforts, of others; it is by their labor you hope to profit.
Therefore, buy property on leading thoroughfares; except in a very small section devoted to the residence of millionaires, the price of residence property has a limit; even there the merest accident or the whim of fashion may destroy the value, but there is no telling what figure business property may reach.
Do not build unless you have to. It is rare that a building pays five per cent net on the value of the land and the cost of the house. ”

“ It is also wanting where the right of way is taken out of the narrow river lands in the Appalachian Mountains, where the total value of the whole farm is dependent on the small acreage of flat land along the river bank. The general rule of prefixing a constant to the current selling price of lands, in order to determine the estimated cost of right of way, should be limited to agricultural and timber lands, and to those which, owing to their extent, the carving out of the right of way does not wholly destroy for the continuation of agricultural and timber operations. ”

“ There are laws in operation fixing the price and amount of land to be bought by any one person. One may buy 6,000 acres of first-class grazing land and 10,250 acres of second-class grazing land at very low prices. ”

“ The price of public lands ranges from twenty-two cents to eighty-eight cents per acre, to those making an independent purchase. To those without the means of buying land, or of supporting themselves separately, one hundred and fifty acres of land will be provided, under the regulations of the government, in one of their colonies—to be paid for at the rate of one dollar and thirty-three cents per acre, one-third at the end of two years, one-third at the end of four years, and the last third at the end of six years. ”

“ This evil might easily be avoided by retaining the present bona fide price of the land per acre, qualified by an arrangement that one-half of the purchase money should be expended in the formation of roads from the land in question. This would be of immense assistance to the planters, especially in a populous planting neighborhood, where the purchases of land were large and numerous, in which case the aggregate sum would be sufficient to form a carriage road to the main highway, which might be kept in repair by a slight toll. ”

“ Land is bought on the building society principle, money for the purpose being borrowed usually at 5 per cent. per annum, very frequently through the lawyer who conducts the sale. In the days of agricultural prosperity land in the open fields of Haxey, Epworth, and Belton was sold at £130 per acre; land in the one remaining open field of Owston as high as £140 per acre. Even now, in spite of the tremendous fall in price of agricultural produce, the ordinary price is about £70 to £75 per acre; which is about twenty-five years’ purchase of the rent. ”

“ Some land is situated nearer, and some at a greater distance from, the market where the produce is sold. The farmers of the most distant land, if their produce is needed to meet the demand, must secure such a price as to cover their expenses of production, including the cost of carriage. The farmers of the nearer land, obtaining the same price for what costs less to convey to the market, have a surplus in hand, which competition for the enjoyment of their advantages compels them to transfer to the landlords as rent. ”

“ All the land, however, will by no means increase in value, the great mass of medium business and residence property advancing but slowly since it supplies the wants of a large number of people of moderate earning power who cannot pay beyond a certain price. Coincident with the gradual lifting of values as population becomes more dense, decaying sections, left behind in the onward march, drop down the scale of inferior utilities and values, sometimes to the point of extinction. Such worn-out property exhibits in its dilapidations both absence of utility and public confession of that fact. ”

“ And if the land valuations now obtaining in the fringe of settlement bordering the public domain be from 25 to 75 per cent water, how about its effect on the land values in older sections—say in Iowa, or Ohio, or Illinois?
Obviously the price will be enhanced. And the immediate, discernible effect of that is to render it more difficult for the landless man to become an owner. I have seen land go from $25 an acre to $60 and over, in Iowa and other States in the East. The land utility is the same as in years gone by. It will raise no more—sometimes less than former years. ”

“ City land values are increasing—slowly in the east, more rapidly in the west. Each decade sees from twenty per cent, to one or two hundred per cent, added to the value. Still the rate of increase does not compare with that for forest or agricultural lands.
The increase in the land values throughout the entire United States has been immense during recent years. Particularly since 1896, timber and farm land values have advanced rapidly in price. City land values, though less rapidly, have risen none the less surely. ”

“ A mechanic's lot on the outskirts of a small city differs from one on the outskirts of New York not only in price but in size, those in small towns having 50 to 60 feet frontage, and those in New York 15 to 20 feet frontage with usually two-family houses on them. Thus an average price of $150 for 50x100 foot lots in small cities would be equivalent to $1,300 per net acre after platting, or $850 per acre as acreage, and a price of $300 for 15x100 foot lots in large cities would be equivalent to $7,700 per net acre after platting, or $5,000 per acre as acreage. ”

“ The distinction between what is earned and what is unearned would, indeed, seem on theoretical grounds to be more easily established in the case of land than of other forms of wealth, and in the case of urban rather than agricultural land. But even here the evidence given by surveyors before the Town Holdings Committee on the possibility of distinguishing between the value of a house and of the land on which it is built was conflicting, and even here landlords may have developed and improved building sites by expenditure and efforts of their own. ”

“ Without the water the land is worthless, and without the land my water-right is practically worthless—to me. To control that 32,000 acres of desert I will have to put up the purchase price of $40,000 for the men I induce to file on the land, and after paying the filing fee of $5 and the initial payment of $20 on each of the fifty applications for the land, I'll be in luck if I'm not left stranded at the State Land Office. ”

“ The 1900 appraisal was based on naked land prices, as estimated by a number of citizens of each county, and this flat rate was used in 56making figures for the so-called "Market Value of Right-of-Way." It is fair to assume that a railroad company can purchase large tracts of land for gravel pits, or a narrow strip adjoining and widening its existing right of way, at about market prices, as the elements of severance, abutting damages, etc., are absent. Prices for this class of land ought to be, and usually are, lower than those paid for a new right of way. ”

“ Land that is too sterile for profitable cultivation or for taxation sells for from six to sixty dollars an acre, while good farmland is valued at from three hundred to eight hundred dollars an acre. Rice-fields not in the vicinage of a city sell readily for six hundred dollars an acre, and are not always to be bought at that price, because those who own land find it the safest investment, and part with it only when under the stress of debt. ”

“ Where an entire farm is desired, the buildings are frequently given no value, the cost being the price of the land only. As has been stated, it is quite possible to acquire too much land as well as too little. A few acres selected from a tract of good, productive soil will usually be found a better investment than a large farm that has been abandoned because of lack of fertility. ”

“ The cause which limits speculation in commodities, the tendency of increasing price to draw forth additional supplies, cannot limit the speculative advance in land values, as land is a fixed quantity, which human agency258 can neither increase nor diminish; but there is nevertheless a limit to the price of land, in the minimum required by labor and capital as the condition of engaging in production. If it were possible continuously to reduce wages until zero were reached, it would be possible continuously to increase rent until it swallowed up the whole produce. ”

“ Having to pay the rates and to pay quarterly instalments on the price of the land beyond the rates, if the municipality puts a value on the lots, it is to his interest to dispose of them as speedily as possible. He does not want to build, and certainly he does not want to go on paying those rates and instalments on unproductive land. He sets a value on the lots. If for houses of about 25 to 30 feet frontage and a depth, say, of 120 feet, the value may be $10 to $20 per foot frontage. ”

“ The price of improved land in most parts of the country is much lower than can be accounted for by the quantity of waste land at market, and can only be fully explained by that want of private and public confidence, which are so alarmingly prevalent among all ranks, and which have a direct tendency to depreciate property of every kind. ”

“ On the other hand, its value cannot be determined by ascertaining the value of the land included in the roadway assessed at 117the market price of adjacent lands, and adding the value of the cross-ties, rails, and spikes. The value of land depends largely upon the use to which it is put and the character of the improvements upon it. ”

“ Most prices in a country are not prices of articles of international trade. High wages may, indeed, draw in immigrants. But high land rents, and high prices of land cannot bring in land. Nor do high land prices send away much gold to other countries for the purchase of land there. Indeed, within a single country, the differences in the relation between land yield and capital value of land are enormous. The following figures are taken from an article by J. E. Pope: [356] In Yazoo Co., Mississippi, farm lands are sold at $10 to $25 per acre. The average gross income per acre is $28. ”

“ Land, in England at least, is a species of property, which is considered to be more subject than manufacturing or mercantile wealth to obligations of a customary and non-competitive character, and to the influence of kindly, personal considerations. And hence it is generally admitted that, taking a broad view of agricultural land, English rents have not reached an extreme competitive limit. But these considerations, however instructive, are not perhaps of such importance in the relations of the theory to practice as others which are more easily overlooked. ”

“ The price of land ranges from about $4.80 to $19.20 an acre, and each new selector over sixteen years of age will have the right to practically a free grant of 160 acres, additional land being available at approximately the prices quoted, the payments for which will be spread over twenty years without interest. ”

“ An apparent exception to the law of no value in the site when a city starts, occurs where a city is speculatively undertaken and the lots sell at high prices in advance of utility. The difference between price and value is usually demonstrated before many years, the invariable reaction carrying the prices of lots as far below their value as they were formerly above it. Thus lots in Columbus, Ohio, which sold in 1812 at $200 to $300. ”

“ On this side the line a very large extent of land is wholly unsaleable, even at such low prices; while on the other side property is continually changing hands. The price of two or three shillings per acre would purchase immense tracts in Lower Canada and New Brunswick. ”