Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

Measuring land values

There is a massive rental market in both residential and commercial sectors. This makes it easy to calculate land rental values by the residual method.

eg a 100 sq metre flat in Hove lets for £12000 a year. This has been the case for the past five years at least. Council tax is another £1000. ie Gross value is £13000. Maintenance is £2000. Administration et is £2000 a year. So AV is £9000. Building value is £90000 at a building cost of £90 per square metre. To convert this into an annual figure, say 5% (OK, it might be between 4% and 6%) of that is £4500 ie within the range £3600 and £5400. The balance is the annual value of the land AV (land), £4500 (land rental value range is £5400 to £3600).

At the £4500 figure, if the initial rate of land rent charge is 22%, they will be paying the same and will not complain. In fact, they are used to increases of up to £150 a year and would probably only grumble a bit if the initial rate was 25%, which would come to £1250. However, because there are some very high land value properties within the administrative area, as well as some vacant sites with planning consent, this rate of tax, which is probably what the median resident pays, will yield substantially more revenue. Which is sorely needed. Obviously the well-heeled of Withdean are going to complain. And if it came with a tax cut somewhere else, eg income tax allowances, then it would sugar the pill nicely.

And with 40 flats in the block, this gives a site value of £180,000 per year. And with the area known - say 1000 square metres, an annual value of £180 per square metre is established. Now do the whole street and even them out. In any case it matters not at all if they are up to 10% wrong as what counts are the relativities, which is why the choice depreciated interest rate for the building value is not critical.

Kommentarer

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

The Zombie Train that refuses to die

The Guardian has published a couple more articles against HS2, one by specialist rail commentator Christian Wolmar, and another today by journalist Simon Jenkins. The main arguments in favour will doubtless be wheeled out by the commentators: the need for capacity and the disruption caused by upgrading existing routes. HST itself will severely disrupt services to Euston during the construction period. Capacity can be increased at a fraction of the cost by a variety of measures, provided that it is accepted that the additional traffic will run at existing speeds. It is not generally known that the Midland main line is, or was, four track all the way from London to Trent Junction, between Nottingham and Derby. This is because the additional tracks are separate, having been added for coal trains which trundled down to Brent sidings, on the edge of London, from a collection point at Toton in Nottinghamshire, where the Midland Railway build a huge marshalling yard. Beyond Derby, the main l...

Importing people to sustain demand

I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...

Beyond electrification

In an earlier post I suggested a core list of lines which ought to be in an electrification programme spread over twenty years of so. This leaves a residue of routes which it is unlikely will ever be electrified. This include for example All lines beyond Glasgow, Stirling and Aberdeen All lines west of Exeter and Swansea All lines west of Chester Shrewsbury - Chester Everything not listed in my previous blog - electrification plans only scratch surface   Some of these routes carry main line services to London and other cities on parts of the network that are already electrified or included in electrification plans. Others are self contained and others carry light traffic - less than a dozen trains a day. The current plan is that main line services will be operated with the hybrid trains on order from Hitachi, but this is a costly, wasteful and ineffective solution. The performance of the trains will be inferior to the present Inter-City 125 trains on non-electrified lines and the ...