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straw who hoped to make a quick boom profit were deservedly punished, and it is a fact that in the years 1933 to 1937 there was in the Colony what has been described to us as an overbuilt position ", but the majority of property owners must be regarded as legitimate investors, and had it not been for the overbuilt position, the present acute shortage of accommodation would have been much accentuated.
3. During the years of severe depression, property owners were left with great numbers of vacant tenements on their hands, and were glad to find tenants at rentals which did not yield an economic return on capital outlay. Many tenants availed themselves of this position to move into a class of premises considerably superior to that which they would normally occupy, and when, with the increased demand for accommodation due mainly, but probably not entirely, to the outbreak of the present Sino-Japanese hostilities, rents began to show an upward tendency, these tenants found themselves faced with demands for rentals which they could not afford to meet but which were not in the great majority of cases at all exorbitant having regard to the class of property in respect of which they were charged. The Government Assessor of Rates gave us an example in his evidence of flats let in Wongneichong for $145 per month four or five years ago, fetching after the slump and until the commencement of the upward tendency only $70 per month, and later made the general statement that in some cases where he had found what appeared to be a very heavy increase in rent, investigation had shown that during the depression rents were excessively low for the class of property concerned. If a more normal level of rental were taken as a standard, there was in fact no excessive increase.
rents.
4. Many other tenants did not move from their residences, but reaped the benefit of the slump by threatening to quit unless their landlords reduced the existing The landlords were forced to agree to reduction in order to avoid being left with empty and wholly unremunerative premises on their hands. The Govern- ment Assessor of Rates summed up this aspect of the situation in his evidence in the words tenants have for the past few years been holding a pistol to the landlords' heads.
5. Our attention was thus directed to the question whether the rentals which we had been informed had been increased or were about to be increased had on the average reached or were about to reach a rate of rental higher than that prevailing for the same premises before the depression set in.
6. A prominent member of the Chinese community, whom we invited to give evidence, stated that up to November, 1937, beyond which date he had not pursued enquiries, statistics showed that rentals had not gone back to pre-depres- sion figures.
7. We next investigated the records at the office of the Government Assessor of Rates from 1928 or, in the case of new buildings, from the first assessment, until the present time, paying particular attention to the premises referred to by landlords and tenants in their written or oral statements.
8. Of some 269 addresses, some of which probably included several floors, only 213 provided sufficient data upon which to base any conclusions whatever. In only 45 of these 213 cases did the Government Assessor's records of assessment show definite figures for 1933 and 1937, the figure for 1937 being confirmed by the tenant, who also provided a figure for 1938. Of the 45 cases, 8 showed an increase of rent above the 1933-1934 level; 11 showed a return to that level; 17, while increased beyond the 1937 level, had not reached the 1933-1934 level and in 5 cases we were already aware that a bare notice to quit had been given. Of the 8 cases showing an increase over the 1933-1934 level, one related to a factory, one to a school and one, we learned from the landlord, was really a notice to quit. Of the 5 remaining cases, the increases over the 1933-1934 level were either small or, in relation to the class of premises concerned, not excessive.