Indeed, so great was the volume of work flowing into these branches that it was impossible to dispose of all of it expeditiously and con- siderable delays especially in land matters could not be avoided. It was found necessary in the course of the year to apply for additional staff, and four additional Legal Assistants, one Assistant Registrar and nine other officers were authorized by Special Warrant. Unfortunately Legal Assistants are hard to recruit owing to the flourishing state of the legal profession both in Hong Kong and in England, and none of the new vacancies were filled during the year. This naturally resulted in an increasingly heavy load being thrown upon the legal officers in the Department, and much midnight or at least evening oil was burned.
The Property Market
4. Partly arising from the industrial and commercial activity, partly contributing to it, the great building boom of recent years continued unabated. There was still a strong demand for good office accom- modation in the centre of the city, and land values soared. Whereas only a year or two ago $1,000 a square foot was considered phenomenal, land in the central area of Victoria was being freely talked up to $3,000 a square foot, and this in spite of the announcement that Government was shortly going to put on the market several acres of land forming part of the old Naval Dockyard land. The impending completion of the Hong Kong Hilton and the Mandarin Hotels in Victoria, with a total of some 1,600 rooms, naturally increased the value of shops in the vicinity, and this gave an added spur to redevelopment in the central area. At the same time the construction of these Hotels checked the rise of land values in the Tsim Sha Tsui (Kowloon Point) area where most of the big hotels are at present concentrated.
5. There was also a strong demand for industrial land, but owing to the greatly increased number of new lots being sold by the Crown Lands Office prices tended to ease in certain areas. Complaints were from time to time expressed that too many lots of Crown land were falling into the hands of speculators at public auctions to the detriment of bona fide industrialists. In view of these complaints the Colonial Secretary stated in his Budget Speech that Government was prepared to consider the sale of land by sealed tenders, but the advantages of this over public auction were likely to be limited to special cases.
6. As for residential buildings, many factors combined to create a vigorous demand for most classes of accommodation. At the beginning of the year the Colony seemed to be on the verge of a wide, general
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