of this type as against $52,000 in the previous year. One cannot say that this represents a decrease of $1,000 in the average price per unit because some assignments were of more than one unit. In fact, there were 19,858 units affected by the 18,968 assignments registered in 1964-65, and if the total considerations in assignments of undivided shares were divided by the actual number of units affected, the average price per unit would amount to $49,000. Since the number of units affected by the 11,559 instruments of undivided shares in 1963-64 is not available, no comparison in the actual average prices per unit can be made. Never- theless, the slight decrease appears to indicate to some extent that the upward trend in the previous years due partly to rising land values and partly to increased building costs has levelled off or perhaps even been reversed. In this connexion it should be borne in mind that in the case of new premises the prices included in the assignments are usually prices fixed perhaps one or two years previously when the agreements for sale and purchase were entered into.
25. With the increased number of assignments there was naturally also an increase in the number of mortgages, the total rising from 7,410 in 1963-64 to 9,473, including 391 building mortgages. The grand total of mortgage considerations jumped to a new record of $1,651,911,000, which represents a 42.3% increase over last year's total of $1,160,457,000. A not inconsiderable portion of this increase may be attributed to the effects of the banking crisis referred to in paragraph 6, which led to many inter-bank and other mortgages. The new record figure included $362,210,000 in respect of the 391 building mortgages, which therefore averaged about $926,000 per mortgage. Table V illustrates the striking manner in which the amounts lent annually on building mortgages have risen in the past four years. The number of re-assignments and the total of the relevant considerations also rose to the new record figures of 4,478 and $595,700,000.
26. The only other items in Tables IV and V that call for special comment are the slight decline in the number of Agreements for Sale and Purchase from 7,619 to 7,581; the marked increase from 481 to 838 in the number of Exclusion Orders made under Section 31 of the Landlord and Tenant Ordinance; the number of Redevelopment Notices/Orders under the Demolished Buildings (Re-development of Sites) Ordinance 1963, which was nearly five times the number in 1963–64; and the grand total of considerations in all instruments, which was up by 31% from $2,912,853,000 last year to $3,816,010,000,
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