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6. Evidence which really puts the matter beyond doubt and disposes of the necessity for a long inquiry into particular cases, was given by a representative of a European bank. He told us that his expérience during the last six years had convinced him that the position of house owners had been growing worse all the time" their revenue has gone ". The bank had advanced money to many such owners. Valuations of property were arrived at by ascertaining the revenue derived from rents and calculating the capital sum on which such revenue would represent a return of 8%. This standard of calculation was not rigidly adhered to, but represents the broad basis of valuation. The usual advance was limited to 60% of the valuation, and interest was charged at 5%. The witness told us that in a great many cases during the depressed years landlords had not been able to obtain sufficient to pay the 5% interest on 60% of the valuation. At the end of 1937 he had reviewed several hundred mortgages. The values of the properties, based on the rent returns at that time, barely covered the advance, whereas a few years previously the advance had only represented 60% of what the witness regarded as the real value of the properties.
7. The evidence referred to in the three preceding paragraphs is authorita- tive, but in all cases landlords have stated, and we believe them, that they have sustained a drop in income, in most cases very severe, while in many cases they have not been able to pay the interest on loans which they have been compelled to obtain from the banks in order to carry on at all.
8. It has been suggested that in assessing a fair return on capital outlay, regard should be had to the conditions obtaining at the time when the expenditure was incurred. That is to say that if property is acquired at the peak of a boom period when property values are unusually high, it would be unreasonable in a landlord to expect a steady return of 7% on his abnormal expenditure. But the problem is essentially one of supply and demand, and the investor in house property who comes in on the crest of a wave, will inevitably suffer when the wave recedes. It seems a strong thing to say that when demand revives, the investor shall be debarred from endeavouring to reimburse himself merely because his original investment was unduly optimistic. Be that as it may, we are satisfied that the majority of landlords are at present persons who built or acquired property as a permanent investment. The speculative builder who hoped to reap a quick profit on a rising market has either defaulted altogether, or been replaced by concerns which advanced him money limited to a percentage of valuations made in the ordinary course of business and which have thus become, to adopt an apt phrase used before us, unwilling land- lords "
The property market in this Colony, for many years at least, has always displayed short spells of activity followed by long intervals of slackness. It is not to be expected that investors will build only in the slack periods at a low cost, when returns must be small, on the chance of an early revival. It is only on the signs of revival that persons will begin to purchase and build house property and in the process the standard of necessary expenditure inevitably rises, but if investors did not incur this higher expenditure. it is obvious that periods of activity would disappear and developineni be permanently arrested. It should be added that there is at present little or no evidence of an increased market for Crown Land or private house property. There is only a general upward tendency in rents.
PART IV.
Evictions and Alternative Accommodation.
CL
1. The Government Assessor of Rates provided us with a table compiled from his records showing the number of tenements vacant monthly in the Colony from January, 1935, up to the end of February, 1938. A copy of this table is annexed to this Report as Appendix I. In July, 1936, the number of houses and floors standing
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vacant was 3,505. At the end of February, 1938, the figure had fallen to 522. The Government Assessor's figures do not, for reasons which he gave us, include every vacant tenement, but they sufficiently indicate the downward trend which, he informed us. still continues. We also annex as Appendix II a graph illustrating the decline in vacant accommodation, during the same period, originally supplied to us by the Government Assessor and reproduced on a smaller scale by the Executive Engineer in charge of the Buildings Ordinance Office. It will be seen from these appendices that a tenant who is given notice to quit is faced with a serious dif- culty. The Government Assessor told us that of the vacancies on his list at present not one was suitable for the Portuguese clerical class or European subordinates,
2. In some cases an apparent notice of increase of rent probably amounts, as between Chinese landlords and tenants, to a notice to quit. The landlord in these cases has usually a shrewd idea of the amount the tenant is able to pay. As the landlord is now in a position to obtain an economic rental and to insist on good tenancy, we think it likely that in some cases his way of getting rid of a tenant has been to ask for a rent which he knows the tenant cannot possibly pay. In one case a tenant who had moved into the ground floor of a Chinese tenement house two years ago during the depression at a rent of $21 per month was notified by Chinese letter in the first moon of the present Chinese year that he would in future be charged a rent of $60 per month, and this was followed by a letter from a firm of solicitors giving a bare notice to quit. The tenant himself admitted that when he first moved in "nearly all the floors in the street were vacant", and that he had himself parti- tioned the floor into cubicles for the purpose of sub-letting. We are of the opinion that the landlord really wants the premises back to let as a shop, and that the tenant only acquired the premises at a rent of $21 because no other tenant could be obtain- ed.
3. In other cases the landlord states that he desires to obtain recovery of his property "for his own use". This may mean for the use of himself and his own family, for near relatives, for more or less distant relatives or clansmen, or for letting out as shops, factories or other business premises. Tenants frequently alleged that the object of the landlord was in reality to obtain well to do refugee tenants at an abnormally high rent, but this was never established. On the other hand in cases where the landlord appeared and claimed that he genuinely wanted the pre- mises for his own use, we were only once in doubt as to whether he was speaking the truth. In one case, the landlord wanted a European flat back for the use of his own son on his pending marriage. "I do not see anything unreasonable", said the landlord's son, in our getting back our own house for our own use”. It is hard to disagree. In another case an owner possessing one house in the Colony and himself in employment in Canton wanted to recover the house for the use of twelve of his immediate dependents, as he did not desire his family to remain in Canton during the present unsettled conditions. We may here comment on the provision in the expired Hong Kong Rent Restriction Ordinances whereby a landlord was pro- hibited from giving his tenant notice to quit unless he provided him with alter- native accommodation of a similar nature at a similar rent. At present it is in most cases impossible for the landlord to provide alternative accommodation. The pro- vision in question was based on a comparative provision in England, introduced as a temporary wartime measure, and limited to houses of a certain value, at a time when the great majority of the landlords affected were resident in England with their families. To-day a number of refugees from China desire to occupy their own houses in the Colony, built perhaps with a view to trouble in the interior.
4. In other cases where the landlord has given notice to quit, he may be suffering from resentment at the treatment he has received at the hands of his tenant during the depression. For example, two flats in Babington Path were lot over twelve years ago at $150 per month. In 1925 the landlords asked for $180 per month, and after negotiation, a rent of $160 per month was agreed to. In 1935 this rent was reduced to $140 per month, and then to $110 per month for the twc flats. Some time in 1934 the remaining members of the tenant's family gave up
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