A 3.5 acre parcel, adjacent to their campus, was purchased for $1,995,000 by a local hospital. They claim it was actualy worth only half that, but they overpaid because they really really wanted it, and therefore they sought a reduced assessment. An appeals court now agrees that sales price is the best indicator of land value.
What would have happened had the hospital refused to pay more than what they claim is the “actual” value of $1 million? There’s a lot we don’t know, including whether the seller was holding for investment or future use, and whether the seller had any particular need for cash. We do know that the buyer used an agent, to keep their identity secret. It seems that the hospital wanted to buy the land to hold it for possible future use. If they’ll now have to pay significant taxes, say 1% to 2% of value, that’d be no more than $40,000/year, pretty nominal relative to the size of the enterprise. (According to their 2006 financial statement, the hospital organization paid their chief executive about $1.3 million, not including expense accounts). And it could be reduced by leasing the land for agriculture or other purposes.
source: Chronical-Telegram, CHP Loses Fight Over Land Value, August 26 2008
Tags: Elyria, holding vacant land
From Rediff India Abroad (”Singur turns Bengal promoters generous” Aug 29 2008″)
Today, Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Ltd, builder of the state’s only private airport and related economic zone at Durgapur, 160 km from Kolkata, indicated it would pay Rs 7.5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh an acre for the 3,500-odd acres that it intends to acquire there along with attractive additional incentives like annuity to land losers for five years, training and jobs for one person per displaced family and alternative land up to a limit of 6 cottahs (1 cottah = 720 sq ft).
This is 25 to 30 per cent more than the current price of land there even if the additional benefits were not taken into account, said an investor with an industrial project and park in the region.
Rs 7.5 Lakh seems to equate to about $21,000, so if this is 30% higher than the current price, we can conclude that agricultural land goes for at least about $16,000/acre. This is considered agricultural land, tho it also contains dwellings. It would be unusual to find agricultural land in the U. S. selling for as much, but the presence of dwellings and the greater population density of India makes the comparison poor.
Tags: Durgapur, India, land prices
That’s the news for the second quarter of 2008, from a Bloomberg report. Values fell in 38 areas and rose in 13. Apparently the remainder of the 100 districts showed no change from the previous quarter. There is a brief report in Japanese which google can sort of translate , as can yahoo babelfish. It seems that these are prices of central city land suitable for high-rise apartments or commercial use, estimated by professional appraisers. There’s also a pdf, in Japanese, with nice maps.
So now I know more about Japanese urban land prices than any U S Government agency seems to know about American urban land prices.
Tags: Japan, land value trends, urban land value