276 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Salable Assets 

 Produced by 

 Development 



Room 



ment or of as many of them as are incurred in the particular case : the 

 value of the unimproved land, street and sidewalk construction, tree 

 and other planting, sanitary sewers, storm sewers, telephone and elec- 

 tric light wires, water pipes, gas pipes, street lighting, street signs, and 

 such other structures as the particular situation may make necessary. 

 All these conveniences may not be provided when the land is sold. If 

 any which are necessary are not provided, the selling price of the land 

 will be by so much reduced. The selling price of the land must also 

 include the actual cost of putting it upon the market, covering cost of 

 all professional services concerned with this process, — those of the 

 real estate expert, landscape architect, engineer, and soon, — the interest 

 on the various expenditures made in developing the land from the time 

 when they are incurred to the time when the land benefited by them is 

 sold, and taxes on unsold land up to the time when the last piece of land 

 is disposed of. Obviously there will be less land to be sold than was at 

 first bought, since a considerable portion must be set aside and ultimately 

 given to the city in the form of streets or perhaps other public areas, 

 and the total cost of the land so set apart must be included in the original 

 cost of unimproved land to be covered by the selling price of the land 

 actually sold. Finally, the whole transaction should show, in addition 

 to the original value of the land and the total cost of developing it and 

 marketing it which we have just discussed, a profit to the owner for 

 his risk in undertaking the development. Usually of course the owner 

 looks also for a speculative profit, repaying him perhaps very amply 

 for his ability to put into the real estate market something much in 

 demand. 



In return for these various expenditures the persons developing the 

 land have the following valuable things for sale in different degrees 

 according to the case, — things not always separable in the actual case, 

 and interdependent in various ways, but for the sake of discussion, 

 capable of being talked of separately. First, there is for sale room, — 

 space in which a man can build a house, construct a garden or make 

 whatever desirable use of the ground he pleases. If the scale of living 

 of the people to whom the land is intended to be sold requires a certain 

 amount of space, then this will fix the size of the separate lots. Granted 

 however that space enough is given in this way, the smaller the lots 



