UTILIZATION OF LAND 



PERCENTAGE 



DOLLARS 



25 



PerceTitaje of Asseijed Area. 



Owned bij Non- Residents, 



by Tovv'ng A<-r-ayed in Ascending Onle 



Chart 5. — Value of Farm Land per Acre and Percentage of Acreage Owned by Non-Resi- 

 dents, 71 Massachusetts Towns. 



For this reason in some communities farm land which is poor and is but slightly 

 cultivated commands a comparatively high price. It can not be expected, there- 

 fore, that a considerable amount of land held by non-residents for non-agricultural 

 purposes will be necessarily connected in all towns with a low value of farm land. 

 The irregularity of this movement is well demonstrated in Chart 5. Where the 

 land owned by non-residents is merely inferior farm land abandoned by agricul- 

 ture without immediate prospects of being used for any other purpose, there is a 

 distinct association between low farm land values and a high percentage of non- 

 resident land ownership. This condition is especially marked in the interior towns 

 like Hancock, Windsor, Shutesbury, Holland, and Sandisfield, all of which have 

 average farm land values below $20 per acre and over 50 per cent of their area 

 in non-resident ownership. This relationship, however, for the reasons already 

 indicated, does not hold very well in many other towns, and is rather reversed in 

 the shore towns and in the thickly populated eastern sections of the State. The 

 farm land values are here distinctly affected by more profitable land uses, and 

 large sections of land are being intensively utilized especially for recreational 

 purposes. In the towns like Holliston, Randolph, Pembroke, Sandwich, Harwich, 



Table 5. — Distribution of 71 Towns by Average Value of Land per 

 Acre in Resident and Non-Resident Ownership 



Average 



Value of 



Land 



Below $50 

 $50— 99.99 

 100 — 299.99 

 300 or over 

 Total 

 Average value per acre 



Non-Resident Ownership 



Resident Ownership 



