AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS February, 1907 



Monthly Comment 



^[J^^^^^^^^pEW statistics are so interesting to the house- 

 ^^^^^ holder and the landowner as those relating 

 to the increased valuations of real estate. 

 ^^W^ Day after day the comforting assurance is 

 ^^^^Yy\ given to landowners, that during the pre- 

 mu}^^^^^^ ceding night the value of their holdings 

 has increased by so much per cent. It is a 

 wonderful story, and perhaps nowhere so wonderful as in the 

 large cities, where values increase so prodigiously that dwell- 

 ings have been known to change hands several times during 

 the process of construction, each time at a handsome advance 

 over the preceding figure. Neither prices nor buyers seem to 

 have limits; the golden stream of money flows on, apparently 

 without end, reaching out into most unexpected regions, and 

 distributing wealth in the most generous manner possible. 



The movement which is reflected in real estate values is 

 typical of our time. It is an expression of unrest. The desire 

 to sell and to turn one's real estate into money amounts to a 

 positive mania. Why retain land which one has held without 

 profit for a term of years, when a hundred per cent., or more, 

 can be gained through its sale? Neighborhoods are changed 

 in a few weeks, "improvements" of one sort or another are 

 projected and carried out without regard to their effect upon 

 others. If one's neighbors have sold, why refuse the golden 

 bribe? There is seemingly no answer but to sell and start 

 life afresh elsewhere. 



likely ever to occur. And what has happened in the most 

 fashionable street in America has happened in a thousand 

 streets elsewhere in New York and other cities, in places 

 good and bad, in the seats of fashion, and in the outskirts 

 that border on the rural regions. The slums, everywhere, 

 have perhaps held their own more rigidly, with the persistency 

 of evil; but even they have been invaded by the model 

 tenement house, by factories of a new sort, and by other 

 changes, all betterments, all welcome innovations, all desir- 

 able features. 



But the great home belts are likely to be affected other- 

 wise. The good streets — streets of good houses — grow bet- 

 ter, and their more modest inhabitants are compelled to seek 

 less expensive abodes; the poor streets grow poorer, and those 

 who would like to live in a better way can find no better 

 place. There is a loss in citizenship here, a loss in civic 

 worth that may perhaps be offset by advances elsewhere, 

 although the individual loss can scarce be bettered. Thus 

 the home changes; it moves from place to place; the house as 

 a home ceases to have meaning or value, and becomes a mere 

 thing of furniture and personalities. The latter, indeed, 

 count everywhere, and under all circumstances; but surely it is 

 something new in civilization when the house ceases to be the 

 home, and only the tables and chairs, beds, tables, and candle- 

 sticks have homely suggestiveness, and remind one of one's 

 own abiding place. 



The architect, the builder, and the real estate men are 

 helped, and often amazingly, by these operations. Few pur- 

 chases of real estate are now made save with a desire to "im- 

 prove." This means new work for the builder, fresh oppor- 

 tunities for the architect, additional gains for the real estate 

 man in further percentages he may exact in later transactions. 

 1 hat many of these operations are so conducted that persons 

 previously unable to own homes may now do so — by assum- 

 ing fresh obligations of indebtedness — is true. In many 

 senses this is a gain, if the debts can be properlv cared for in 

 the end. But the new purchaser is quite likely to be bitten by 

 the selling microbe, and be ready to dispose of his new home, 

 at an advance, to any one who will pay his price. 



Where, then, is the American home? It is rapidly losing 

 all permanency and is becoming a mere temporary expediency, 

 a place existed in for years, when removal necessitates be- 

 ginning all over again. We, as a people, are losing, if we 

 have not already lost, all the charm that comes from home 

 association in relation to locality. The men of coming gen- 

 erations, if present tendencies continue, will not be able to 

 point to their childhood's home, for that interesting period, 

 as likely as not, will ha\'e been passed in several places, not 

 one of which had any relationship to anything save the par- 

 ental desire to realize on real estate values. It is a singular 

 and surprising condition that we, who live at the beginning 

 of the movement, can not understand nor foresee the final de- 

 velopment. 



But increased prices for real estate are not the single 

 agency in these changes. The time can not be far away when 

 the word "improvement," as applied to real estate, will be 

 viewed with as much alarm as it now is with complacency. 

 The march of trade has already swept so far up Fifth Avenue, 

 in New York, that the rich folk of the metropolis have been 

 crowded much further north than a few years past seemed 



All these matters are most clearly defined in the cities, 

 where the population is the most crowded, where the various 

 movements may be most readily traced, and where the records 

 of real estate values are most conveniently recorded. But if 

 the speculator in city real estate imagines that this present 

 movement is limited to the area that he himself is personally 

 acquainted with, he makes a grievous error. It is a move- 

 ment so widespread as to be essentially national; it includes, 

 not the cities alone, but the rural regions also. And to be 

 certain of this the national Department of Agriculture has 

 conducted an investigation into the value of rural real es- 

 tate values, and announces to the world at large, ^nd to the 

 farmers in particular, that the real estate value of farms, 

 medium in quality and equipment of buildings and improve- 

 ments, has increased in value in the five years — since the 

 census of 1900 — no less that 33.5 per cent. The ratios of 

 increase are, of course, not identical throughout the country. 

 The highest percentage exists in the South Central group, and 

 amounts to 40.3 per cent. ; then comes the Western group 

 with an increase of 40.2 per cent.; the South Atlantic, with 

 36 per cent.; and the North Central States, with 35.3 per 

 cent. The smallest increase is in the North Atlantic States, 

 where it reaches but 13.5 per cent. 



Average figures are apt to be unsatisfactory, for the indi- 

 vidual seldom realizes in himself, the progress, or excellencies, 

 statisticians tell him are his. Yet, making every possible al- 

 lowance for the personal equation, the fact undoubtedly re- 

 mains that farm values everywhere — taking the country as a 

 whole — have largely increased in the last few years. If any 

 one has a doubt on this subject let him try to buy a farm, or 

 any farm land, at old-fashioned prices, prices that ruled 

 before the day of real estate publications, that were the fash- 

 ion before the land-boomer came into vogue, prices that were 

 diflUcult to obtain when no one wanted land, and customers 

 were few and scarce. 



