Showing papers on "Leasehold estate published in 1995"

Household Resources, Transaction Costs, and Adjustment through Land Tenancy

Abstract: This paper examines the role of household endowments of imperfectly tradeable factors of production (e.g., male, female, child labor, and draft animals) on land leasing. An explicit attempt is made to account and test for the role of transaction costs on the incidence and extent of adjustment taking place through the land lease market. The econometric model is implemented using pooled data from six villages in the semiarid region of India. The results confirm the significant role of nontradeable family endowments and indicate the presence of frictions in the land tenancy market.

Does Agricultural Growth Matter in Poverty Alleviation

Abstract: This article uses a panel survey of households in the Indian state of Maharashtra to demonstrate that agricultural growth takes too long to trickle down to the rural poor. Unanticipated inflation, on the other hand, aggravates rural poverty, as does domination of the agricultural growth process by large landholders. This affects the poor through the oligopsonistic influence of the landholders in rural labour markets, dampening employment and wages (as compared with the outcome in a competitive market). In the context of structural adjustment, while the emphasis on allocative efficiency through withdrawal of input subsidies and remunerative prices for output is justified, acceleration in agricultural growth by itself is unlikely to make a dent in rural poverty. Measures designed to accelerate agricultural growth must therefore be supplemented by direct anti-poverty interventions. Consumer price stabilization is particularly important, and would be assisted by an overhaul of the Public Distribution System. Major reforms would include improved flexibility in the scale of the PDS, better targeting through alternative distribution networks when private trade channels are weak or non-existent, and simplification of registration procedures. The oligopsonistic role of large landholders could be curbed through market-mediated land redistribution, scrapping of all tenancy regulations when tenancy markets function efficiently, and through large-scale intervention in rural labour markets along the lines of the Employment Guarantee Scheme.

Land tenure, land markets, and institutional transformation in Zambia

Abstract: This paper identifies current land market constraints as a basis for designing an action plan to assist the government with land policy reforms. Chapter 1 provides a general overview of the history of land policy in Zambia and critiques selected pieces of land legislation that define the legal framework governing land rights and land markets in the country. Legal and institutional impediments to the development of a market-oriented land policy are identified along with concrete recommendations for short- and long-term legal and institutional reforms. Chapter 2 presents a thorough review of land registration procedures starting with the roles and activities of the chiefs and rural councils` and ending with the issuance of the title certificate by the Commissioner of Lands. Chapter 3 focuses on the assimilation and analysis of data on official title issuances and transfers in State, Reserve and Trust Lands. Chapter 4 reviews alternative methods for administering government land policy in undeveloped areas, including options for land development, land distribution via allocation or auction, land price determination, valuation of leasehold rents, and property taxation. Chapter 5 is a synthesis of a land tenure study involving a survey of 200 agricultural producing households in Eastern and Southern provinces. The chapter briefly discusses the research methodology used, followed by empirical findings on land acquisition, land rights, and land conflicts. Chapter 6 reviews the nature and scale of past settlement schemes and assesses their performance based on archival research, and analysis of primary and secondary data. Chapter 7 uses available time series data to analyze national and regional changes in land use, productivity, and profitability of agriculture, both spatially and temporally, for the commercial and noncommercial farm sectors. This chapter was intended as a more forward-looking analysis of economic forces influencing the profitability of farming in Zambia, the rate of expansion in the agricultural frontier, and the resource issues that are likely to emerge in the context of agricultural extensification. Chapter 8 provides an overview of official time series published by various agencies in Zambia, including the state of their availability for analysis and the methodology used to collect the data. Data presented in this and previous chapters underscore the difficulty of making policy decisions given the very weak and tenuous base of empirical research on property rights, agrarian structure, resource management, land use, and market access in both the state and customary sectors.

Informational Rents and Property Rights in Land

Abstract: Is the institution of land tenancy inefficient? If so, why does it survive? This paper uses a complete contracting framework to develop a theory of land ownership in the context of a labour surplus, subsistence economy. Ownership affects efficiency in the presence of incentive-based informational rents, and endogenous credit rationing, both arising from wealth constraints. A ceteris paribus transfer of ownership to a tenant or hired labour results in higher bargaining power and rent capture by the cultivator. This explains why small owner cultivated farms relying on family labour exhibit higher productivity and welfare (in a utilitarian sense). Nevertheless, tenancy results in a Pareto efficient outcome: the market will never effect such transfers, as tenants will not be able to borrow enough to purchase land. The model predicts that productivity differences between tenant and family farms will be large when population pressure on the land is high, alternative employment opportunities of farmers are low, and their wealth levels are neither too low nor too high.

Legal Uncertainty and Land Disputes in the Peri-Urban Areas of Mozambique: Land Markets in Transition

Abstract: The Government of Mozambique is considering legal changes in its land law and administration of state leasehold property-an enormous challenge given its past socialist history and the uncertainties created by its current transition to a private market economy. The present research sought to identify dispute causes and de facto processes of dispute resolution as one basis for gauging inadequacies in the current law and system of state land administration.

Land use rights reform and the real estate market in China: a synoptic account of theoretical issues and the property rights system

Abstract: Is China′s “land use rights” legislation which distinguishes transferable “land use rights” and inalienable “land ownership”, a novel concept unknown to human kind before, or a pragmatic reversion to the private property rights system abolished by the communist revolution? Advocates the view that the latter is a more correct interpretation. As part of a “going capitalist” economic reform programme, such a reversion is manifested in the legal recognition of the leasehold tenure after the “responsibility system” in privatizing agricultural production had proved to be successful. As the development of private property rights is a prelude to market transactions, the Chinese land use rights reform should be conducive to the success of the economic liberalization policy of China, provided that there is a contemporaneous advance in the development of the rule of law and technical know‐how, such as valuation and land surveying.

The Political Economy of Urban Land Reform in Hawaii

Abstract: Summary. In the mid 1960s there were about 22 000 single-family leasehold homes in Honolulu. Dissatisfaction with leasehold led to reform legislation in 1967, allowing lessees to buy leased land. By 1991 less than 5000 lessees remained. This paper examines why landowners elected to lease rather than sell land and attributes the rise of leasehold to legal constraints on land sales by large estates, duties of estate trustees and the federal tax code. Ideological forces initiated land reform in 1967, but rent-seeking forces captured the process in the mid 1970s. It is concluded that Hawaii’s experiment with leasehold was a failure due to the dif® culties associated with specifying and enforcing long-term contracts in residential land.

Houses, Fertility, and the Nigerian Land Use Act

Abstract: The case study in one rural Ekiti Yoruba village (3500 total population) in Ondo state Nigeria illustrated that fertility was affected by house plot exchanges traditions in housing tenancy and ownership local household composition and federal land tenure policies. Houseplots consisted of family owned land which was passed on to kin. Recent house exchanges were made on a more impersonal cash basis. It was argued that the Land Use Act weakened village land claims and weakened the security of houseplot ownership. Thus the need for children increased and federal family planning programs were undermined. The emerging tendency to limit family size was being thwarted. Communities were changing within a cash economy and status was associated with a large family and the possession of expensive consumer goods. Among young men and women aged 20-24 years the median desired fertility was 5 children while the total village fertility rate was 6.3 children per woman. Housing was not considered a substitute for children but as an additional form of security. A census and interviews among 70 women aged 15-39 years and 66 men aged 20-44 years were conducted during June 1991 and April 1992. Findings revealed that 87% of village women aged 15-19 years had attained some secondary school education. The village was off a main transportation route and modern improvements such as electricity and piped water were available. The interest in building and maintaining a family house with kin buried close by was very strong. Only 13% of the 333 houseplot transactions recorded between 1910-89 were cash payments of which 75% occurred since 1970. 49% were transactions involving division of family land. Cash transfers of land usually involved plots located on the fringes of town. Family land involved no transfer of cash or in-kind gifts. Family plots could be transferred to non-family members of another patrilineal group; 38% were transactions of this kind and involved considerable transfer of goods to secure the deal. In addition to cash transfers for land other practices such as rental housing on cash-transferred plots and surveyed boundary markers were being introduced. After 1978 land was "nationalized;" rural land transfers slowed and few transactions were recorded. The act was passed to promote equitable distribution of rural land but instead promoted land insecurity.

Agricultural diversification and institutional change: a case study of tenancy contract in indonesia

Abstract: HE purpose of this paper is to examine how “agricultural development,” which is expressed here as diversification and commercialization, caused a change in the “institution” of tenant farming, and what logic is behind the choice of tenancy contract. A case study was conducted in a rain-fed village in West Java, Indonesia, which virtually has no status system or legal restrictions to land tenure (Hayami and Otsuka [5, p. 108]). The area is therefore suitable for an analysis of farmer economic activities under conditions where commercial transactions and tenant farming contracts can in principle be selected freely.

Leaseholders and Service Charges in Former Local Authority Flats

Abstract: The pattern of sales of local authority flats the social survey of leaseholders the experience of purchasing and living in a leasehold flat managing leasehold properties. Appendices: methodological notes renters in former local authority flats.

A DCF analysis of market price for leasehold investments

Abstract: Advances an alternative method of analysing the market price of leasehold investments for use when assessing the market price of a comparable investment. The method can be adapted to evaluate investment worth by substituting rental growth forecasts for those implied by market price levels. Baum and Crosby highlighted the inadequacy of current dual rate valuation methods for leasehold investments and the problems associated with the contemporary approach. Their work is used as the basis for this article. A discounted cash flow (DCF) approach is developed using an analysis of target returns. The all risks yield (ARY) and target return are first assessed on the basis that the investment is freehold but otherwise identical. The implied annual growth rate in CRV is then calculated using the equated yield formula. It is then argued, that because this growth in CRV arises from the location and quality of the building, it is equally applicable to a leasehold interest in that building. This leaves only the target ...

The negative leasehold

Abstract: There have always been situations where tenants, for one reason or another, have paid rents in excess of open market rental value. The position today, due to the downturn in the letting market, is that many more tenants are now in this position. This poses a problem for valuation surveyors when asked to express an opinion on value for sale, negative or reverse premiums, and on value for asset valuation purposes where negative values must be specified. A further point for consideration is the issue raised by the Accounting Standards Board of charging future rent obligations as a single lump sum to profit and loss accounts. Explores these challenges in relation to leasehold valuation methodology and suggests approaches.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS OF THE EU FARMLAND MARKETS: NATIONAL VARIABLES AND COMPARATIVE EFFECTS OF THE CAP REFORM IN SELECTED COUNTRIES; Proceedings of the Fourth Minnesota Padova Conference on Food ,Agriculture, and the Environment, September 4-10, 1994, MN

Abstract: The present paper consists of two main parts. The first one gives a picture of the more recent development of the farmland market in selected EC countries since 1985/86. Two main indicators are used to make relatively comparable the observed trends concerning: i) land mobility, ii) farmland values. The second one tries to evaluate the effects of the CAP reform and the influence of national variables overtime, taking into account the following indicators: i) mobility (on land transfers; on tenancy), ii) income (for agricultural or forest use), iii) farmland values (in the plain; in the hill/mountain areas). Considerations on land market complexity and segmentation are finally included, with justification on the empirical approach adopted in the paper.

The Property and Investment Markets and Town Planning

Abstract: Fundamentally, the subjects of real property transactions are not the land and buildings themselves but interests in rights over land, which in aggregate are known to English law as property.1 Land is merely the medium in which property rights subsist. The greatest bundle of rights in property is the ‘fee simple absolute’, an unencumbered freehold estate free from any sub-interest. Freehold rights are, however, not unlimited; they will be subject to the provisions of planning and other legislation. The freehold interest may be purchased subject to obligations entered into by the previous owner. For example, a property may be purchased with an existing tenant who has a leasehold interest. The freeholder has purchased the right to receive rent from the tenant, the right to regain possession at the end of the lease, and then to use the property within the constraints of planning or local authority regulations. The durability of real property enables more than one interest to exist; in particular, ownership and right of use may be separated.