Bailey v Chief Executive, Department of Lands
[1995] QLC 62
•28 July 1995
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BRISBANE
28 JULY 1995
Re: Appeal against a valuation
Valuation of Land Act 1944
Brisbane City Council - South Brisbane
AV94-570
Peter and Amanda Bailey
v.
Chief Executive, Department of Lands
D E C I S I O N
The appeal before the Court is against the determination of the Chief Executive, Department of Lands, of the unimproved value of a parcel of land situated at 21 Hanworth Street, East Brisbane, in the sum of $150,000 for the purposes of the annual valuation of the area as at 30 June 1993.
The appellants in the Notice of Appeal stated an unimproved value of $83,000. This estimate of value has its source in the value applied to the site as a single-unit residential site and before the site was put to its potential as a unit site by the owners/appellants. In that process and with valuations being reviewed annually, coupled with sums upon which rates are calculated, led to some confusion which I find I have no need to address, assuming that otherwise such matters were relevant.
In the course of the hearing it became clear that permission for development of the land for units was acted upon with construction commencing in mid-1993. When asked by the Court what value the appellants would give the land as unit land at that date, Mr Bailey answered by saying that the land would possess a market value of $200,000. He said that the value has since fluctuated which is something for consideration in the future.
Mr G Glancy, who represented the Chief Executive, elected not to call evidence. His submission is that the Chief Executive, who has applied a value of $150,000 to the site at a time coinciding with the commencement of construction, has no case to answer.
The case for the appellants as put in the Notice of Appeal is derived from a chronology of events which, to say the least, is confusing but whatever the position the issue before the Court is the question of the unimproved value of the land as at 30 June 1993 for its highest and best use as unit land. This is implicit in the directions contained in s.66 of the Act which may be read with the principles stated in Toohey's Ltd v. The Valuer-General (1925) AC439 (Privy Council) and more recently by the Full Court of Queensland in Stubberfield v. The Valuer-General (1988/89) 12 QLCR 328 in which Carter J at pp.330-1 said -
"In Spencer v. The Commonwealth [1907] 5 C.L.R. the High Court propounded the proper test for the assessment of land value. It is the price which a willing purchaser would at the date in question have had to pay to a vendor not unwilling, but not anxious to sell. It seems to me that that test finds statutory expression in the Valuation of Lands Act. In defining `unimproved value' for the purposes of the Act, it recites that that value is the capital sum which the fee simple of the land might be expected to realise if offered for sale on such reasonable terms and conditions as a bona fide seller would require. In simple terms it is synonymous with the market value of the land."
On the evidence the appeal must be dismissed.
Accordingly, the appeal is dismissed and the determination of the Chief Executive is affirmed.
DM WHITE
PRESIDENT OF THE LAND COURT
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