The price of freehold land and the interest rate in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Abstract

Since the supply of land coming to the market in the eighteenth century was small and was still sought for social reasons, it was relatively unremunerative purely as an investment. About I730 it was estimated that four per cent was a good gross return on the purchase of land-the net return after allowing for taxation and maintenance may well have been less than three per cent-and this was at a time when the return on mortgages was from four to five per cent. A wealthy merchant or lawyer, a distinguished soldier or sailor, was prepared to incur a loss of income of one or one-and-a-half per cent in order to acquire an estate and establish himself as a landowner. It was the fee he paid for admission into the charmed circle of English landed society.2