The US Experience
Premier Land follows the tried and tested land banking* principles developed in the USA over the last half-century. Most especially, the principles developed in California.
Donald Trump
Donald Trump is the epitome of the American success
story, based on property opportunities. "I just love real estate. It's tangible, it's
solid, and it's beautiful."
The Trump Tower on New York's 5th Avenue was his original crown jewel, but today he owns many other Manhattan properties that include the Trump World Tower, and the Trump Palace. What property excites Trump the most these days? It's his prime undeveloped land parcel, the old West Side Rail yards in Manhattan. This amazing, undeveloped 100-acre plot goes from 59th to 72nd streets along the Hudson River, and is one of the last remaining large land parcels left in Manhattan. Donald J. Trump understood the value of land banking. He realized that if he just buys and holds the land, he would position himself to make a fortune.
If Trump has one regret, it's that he didn't buy and hold more land in New York City when he had the chance.
Bob Hope
Legendary comic Bob Hope probably made more from land
than show business. A lot more - and through banking his money in Southern California land when it was little more than orange groves
and scrubland. At one point he owned at least 10,000 acres of land in the San Fernando Valley. Combined with other land holdings, this
made him the largest private landowner in California. Hope was thought to have enough land to make a principality nearly 50 times the size of Monaco, "with
just as fine a climate."
Howard Hughes
Personally eccentric in later life, but also shrewd and richly successful in his business life, Howard Hughes bought and held land in Southern California and the Las Vegas Valley. He was a firm believer in land banking his properties. For example, in the early 1950s, Howard Hughes acquired a 22,500-acre parcel of land located well outside the Las Vegas city limits. Today, this land parcel is known as Summerlin, and regarded as one of the most desirable and prestigious master planned communities in Nevada.
Howard Hughes’ land holdings made him vast fortunes during his lifetime.
Roy Sakioka
Relatively unknown in Europe, Roy Sakioka was a poor immigrant farmer who came to the U.S.A. from Japan with virtually no money. He credited his father with teaching him the value of real estate as a hedge against inflation. " ..You never forget it: Inflation will never be stopped.. " Sakioka began buying small parcels of rural California land just after World War II. He had an uncanny knack for knowing where motorways and shopping centre's would rise up, and this sixth sense made him a master at buying land along development's path, then waiting until the last possible moment before selling. Sakioka amassed roughly $325 million in landholdings, with virtually no debt. Many of Orange County's malls and office towers sit on former Sakioka celery fields.
In 1991, Sakioka was named one of America's 400 richest individuals by Forbes magazine.
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Asset Class Comparison(Click for larger image)
Land Value Growth(Click for larger image)
