Years ago, I worked for a large land & housing developer (now a...

Years ago, I worked for a large land & housing developer (now a very big Company) in Sydney. Part of my job was buying lots and land that we could use in our home building business. I remember one piece of land that we looked at and it had all of the attributes that we were looking for EXCEPT that we needed to extend the Mains water to the project. The problem was that the cost of running the water was so large that it was prohibitive in that we could buy fully developed lots from other developers cheaper. In effect, the land we were looking at had "negative value". i.e. we could not have developed it commercially even if we had been given the land. It taught me that the land was just another component of the home building process. I think that one of the mistakes that 88E has made has been in "tieing up" so much land and not drilling enough in the past. However it is what it is and we all look forward to the next few months. Good luck to all. Cheers dc