In most states of the US (sorry to bring up the yank nation so much lately) if a developer is interested in turning your bach, home or farm into in mall, mansion, bigger housing estate or retirement village, he can apply to the state to have it compolsury sold to him for GV if the tax taking on the newer property are going to be higher and therefore benefit that state or region. And the state is the one that values the property.

In other words, developer wants your land, state (council) will gain more tax or rates from him getting it so they force you to sell it to them.

The Wellington city council swapped some flat reserve land with a developer who had steep land that wasnt buildable or usable in any way. Now because the dog reserve is worth nothing (because its a reserve and cant be developed), they PAID the developer more to take it off there hands, then made the reserve residential. Its now worth a couple million with nothing on it and the developers laughing at getting public land and money in his pocket and WCC already had started with the nessesary water services before it was even mentioned in public. Oh wonder why you dont hear about this stuff? the WCC has a habit of not informing anyone by mysteriously not getting letters in the mailboxes or when they do the public submission ads they do it in newspapers outside of wellington. Neat trick huh?