Rankin on Sunday

Christine Rankin on TVNZ's Sunday

Christine Rankin appeared on Sunday last night.

Janet McIntyre read a statement from Margo McAuley’s sister. Christine Rankin read her own.

What possesses Christine Rankin to keep trying to justify her life to the nation? She should just be quiet. The more appropriate course of action would have been to accept the Family Commission position and then shut up. Just don’t engage with the media. Perhaps she’s using Glenda Hughes, who similarly instructed Tony Veitch to talk to the media when what he should have been doing was keeping his head down.

Christine Rankin knows how the media works. She knows that everything she says, especially now, will cause controversy. As hard as it is for her she needs to button her lip and take advice from the Prime Minister and only comment on things to do with families and children.

”As far as I’m concerned she’s been appointed a commissioner, one of seven in a part-time job, to advocate for families and particularly because of her expertise when it comes to abused children,” Mr Key said today.

”That’s what I want to hear her talking about and nothing else.”

Christine Rankin stupidly went on prime time television and made a statement that completely contradicts what Margo McAuley’s family believes happened - this only piques our interest.

Now we all want to know who is telling the truth.

TVNZ and Sunday

For two weeks in a row the Sunday program has played only one local item out of the three they usually put to air. That equates to about 12 minutes of a commercial hour on TV.

I’ve been incensed about this for some time, given that Sunday received the lions share of funding from NZ On Air. I have just looked it up online and found this story in the NZ Herald.

$2.77 million dollars for one item a week.  As John Drinnan points out that figure would “keep all of Radio New Zealand - including National Radio and Concert FM - on air 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for a month.”

And what’s more the item tonight from BBC Panorama first aired in the UK on 14 May 2007 - so it’s hardly breaking news.

The Joneses, and the Real Estate Institute

I’ve just finished watching Sunday on TVNZ .

The first story was about the recent spat between the Joneses Real Estate company, and the REINZ (Real Estate Institute of New Zealand).

Chris Taylor of the Joneses talked about their flat fee structure. All of their agents are on salary so that, they say, effectively removes commissions from the incentive to sell a property. They charge a flat fee of $7,995 including GST to sell a property. Other agents can take around $15,000 to sell a $350K house, or $28,000 to sell a house worth $700K.

Chris made some good points - the one about an agent working hard in Invercargill to sell a $140K house and earning a $5K commission, compared to an agent working as hard in Auckland and getting 3 or 4 times that commission hit the nail on the head. As Sugar pointed out the agent in Invercargill probably has to work harder to sell the house because the market is smaller and there are less buyers.

We saw the wealthy agent selling $5 million apartments in Parnell, who assured Cameron Bennett that the commission wasn’t why he sold homes. He maintained he never thought about it, but then admitted that if he was on a salary (a la Joneses) that wouldn’t be very motivating for him. Cameron neglected to push home the point that he’d just told the viewer the commissions weren’t important.

What a real estate agent brings to the sale of a home is a list of potential buyers. I’m not convinced they offer much more than that anymore, since, for a modest sum I can go onto QV and find an up to date valuation for my property plus find out what all other properties in my area sold for.

The discrepancy between a Joneses agent and a commission agent was not made clear in the article. I don’t know how big the Joneses database of buyers is or how long they take to sell homes compared with the others. I suspect that I’ll never truly know that information.

But if I am selling my home, and I can go for a $7,995 commission, which I only pay once I have sold my home then I guess it’s a good gamble, and worth the risk. Especially of I’m likely to save in the region of $21,000.