Herald Homes and OneRoof apologise for insensitive articles

The two editorial features that were published failed to live up to the paper's values and the values of readers. Photo / Supplied

Herald Homes, the New Zealand Herald's property listing supplement, published on Saturday two editorial features that failed to live up to the paper's values and the values of our readers.

The two articles profiled two separate homes that had been listed for sale and included statistics on the ethnic make-up of the neighbourhoods in which they are located.

The decision to publish the statistics - sourced from data on the Herald's property listing platform OneRoof.co.nz - was tone deaf and insensitive.

The Herald and OneRoof apologise for the offence that this has caused.

OneRoof editor Owen Vaughan said: "In publishing these statistics, we have fallen short of our readers' expectations, and broken the trust of not only the home-owners and selling agents who allowed us to profile their properties, but also the real estate industry as a whole.

"I wish to make clear that these articles were not produced or sanctioned by the home-owners or selling agents. The mistake was ours alone and we apologise sincerely for that.

"We are putting in place systems to ensure that this sort of error does not happen again."

Vaughan said: "The aim of OneRoof is to provide a content-rich property site, with as much publicly available data and statistics housed in one place - making it easier for people looking to buy or sell property.

"That said, in light of this incident and feedback from our readers and the real estate industry, we will remove the cultural diversity data from OneRoof."