Shocked (shocked!) by rate increases.
Nathaniel Wilson nominates a Stat of the Week that I’d noticed this morning but hadn’t had time to write up.
The Herald story begins
Aucklanders’ rates bills have arrived in letterboxes and the figures have come as a shock to some homeowers who have seen rises of 10 per cent – despite the council promising an average increase of 2.9 per cent.
Obviously there’s nothing inconsistent about the average being 2.9% and the maximum being 10%. NZ’s average income is about $48000, but I take home somewhat more than that, and the CEO of Fonterra makes a whole lot more, and he may well not be the maximum. The average and the maximum are different. That’s not a shock.
The other point, that our nominator doesn’t make, is that rate increases are capped at 10%, and that all the people who hit the cap last year already knew that they would be seeing an increase this year, and roughly how much it would be. I know this because I live in Onehunga, where property values have gone up quite a lot, and I’m one of the people with a large rate increase. Since I read the rates notice I received last year I’m not at all shocked. I don’t have to say whether I’m happy or not, but it certainly wasn’t a surprise.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
The article’s astonishing for so many reasons (shock! Horror! Poorer people may be paying less this year). However, it’s still not a patch on the Herald’s front page revelations from a while back, that it’s easier to buy a house as a couple than it is if you’re single.
11 years ago