A high profile Auckland real estate agent has been given a formal warning by her employer after posting a TikTok video of herself giving a sales pitch using a fake Asian accent.
The award-winning Ray White real estate agent Linh Yee, who is of Asian descent, also said in the video that she will do cleaning and cooking for potential buyers.
The video circulated for more than a week before it was removed, following a complaint.
While Yee spoke fluently in an official video promoting a Sandringham house, she took on a different persona in a TikTok video marketing the same property, where she called herself “Lingling” and affected an Asian accent.
The video showed Yee walking through the property, offering to do a range of household chores for potential buyers – including sweeping the deck, and crouching down to clean the floor.
“You pay me good price, I also get dirty for you, see – I clean,” she said.
She also wandered to the kitchen and said: “And when I sell your home good price, I also make you good dinner, see, peanut butter jelly, I make for you”.
The video ended with the agent saying “love you long time” – a line from the movie Full Metal Jacket in which a Vietnamese sex worker solicited American soldiers.
An Auckland woman who complained to Ray White said she felt deeply offended by the video.
“I feel like what she was doing really proliferates stereotypes against South-east Asian women, and as someone who is of Asian descent, it was just really disappointing and sad to see,” she said.
The woman – who did not want to be named – said it normalised racism.
“This is leading to more acceptance and apathy on normalising racism in our society, and it is quite disappointing to see that Ray White doesn’t really have any formal procedures and policies for their real estate agents, to basically be posting anything they want in social media,” she said.
She said she felt there was a wider issue of racism in New Zealand, and that it was a “dark underbelly of our culture” that was not being talked about enough.
Yee would not do a recorded audio interview, but told RNZ she had no idea how much the video would offend people.
“I’m so embarrassed about what’s really going on, I’m still letting it sort of absorb in, I really, really didn’t even have any idea how much this is actually gonna offend people, when all I was doing was mocking and teasing myself,” she said.
She said on reflection she realised speaking English with a fake Asian accent was wrong and had taken down the video.
“My intention was never to cause harm or discomfort to anyone, but rather to share a light-hearted moment of self-expression and humour. However, I now understand that my actions were culturally insensitive and perpetuated harmful stereotypes,” she said.
Linh Yee said she was “truly sorry”.
“Moving forward, I am committed to educating myself and being more mindful of the impact of my words and actions. I understand that words alone cannot undo the hurt caused, but I hope to demonstrate through my future behaviour a genuine commitment to learning and growth,” she said.
Ray White Epsom director Nick Lyus said Yee has been given a formal warning about the video, which was taken down as soon as the company was made aware of it.
He said the company was committed to giving all its employees cultural sensitivity and anti-discrimination training.
Ray White said it did not vet all its staff’s social media posts, but did monitor them regularly.
Graeme Edwards, an Auckland businessman who died this month.
One of the former owners of Alloy Yachts and one of a group who founded national discount retailer Dress Smart died this month.
Graeme Marten Edwards, 89, of Parnell passed away on February 19. His funeral is at St Mary’s-in-Holy Trinity in Parnell at 1pm tomorrow.
Edwards was born in 1934. Friends recalled how he overcame major health issues as a youngster, having drunk unpasteurised milk collected from a farmer in the Howick area. He contracted tuberculosis so was hospitalised, they recalled.
It was not until the 1940s when the Americans arrived in New Zealand during World War II and his father became friends with an army doctor that Edwards was given penicillin.
At the age of 14, he was able to go to Auckland Grammar but he had spent years in bed reading, so one friend said it was a shock to the teachers how much he already knew.
Once he left school, he studied pharmacy, bought a chemist’s shop, then other properties to eventually form developer Argyle Estates which built suburban bank offices, medical centres and food outlets.
In the 1960s, Edwards and wife Barbara established Auckland’s Sheraton House furniture store at a time, friends recalled, when most furniture in the city was bland.
Edwards also bought a chain of motels throughout New Zealand, including Māngere’s Airport Inn.
In the 1980s, he became chairman of Argus Corporation, then listed on the stock exchange. At one point, Argus owned Rainbow’s End and Sea Life Kelly Tarlton’s Aquarium. Edwards made millions from property but lost most of it in the stock market crash of 1987, then rebuilt his business.
In 1995, Edwards’ wife Barbara died. He later married Di Le Cren in 2012.
In the 1990s, he worked closely with business associate Nigel Powell.
As well as being in the group of founders of Dress Smart with John Bougen and others, Argyle Estates built 10 medical centres, five retail centres, a hospital in Fiji and a number of other commercial developments.
The two men were also founding directors of Auckland Memorial Park.
In 2008, the Herald reported how Edwards and Powell turned their attention to a suburban Auckland development.
Argyle built a shopping centre at Greenhithe but that article also said it had designed and built many properties in the past 16 years.
Powell is managing director what is today called Argyle Property Group.
It was with business associate Gary Lane that Edwards got involved in Alloy Yachts. They bought it from the receiver and during about 25 years, Alloy built around 50 superyachts.
Edwards was also chairman of Lane’s food business Healtheries for 10 years.
He is a former director of Oyster Property Group and Oyster Management and of Opera New Zealand.
He is survived by Di, his son Jonathan, niece Lucy and granddaughter Nicola.
Aerial view from Pokeno, Auckland, where builder has put up more than 200 new residences.
South Auckland house builder Compass Homes (Franklin), which put up more than 200 new residences in Pōkeno, has gone into liquidation today.
Grant Reynolds of Newmarket has been appointed the liquidator, Companies Office
Carey Baptist College on Great South Rd, Penrose. Photo / One Roof
Two Baptist entities have sold a 1.37ha Penrose commercial property, valued by Auckland Council at $21.5 million, to one of New Zealand’s biggest Pentecostal churches.
Carey Baptist College and Brent McGregor,
Bert Potter (front) and residents of the Centrepoint Community in Albany. Photo / Supplied
A multimillion-dollar Auckland property that was the site of New Zealand’s most infamous commune, Centrepoint, has been withdrawn from sale without finding a buyer.
The huge site in the city’s north has a council valuation of almost $9 million and had been billed as “one of the last significant underdeveloped landholdings on the fringe of Albany”.
It also has a dark history as it was where Bert Potter served as the spiritual head of the Centrepoint commune.
Potter was arrested in 1990 for sexual abuse and drugs crime, with survivors sharing stories of life in the commune in the acclaimed documentary, Heaven and Hell – The Centrepoint Story, in 2021. Many of them had been exploited as children by adults living at the commune.
The commune was shut in 2000 and Potter died in 2012, aged 86.
Since then, the property at 14 Mills Lane has been run as a wellness and retreat centre, before being put up for sale and marketed last year as a big development opportunity.
However, agent Michael Nees, from Bayleys North Shore Commercial, said the property did not get a buyer “so it was withdrawn from the market” at the seller’s wish.
Advertisements for the sale of the site were taken down from property website OneRoof in December.
Council has valued the 7.62ha site at $8.7m, but it is believed the owners had hoped to get more than $10m.
Owners Prema Charitable Trust bought the property in 2008 for just over $4m. The trust operates the Kawai Purapura retreat at the site, which was also home to the Wellpark College of Natural Therapies.
It had been advertised as “an incomparable opportunity” to secure a huge slice of city land where applying for rezoning could generate “considerable value uplift”.
The site sits on land overlooking Albany’s commercial precinct and is close to Albany Bus Station and Westfield shopping centre.
Centrepoint was opened by Potter in 1977 and at its peak had a permit for 244 fulltime residents.
It was based on therapeutic encounter groups popularised in California in the 1960s, promising social transformation by encouraging open communication.
The commune was shut down in 2000 after some leaders, including Potter, were convicted of sexual abuse and drugs crimes.
Potter was convicted and sentenced in 1990 to three and a half years in jail on drug charges and in 1992 to seven and a half years for indecent assaults on five children, some as young as 3.
Other men were also convicted of indecently assaulting minors, sexually assaulting minors and attempted rape of a minor.
A 2010 Massey University study revealed that one in every three children at Centrepoint was sexually abused.
Three survivors from the infamous cult spoke out in 2021, writing an open letter calling for restorative justice for children who were abused.
Christchurch GP Caroline Ansley wrote the letter with two other Centrepoint survivors, who are featured in the TVNZ docudrama Heaven and Hell – The Centrepoint Story.
Ansley said realising she was not the only one who was abused was empowering.
“I had to ask myself what’s worse – fear of exposure or the disappointment of not advocating for the right thing.”
The trio asked in their letter that former Centrepoint members consider “their obligations towards the children of the community” and acknowledge the resulting social, emotional and psychological difficulties many still experience as adults.
“We ask you to hear our voices. We ask you to set aside your complex feelings surrounding this issue and acknowledge our realities. We ask that you work with us to find ways to enable healing and restoration of the history.”
Drugs such as LSD and ecstasy were manufactured on the property and taken in group experiments that involved youngsters.
“This potent mix of social control, parental child neglect, drug use and hyper-sexuality set the scene for child abuse to occur,” the letter stated.
The signatories, some of them anonymous but known to the authors, include Louise Winn. She was only 11 when she was brought to Potter’s hut by his wife Margie. She was later also sexually abused by his son John Potter and other men.
To keep predators away at night, the girl barricaded herself with junk in her caravan on the property or escaped into the bush.