Stratford in David and Goliath battle over housing data

The privacy of home owners has been cited as the reason for a tiny council refusing to provide data to New Zealand’s most popular website.

Trade Me and PropertyNZ had asked to buy the data on Stratford District Council’s valuation roll, which includes the rateable value and sales history of all houses in the district.

The only information the proposed deal wouldn’t include would be an owner’s name and their alternative postal address, if they had one. The sale of the information has already been approved by 61 other councils around New Zealand, including the New Plymouth District Council and South Taranaki District Council.

Stratford is Taranaki’s smallest district, with a population of 8991.

In a report presented to the Stratford District Council’s (SDC) policy and services meeting, council staff said they were uncomfortable with the housing data being made public.

The information would be used by Trade Me as an extension of its property website, where it would show the sales from the last 10 years for a property.

‘‘It is this aspect that officers are uncomfortable with and do not believe that it is appropriate for council staff to authorise that the historic sales data be released in a public environment,’’ Mark Weidenbohm, director of corporate services, said in the report.

On Tuesday the councillors voted nine to one against selling the information to Trade Me, with Graham Kelly voting to sell it.

Stratford mayor Neil Volzke said he voted against it because he didn’t think it was anyone else’s business what he had paid for his house and he didn’t need to know what anyone else had paid for theirs.

Trade Me spokesman Paul Ford said they were surprised and a bit disappointed at the move.

‘‘We think that providing New Zealanders with transparent, easy, and open access to property data is a good thing,’’ he said.