Agent TV star may be going, gone

By LOUISA CLEAVE

Millionaire real estate agent Michael Boulgaris is having second thoughts about his role on television's top-rating Location Location Location because of the way he has been portrayed.

Mr Boulgaris said the overall tone of the programme - the sixth-highest rating show on television - had changed this year, and he was particularly upset by a suggestion in the first episode that he had used a fake bidder to sell a property worth nearly $1 million.

The Auckland branch of the Real Estate Institute will view the show tomorrow.

The division's licensing subcommittee, which investigates concerns relating to advertising, wanted to "clarify what happened" during the show, a spokeswoman said.

In the first episode, aired two weeks ago, Mr Boulgaris was seen selling the property with a $950,000 reserve.

The bidding stopped at $935,000 and Mr Boulgaris advised the vendor to drop the reserve and put the home on the open market.

He was then seen going back into the conference room where the auction was taking place, nodding to his left and indicating a bid of $940,000.

Mr Boulgaris told the potential buyers he would knock $500 off his commission if they went to $941,000. They did and the property sold.

A narrator's voice-over said: "Often phony bidders are used legitimately at auction to push the price up for the vendor. Hope is, Michael's other bidders are genuine because now [buyer] Garth is firmly shaking his head."

Mr Boulgaris told the Herald the bidders who pushed the price to $940,000 did not want to appear on-screen, "so they were outside and this stupid voice comes over saying Michael's got a hard job to do now because it's not a true bidder."

He was concerned about his credibility because Barfoot & Thompson, the firm he worked for, had a policy of not using fake bidders.

Mr Boulgaris said he was "not out to expose people and that's what it seems as though they were portraying on the first two episodes."

He believed the show had "become more of a hardcore documentary trying to catch everyone out ... It's not the fun-loving Location that it was the last couple of years."

Asked if he would do another series, Mr Boulgaris said: "I probably wouldn't."

Bronwen Stewart, a spokeswoman for Ninox Films, which makes the show, said Mr Boulgaris had been aware he was being filmed.

"I'm sure that what he did was proper and right within the circumstances."