“I dropped the ball,” North Shore real estate agency boss Martin Cooper told a tribunal in Auckland today after he and a Harcourts business were charged with misconduct for failing to supply documents.
Cooper, managing director of multi-agency Harcourts Cooper & Co, is appearing before the Real Estate Agents DisciplinaryTribunal.
He and the business are alleged to have failed to supply information sought by a Real Estate Authority investigator in 2021 and 2022.
Catherine Sandelin, Neil O’Connor and Fiona Mathieson are the tribunal members hearing the case.
Cooper told prosecutor Sam McMullan of law firm MC: “I don’t know what you want me to say. I am repeating myself. I dropped the ball. I apologised. You are saying to me that I was trying to avoid this, I was trying to cover this up. I was not.”
Cooper explained the difficulties he faced in operating the large real estate agency business during the pandemic.
Martin Cooper of Harcourts Cooper & Co.
“My priorities were the wellbeing of my staff and customers. This case didn’t get elevated to the top. I accept it should have. I accept I made a mistake. I don’t believe it was a conscious decision. I was overwhelmed. I had 407 staff. If a vendor pays $5000 to market their property and they call up screaming ‘what’s going on, I want my money back!’ Accidents happen. Mistakes are made. It was not a conscious decision. It was an oversight and a major one. As we sit here today, I can see the consequences of it,” Cooper said.
He referred to a series of events which made it difficult for him to comply with the request for documents. Cooper said he was dealing with so many problems coming at him all at the same time.
Those included closing a branch, “guys [staff] being tired”, a relief manager having retired, documents being transferred into storage and a manager who was managing an agent being out of New Zealand.
“It was difficult to get the information. I didn’t place importance on this issue. I thought I had dealt with this issue. I just had so many balls in the air. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I was not efficient enough in my administration of this claim. We have had many many claims that had to be dealt with. There were extenuating circumstances of lockdowns, dramas, unprecedented times,” Cooper told McMullan.
He made a mistake by not realising the importance of the documents being sought, he said.
“It’s sort of embarrassing. Should I have known? Yes, I should have.”
But times were so unusual and he told of “people crying, staff having no income and trying to sort out wage subsidies”.
A complaints assessment committee brought the case against Cooper and agency Harcourts Cooper & Co Real Estate.
Those two defendants are charged with misconduct under the Real Estate Agents Act 2008, “in that their conduct constitutes a wilful or reckless contravention of the act”, according to the charge sheet.
Cooper and the agency received a request for information from investigator Rangi Callahan who sought it in September and November 2021 and January and March 2022.
“Despite the requests, Cooper and the agency failed to provide the authority with the requested information,” the charge sheet said.
Neither Cooper nor the agency responded to a notice in May 2022 about the need to comply with the request for information.
So by June of that year, Callahan advised Cooper and the agency via email that a complaints assessment committee had been informed of their failure to comply with the notice.
“To date, Cooper and/or the agency have still not provided to the authority the information sought in the notice,” the charge sheet issued by complaints assessment committee chairwoman Denise Evans said.
Cooper’s counsel Michael Hodge initially sought to argue a strike-out application but the tribunal decided to hear the full or substantive case and not that application at the start.
Hodge applied for and was granted suppression around one aspect of the case.
He cross-examined Callahan about Covid restrictions in 2021 and 2022 and the difficulties real estate agents faced with various levels of lockdowns, then the traffic light system.
Callahan acknowledged the restrictions and their effects on the sector.
The case is continuing.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 24 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
