While she was not the listed agent for the property, she did show the family through it and answered their questions about it, meaning her conduct is subject to scrutiny by the professional body.
The wife in the purchasing family, whose name is also suppressed, told the tribunal she distinctly remembered asking the realtor if the house was safe.
“I asked is this house good, is this house safe?” she said.
She recalls the realtor confirming that both the Rotorua house and the area were indeed “safe”.
“If she didn’t comfort me from that statement I wouldn’t have bought that house,” the wife said.
However, soon after moving in, she described coming home to find her husband and son in distress and smashed windows at the property. It had been broken into.
“We had never experienced something like that and we were obviously traumatised,” the woman said.
She said a glazier came to the house to fix the windows and he informed them he had been there multiple times to repair glass following earlier break-ins.
From there, the woman and her husband made a complaint to the Real Estate Authority about the lack of disclosure. The authority then escalated the complaint to the tribunal.
“I don’t have anything personal against her, I don’t want to punish her, I just want her to understand that when someone asks any question please make sure you answer,” the wife said during cross-examination.
“If someone is asking you specifically if the house is safe, there’s a special reason why they’re asking about that.”
According to advice for realtors from the Real Estate Authority on the disclosure of sensitive information, it depended on the facts of each case. The authority defined sensitive issues as things like an unnatural death that occurred at the property or a violent crime.
The husband, who also has name suppression, took the stand and affirmed his wife’s version of events and said he also recalled asking the realtor whether the house was safe.
But the realtor disputed the couple’s testimony, stating she believed they had only asked whether the area was safe.
“The context of the conversation wasn’t about crime or safety. There was no mention of safety because it didn’t come to my mind,” she said.
The realtor denied having deliberately misled the couple and said if they had specifically asked about crime or safety, she would have disclosed the previous burglaries.
When asked about those burglaries, the woman said her family had not been adversely affected by them.
“Police said they [the burglars] were a nuisance and knew who they were … break-ins happen everywhere,” she said.
“It didn’t change my mind about the area or that we didn’t all of a sudden like our house.”
Counsel for the standards committee prosecuting the realtor, Elena Mok, said that the woman had been deliberately misleading.
“They directly asked about safety and were told ‘it’s all fine’ and then this very serious incident has happened soon after,” Mok said.
“They feel like they’ve been misled.”
Mok said it was “wholly implausible” that the realtor could have interpreted the conversation in any other way.
“She made a decision not to disclose because she didn’t want them to be deterred from purchasing her property,” she said.
The realtor’s lawyer, John Waymouth, said his client had not intentionally misled the couple and the previous burglaries simply had not come to mind for her.
“I would put it down to a brain fade. It just wasn’t at the forefront of her mind,” he said.
Weymouth submitted the couple’s evidence was inconsistent and they couldn’t say whether they both asked about safety, where in the house it took place and how they asked the question.
He said his client had understood the question to be about how safe the general area was and that she had responded by saying she felt safe enough to run alone at night and would be moving to a property around the corner.
“She has not knowingly provided an untruthful answer to a question,” he said.
“It was an innocent omission, and not a serious one.”
The tribunal will issue its finding in writing at a later date.
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
