One Up Realty fined $18,000 after six

Real estate firm One Up Realty has been fined after it failed to audit its trust account for six years.

A real estate agency accepted funds for hundreds of property transactions into a trust account that went unaudited for six years and ignored repeated reminders that it was not complying with the law.

One Up Realty was required to appoint an auditor when it opened in 2017 but failed to do so for six years and five days, despite repeated requests from the Real Estate Authority reminding it of its trust account obligations.

According to a Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal’s decision, the Auckland-based agency received funds from 275 transactions in that time.

The authority told NZME it did not take action sooner because the agency was new and its approach was to work with new agencies to achieve compliance before escalating to enforcement action.