Login
iscover
A Victorian real estate agency has learned the hard (and costly) way that it pays to get your listing details right after being ordered to pay more than $6,000 to a buyer who purchased a home based on an incorrect advertisement.
Home owner Sanjay Tanwar took OBrien Real Estate to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) over the purchase of a house in 2020 on the assumption it had “ducted heating and refrigerated cooling” as per its advertisement.
At a hearing in January, VCAT deputy president Ian Lulham ruled in favour of Mr Tanwar, finding the agency “involved in misleading and deceptive conduct” and with the home owner awarded 50 per cent of the quoted cost of a Samsung system, which the tribunal determined was currently valued upwards of $12,000.
The agency was ordered to pay $6,347, deducing that the Samsung system would have been priced that much when the house was built in 2015. In addition to this, the agency was also ordered to pay a $217.70 filing fee.
Notably, the ruling comes after the second time the dispute was escalated to VCAT.
In March 2022, details of the published decision showed OBrien Real Estate did not show up, and the member initially awarded Mr Tanwar $12,694 to cover the cost of air-conditioning installation.
However, the matter landed back at the tribunal after the real estate agency appealed for a review of the decision.
The tribunal found Mr Tanwar bought the address from vendor Ismail El Azzouri based on a “representation” made by the agency in the advertisement that it had “ducted heating and refrigerated cooling”.
Mr Tanwar stated the property’s feature was reiterated to him by OBrien agent Lin Zhang on the final inspection and once more in a text message sent to him by the agent.
However, the released ruling also showed that during the final inspection of the property, the buyer did not turn on any of the heating or cooling appliances but sighted a wall-mounted electronic control panel that had buttons for “on/off,” “cool,” “fan,” and “heat”.
Reportedly, the buyer assumed the refrigerated cooling system needed fixing but eventually discovered after arranging for repairs that there was no cooling system installed in the first place.
“When Mr Tanwar took possession of the property after the settlement, he found that there was no refrigerated cooling, or indeed any cooling, in the house.”
“Initially, Mr Tanwar assumed that the refrigerated cooling system needed repair, and he engaged Aspen Air to investigate. Aspen Air reported that there was no refrigerated cooling system in the property, but only a ducted heater, which had the heating unit in the ceiling space,” the VCAT decision paper stated.
VCAT emphasised that the claim did not involve the vendor, but the member found his evidence to be “sophistry” and that he also misled the listing agent.
With this, Mr Lulham stated that he acknowledged that the agency and the agent “did not seek to lie or mislead” and that the vendor contributed to the misrepresentation.
“Largely, he sought to deny that he had instructed OBrien that his house had refrigerated cooling, saying that Mr Zhang had misunderstood the words which Mr El Azzouzi had said and written to him and that Mr Zhang had failed to exercise his own care and diligence in including the representation about refrigerated cooling in the advertisement,” the tribunal found.
Speaking on the decision, OBrien Real Estate Agency chief executive Mitch Armstrong stated that the client’s dissatisfaction was ultimately due to miscommunication between several involved parties.
“To address the situation, we have been proactive in finding a solution with our purchaser and are pleased with the outcome as we don’t want any OBrien customer feeling dissatisfied with their purchase,” he said.
Newsletter
