PHOTO: Grange real estate agent Zane Pitt. (Twitter)
An Adelaide real estate agent has won an appeal of a judgement that he had engaged in unconscionable conduct by buying a pensioner’s house below its true value.
Key points:
- An Adelaide pensioner sold his home for $175,000 to a real estate agent
- His daughter subdivided and sold the two new houses on the property for $765,000
- The Supreme Court has ruled the purchase process was not unconscionable
The South Australian Supreme Court’s decision in favour of Zane Anthony Pitt relied on a High Court judgement from 2019 that narrowed the meaning of unconscionable conduct.
The decision on the appeal overturned a previous judgement by a single Supreme Court judge.
It reinstated a Magistrates Court decision that dismissed the action initiated by South Australia’s Commissioner for Consumer Affairs.
Mr Pitt is still a registered real estate agent based in Grange, in Adelaide’s west.
He said he was “very, very pleased” with the judgement and that he had been “exonerated”.
Property subdivided, built on and sold
The court had previously heard that the vendor — a 70-year-old widower only referred to as Mr Hartwig in court documents — had lost almost all of his money to a gambling addiction.
READ MORE VIA ABC
