Realtor admits forging documents

The harder he worked to get recognition, the less help he was receiving — disciplinary tribunal finding

AWairarapa real estate agent has been found guilty of misconduct after admitting to forgery of six agency agreements involving properties being sold.

Andrew Robert Rankin has been fined and no agency business is allowed to engage him to work in the sector for five years.

The Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal heard the case against Rankin who worked for Tremain Real Estate Wairarapa.

He admitted forgery of documents for property sales. The tribunal also heard a case against the agency which was found guilty of misconduct.

“Mr Rankin admitted to forging the signatures on the agency agreements. It is alleged that in completing six agency agreements, he forged the signatures and initials of the vendors. Mr Rankin admits this,” the tribunal said.

The agent said he did not want to appear in person at the tribunal’s hearing because it was too stressful and he could not afford a lawyer.

He had mental health and anxiety issues arising from his time at Tremain Real Estate and other agencies, he said.

He had worked at a previous agency and was found guilty of selling a drug house there.

“This fully exposed him on social media and showed him to be a ‘really bad person’. The local newspaper published a full-page article with his photo, which had a huge impact on him and his family,” the tribunal said.

He joined another agency and achieved some residential sales.

He then joined Tremain Real Estate where the offending took place.

The biggest problem he faced was managers from another region coming to his area, but they did not call at his office. Tremain Real Estate and its associated companies were expanding into his area.

He kept asking to be informed of the identity of his manager.

“Licensees in rival agencies would remind him of the drug house case and even his colleagues would ‘always jest’ and say processes should not be done his way since that would lead to trouble. They did not know how much this hurt him. His relationship with one of his colleagues was not good,” he told the tribunal.

“Rankin says that the harder he worked to get recognition, the less help he was receiving.”

He was spiralling down, had huge amounts of anxiety, stopped sleeping and felt his integrity was being questioned daily.

Rankin made no excuses for what he has done.

“He is not proud of it. It might shed some light on why and how some people lose their way with mental stress,” the decision said.

In February, he sent the tribunal information about his health: a photograph of two tablet containers in his name and a medical printout from his general practitioner.

That identified one long-term medication well known for the treatment of a mental health condition, the tribunal said.

A letter was also sent from a counsellor. He was having counselling for reoccurring stress and anxiety caused by his work at Tremain Real Estate.

The counsellor stated that appearing before the tribunal would trigger anxiety-related stress.

The tribunal said Tremain Real Estate undertook an internal process to deal with Rankin’s conduct. It was reasonable and appropriate.

“However, what it did not do was report his admitted misconduct to the [Real Estate] Authority as required,” the tribunal found.

It was not till the authority contacted the agency that it acknowledged knowing about one of the forgeries and then a full report was produced the next day.

“The managers of Tremain Real Estate made the decision not to report Mr Rankin’s serious misconduct. They did so for what they regarded as good reason, but their failure to report was intentional.

“They are not saying they did not know of the obligation to report. In other words, there was a wilful breach,” the ruling stated.

Although Rankin forged vendors’ signatures, those vendors lost nothing. Nor does it appear that greed was a motivating factor.

It was hard to discern what gain

Rankin got from the forgeries because in every case the vendors accept his buyer’s offer so presumably they

would have signed agreements if belatedly presented to them at the time of the offer, the tribunal said.

But previous offending was an aggravating factor, the tribunal said, citing a case in 2017.

In 2017, the Herald reported how Pahiatua-based Bayleys agent Andrew Rankin had been suspended for three months and found guilty of two charges of misconduct after failing to tell the family who was moving into the house that it had tested positive for methamphetamine.

The mother and her two preschool-aged children only learned their home was a potential health risk when an anonymous letter was delivered to the house.

In the latest case involving the forged documents, the tribunal censured Rankin, ordered him to pay costs of $2000 and no agent can employ or engage him for five years.

Tremain Real Estate was found guilty of misconduct, censured, and ordered to pay a fine of $2000 and costs of $2000.