An agent whose business went under owing over £90,000 to landlords, tenants and contractors has been fined £3,000 by magistrates.
She has also been banned from being a director for five years and must pay £2,000 costs.
The penalties have angered her creditors, who had expected the case to go to crown court.
Sharon Price, an NAEA member, of Price Properties in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, had not kept client money separately, kept inadequate records and ran her business in a “chaotic and shambolic” way.
Last Tuesday, she pleaded guilty to two charges of contravening the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations, and Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations, between January 2009 and February 2010.
While more than £90,000 had to be paid back to landlords and tenants of Price Properties via the NAEA insurance scheme after the company went into administration in February 2010, the company’s full liabilities remain unknown.
Prosecutor Mike Magee said Price, 49, had “singularly failed” in her duties to her clients: “Ms Price held herself to be a competent and professional estate agent. It is the prosecution case that she was neither of those.”
Rent was not passed on to landlords and deposits were not ring-fenced in separate accounts, the court heard.
On occasion, payments to landlords were authorised only to be cancelled by Price the following day. Some landlords received no rent throughout the whole of 2009, despite their tenants paying on time and in full.
Tenants who had paid deposits did not have them repaid when their tenancies came to an end.
Despite concerns being raised by a staff member in the summer of 2009, she believed she could trade her way out of the situation and continued to take new clients until January 2010.
Mr Magee said: “Given the absolute absence of financial controls and financial training, the mess the company was in is unsurprising.”
He added: “By her mismanagement, negligence and lack of professionalism, she caused those losses to the landlords and tenants who had placed their trust in her to negotiate their finances.”
Kevin Warboys, mitigating, said Price admitted mismanaging the company finances “disastrously” but had made no personal profit, and that her membership of estate agency bodies had allowed many creditors to reclaim their losses.
He added that Price herself was the business’s largest creditor, owed £83,500, and that her marriage had broken down in the past year.
One of her creditors, contractor Mark Shipley, carried out decorating work for Price Properties just before the company went into administration and was owed £1,800.
He said: “At the point she contracted me in January, she knew full well she was going down the pan.
“I’ve had to write that money off and put it down as a lesson learned. Meanwhile she’s come out of this smelling of roses.”
* The Editor of Letting Agent Today wishes to thank the local paper, The Hunts Post, for its help and professional co-operation with this report, following the refusal of Huntingdon Magistrates Court to give LAT any information as to how Price pleaded, what the charges were or what penalty was imposed. The court cited the Data Protection Act.
The Hunts Post report is at: https://tinyurl.com/6dy94hs
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