The defendant in the case, facing one charge of arson, cannot be named.
At the start of the trial she applied for name suppression but Judge Hollister-Jones declined her application. Her lawyer, Andy Hill, has appealed the decision, which means she cannot be named until the appeal is decided.
The Crown and the defence closed their cases to the jury on August 17 after the trial started on August 9. Judge Hollister-Jones was due to sum up on the day New Zealand was plunged into a Covid-19 alert level 4 lockdown.
The Rotorua Daily Post attended via audio visual link.
Judge Hollister-Jones told the jury he wanted to "sincerely thank" them for coming back.
He told them he had entered the court wearing his mask but would talk without it so he wasn't muffled. He said he was adequately socially distanced, in very good health and had received both Covid-19 jabs.
After they returned their verdict, he described it as an "impressively short period of time given the break".
"You have gone above and beyond with your service to the community. It would have been really awful if we had to go through seven days and start all over again. We are incredibly grateful."
He said the defendant was free to go.
Earlier, in his summing up, Judge Hollister-Jones reminded the jury of the facts of the case.
He said the woman had intended to buy the house but a previous good relationship between the woman and the vendor on the day of settlement last year changed when the woman was disappointed with the state of the property.
The vendor asked the woman via text message to leave the property and said they would let the lawyers deal with it.
The Crown said the woman then set fire to the house.
The judge said the Crown alleged she did so as there was a clause in the sale-and-purchase agreement which said if the vendor was fully insured and if something happened to the property between the signing of the agreement and the settlement date, she would be able to gain an empty section, minus the burnt house, for $70,000 - effectively gaining a windfall of about $85,000.
The judge reminded the jury that the woman said she was only at the house about 3.30pm when in fact she was seen leaving the area on nearby CCTV around the time of the fire at 4.50pm. Emergency services were alerted about the fire at 4.51pm.
The Crown claimed the woman lied in text messages, saying she was in Tauranga when in fact she was not.
The Crown called evidence from an expert fire safety investigator who determined the fire was deliberately lit by a fuel source in the north-west corner of the house.
But the defence said there were "fundamental difficulties" with the expert's theory. They called their own fire expert, who said the fire could have originated from a "spontaneous" event in the switchboard as a result of a screw penetrating the aged insulation around an electrical wire.
The judge reminded the jury it was the defence's case that there was an innocent explanation and she was simply "an innocent person in the wrong place at the wrong time".
The Crown tried to convince the jury the woman was a savvy property investor who had sold properties before and her financial situation was impacted by Covid-19 as she was only receiving the wage subsidy, which didn't cover her expenses.
But the defence successfully argued that she had never read the sale-and-purchase agreement and wasn't aware of the option of buying the property at a net figure if something happened in the process - such as a fire.
It was also the defence's case that the woman was in a good financial position, was asset rich and the wage subsidy plus some other "cashies" were enough for her to get by.
