Samantha Gaye Chatfield, 30, now faces an anxious wait to find out whether she will be sentenced to time behind bars.

Chatfield appeared in the ACT Supreme Court for the start of her sentence proceedings on Tuesday afternoon, having previously pleaded guilty to one count of arson.

Agreed facts show she and her then-partner, serial criminal Thor Kristiansen, had an argument on the day in question in May 2020.

"This argument caused [Chatfield] to be in a state of significant distress," the document says.

"On a concrete area in the outdoor courtyard, a fire was lit inside a box which contained photographs and letters between the offender and Thor Kristiansen.

"This fire did not spread outside a contained area on the concrete."

Around the same time, however, Chatfield caused another blaze in an area between the kitchen and loungeroom of the Denman Prospect property, which she leased from Housing ACT.

This fire spread rapidly and caused substantial damage, with prosecutor Morgan Howe quoting the cost of it as $378,083.69.

Mr Howe said this demonstrated that Chatfield's crime was "a reasonably serious version of an arson offence".

He also asked Acting Justice Richard Refshauge to take into account that firefighters had been required to extinguish the blaze at a cost to taxpayers, and that the fire had presented a potential risk to others.

The agreed facts note that a large group of people "flocked to the area" of the fire, including a number of bricklayers who ran from a nearby worksite to see if anyone had to be rescued from the house.

Chatfield emerged alone and indicated no one else was inside, then hopped into a car driven by Kristiansen and "took off" past an ACT Fire and Rescue truck that was en route to the scene.

Firefighters dealt with the blaze, allowing crime scene investigators to go through the house the next day.

One of them, Sachida Pandaram, formed an opinion that the fire had been deliberately lit, though the exact mechanism of ignition was unclear.

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On the same day as the examination, Chatfield contacted Housing ACT and said she had burnt photographs in the rear courtyard.

She said there was "petrol out the back" and that the fire had "flared up" when she sprayed water on it, with the blaze getting "completely out of control".

Chatfield was arrested a month later, when she declined the opportunity to be interviewed by police.

She stated, however, that: "I didn't do my house."

Chatfield spent 65 days in custody on remand in the lead-up to her trial, having initially pleaded not guilty.

She switched her plea in July, on the first day of the trial, after the charge was amended to say she had recklessly, rather than intentionally, caused the damage.

On Tuesday, the court heard the 30-year-old had been assessed as unsuitable to serve a jail sentence in the community by way of an intensive correction order.

But both Mr Howe and Chatfield's barrister, James Sabharwal, told Acting Justice Refshauge he could still hand down such a sentence if he saw fit.

Mr Howe submitted that a suspended jail sentence would be "too lenient", leaving only an intensive correction order or full-time imprisonment on the table.

Mr Sabharwal agreed the threshold for a jail sentence had been crossed, but he argued an intensive correction order would be the right outcome.

He said the offending was not premeditated, while different factors reduced Chatfield's moral culpability.

"She should be given the opportunity of taking the path of rehabilitation," Mr Sabharwal told the court.

Acting Justice Refshauge told Chatfield he would impose a sentence on Friday afternoon, until which time her bail would continue.

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