Fair Trading Commissioner's Guidance

When an agent or landlord assesses a tenancy application

The following guidance is considered by the Fair Trading Commissioner to be best practice for landlords, agents and third party tenancy application platforms in dealing with tenants’ personal information.

For information about the general obligations that apply to real estate agents and the application of the Australian Privacy Principles to businesses that deal with personal information please see here.

Agents and landlords should only use information that is reasonably necessary to assess a tenant’s suitability for a tenancy.

Agents and landlords should only use information that is relevant to whether the tenant will be able to pay the rent and is likely to look after the property.

Further, agents, landlords and third-party tenancy application platforms should explain why certain information is being collected and how it will be used to assess the person’s suitability for the tenancy.

Example – agent gathers information from a prospective tenant’s social media profiles

In assessing an application for a tenancy, an agent decides to look at the prospective tenant’s Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account. The agent thinks this will tell them what type of person the tenant is before making a recommendation to the landlord.

This would not be considered best practice.

There is also a risk of mistaken identity through this process – where the profile viewed is of a different person who shares a name with the applicant. This could be unfair and prejudicial to the applicant and could lead to rejection of an ideal tenant.

Information from a person’s social media presence is unlikely to have any bearing on their capacity to pay or sustain a tenancy and would not usually be information that is reasonably necessary to use in the assessment of a potential tenant.

Example – agent informs a prospective tenant how personal information will be used to assess their suitability for a tenancy

A tenancy application form requests that the prospective tenant provide information about their current income level and employer. The form clearly discloses that as part of the agent’s assessment process, the agent will consider the proportion of the tenant’s income that would go towards rent. The form also discloses that the employer will be contacted to confirm the income of the applicant.

A prospective tenant provides their income level and employer details in their rental application, and the agent then contacts their employer to confirm the salary.

This would be considered best practice because the application form clearly informed the applicant the details of the information required (including that the prospective tenant’s employer would be contacted) and detailed how that information would be used.

Personal information and tenancy databases

Tenancy databases store specific information about tenants and their rental history. The Residential Tenancies Act 2010 provides strict rules for listing and accessing information contained on databases.

Where an agent uses a tenancy database, is best practice for agents to disclose to prospective tenants that their information will be used for this purpose.

More information on tenancy databases is available on our starting a residential tenancy page.

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