Phair thought the third-party rental databases were ripe for data harvesting.
“There is no rule governing,outside of the notifiable breach scheme,that a real estate agent should only collect XYZ.
“It’s a really unregulated market. It’s the wild west. It’s terrible. It’s stressful.”
Beyond verifying 100 points of identity,it was unnecessary for the industry to be asking for any more information,Phair said.
“You don’t know where the data is being held,how long it is being held,or whether it is being sold to third parties.”
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A spokesperson for InspectRealEstate,the software provider that owns 2Apply,said each agent could customise their forms according to their requirements,and their property owners’,to assess a renter’s suitability.
The spokesperson said they had a range of cybersecurity measures and did not sell information,but added it was up to agents whether renters had to use the service or not.
But Phair said while the company had good cybersecurity measures,it was to protect the platform rather than the data itself. He said the question remains:“Why is so much information being collected in the first place and where it is stored and what are they doing with it?”
Chief executive of another third-party rental platform,Snug,Justin Butterworth,said the company automatically deletes sensitive information and documents at 60 days,adding data on its platform is encrypted,two-factor protected and stored in Australia,and Snug does not sell renter data.
Tenant groups are also concerned about overreach,such as 2Apply’s tenant-paid background checks as a way for renters to improve their chances of securing a lease.
Tenants’ Union NSW chief executive Leo Patterson Ross said the database companies served real estate agents’ interests.
“The trade-off is that tenants have given up their data and allow it to be used,most of the privacy policies say a third party can sell[the data],” Patterson Ross said.
“But if that permission is coerced it’s not really consent.”
Tenants were paying the price,he said,for a competitive proptech industry that mines different data points to offer agents new ways of assessing the risk of renters,such asSnug’s scoring system.
Snug’s Butterworth said the company’s research shows property owners value affordability,good references and longer-term tenancies,which is why start date and lease term are prioritised in the Snug Match Score.
Tenants Victoria lead community educations lawyer Ben Cording said it was a major concern that renters are forced into applying for a rental through competitive online databases.
“Renters have every right to be concerned they are forced into contributing these data onto these mega-platforms and rental providers,” Cording said.
Cording would welcome a review into the legislation to make sure online rental databases are covered by existing privacy laws and rental laws.
Real Estate Institute of Australia president Hayden Groves said it was up to agents,not tenants,to check their suitability for a rental.
“We caution member agents not to rely on these[platforms] as a panacea of solving the choosing of the tenant process. That’s your job as the agent,it’s not up to the tenant,” Groves said.
“The agent needs to discern how much information they need to collect and what is necessary for the application. The more you collect,the more risk.”
He said it was the state real estate institutes’ responsibility to educate agents on their responsibilities.
The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute has also highlighted the need for Australian governments to better protect tenants’ data such as keeping reasonable limits on data collection and ensuring transparency in its use to prevent discrimination and exploitation.