Considerations home tenants required to share extreme private information to safe leases

Tenants are being pressured handy over extreme private information when making use of for rental properties, with new analysis warning that candidates’ private info may very well be in danger within the occasion of a knowledge breach.

The report from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) discovered some rental purposes on property expertise (or “prop tech”) platforms included as much as 50 questions — greater than was fairly required to evaluate suitability.

“In the private rental sector, there’s a minimum amount of data that’s realistically needed to make an assessment,” mentioned lead creator Sophia Maalsen, from the University of Sydney.

Like many industries, the housing sector has ramped up its use of expertise to assist streamline its processes, also known as property expertise.

Dr Maalsen mentioned there was now an expectation that the one-third of Australians who rented would hand over extra non-public info with out query.

“If you think about the old rental applications … [it] was just evidence of income, maybe a reference or two, your identity documents, and you talk to the real estate agent, they get a bit of a sense of you,” Dr Maalsen mentioned.

“But now if you’re doing it online … you still have to meet the agent, but all those other sort of characteristics, which are lifestyle, smoking, non-smoking, are a lot easier to collect because you can just put it in [the digital form].”

The platforms have additionally allowed actual property brokers to filter purposes based mostly on what they’re on the lookout for.

“They’re able to tweak which characteristics they like to come up with a selection of ideal candidates based on their own industry experience and things like that.”

The report from AHURI, an impartial not-for-profit analysis organisation, argued that as the usage of such platforms elevated, as that they had accomplished abroad, laws have been turning into unfit for function and wanted to be reviewed.

Protective mechanisms lag behind

As expertise has superior, so too has the chance to make software processes extra particular and onerous.

Tenants’ Union of NSW CEO Leo Patterson Ross mentioned brokers particularly felt like that they had an expert obligation to behave in the very best curiosity of landlords.

“They see themselves as needing to take up the new offering because it offers them, even if it’s only marginal, slightly more information, a slightly better ‘assessment’ of the applicants,” he mentioned.

Mr Ross mentioned tenants have been turning into an increasing number of annoyed when anticipated handy over private information, notably when there have been no protecting mechanisms in place.

“[Otherwise] you’re just not going to get assessed, and you’re going to be at the bottom of the pile.”

Renters who share their private information by way of property expertise platforms typically have that information distributed between a variety of organisations that use the programs.

“The idea is that you can use it to apply for not just one property, but multiple properties,” Dr Maalsen mentioned.

“There’s clearly a convenience-factor sell to tenants there, but it also means that they are collecting and holding information that otherwise they don’t need.”

She had considerations that insurance policies guiding the trade haven’t been capable of sustain with the tempo of tech.

“It’s just moving so quickly, and now stuff is outdated … because [regulation] is struggling to keep up with the rapid tech development and AI.”

As it stands, some actual property brokers and property expertise platforms are exempt from the Privacy Act (laws defending individuals’s private info) as a result of they’ve an annual turnover of lower than $3 million.

In August of 2023, the nationwide cupboard met to debate making rental purposes simpler and protecting renters’ personal information by limiting information assortment to 2 items of proof, however nothing has been rolled out at a federal stage.

Mr Ross expressed fear that even with these security mechanisms, there would nonetheless be an influence imbalance between tenants and landlords because of the aggressive nature of housing.

“We make people compete for an essential service, an essential need, in a way that we don’t make people compete for water, for electricity, for healthcare, for education — so that’s what enables all of this,” he mentioned.

NSW Rental Commissioner Trina Jones mentioned: “It’s estimated around 187,000 pieces of identification information are collected from NSW renters every week, but currently, there is no consistent standard for how this highly sensitive information is stored, used, or destroyed.”

The NSW authorities has launched The Residential Tenancies Amendment Protection of Personal Information Bill which Commissioner Jones mentioned is “to stop the unnecessary collection of extra personal information and help reduce the risk of identity theft and data breaches for tenants, property technology platforms, and agents”.

Pros and cons for social housing purposes

When it got here to social housing, Dr Maalsen mentioned the digitisation of housing purposes might assist renters by fast-tracking processes.

“For the providers, they find it quite useful in terms of prioritising the sort of automated processes [and] being able to prioritise tenants possibly faster than they would have otherwise,” she mentioned.

The analysis discovered the expertise might additionally enhance triaging processes and rank candidates based mostly on ranges of vulnerability.

Often, social housing candidates require important quantities of non-public info to show a case, which might now be automated in some areas.

However, provided that this information was typically delicate and will embody medical data and police experiences in circumstances of home violence, Dr Maalsen mentioned robust frameworks have been required.

“There’s a value proposition that I think can help streamline, but then it requires government to be a lot more proactive about their data security and privacy because it’s suddenly easier to connect across different databases as well within government.”