It is with interest that I read the articles about the data that rental platforms hold on tenants [https://www.choice.com.au/consumers-and-data/data-collection-and-use/how-your-data-is-used/articles/rental-apps-and-data-use] and [https://www.choice.com.au/consumers-and-data/data-collection-and-use/how-your-data-is-used/articles/choice-renttech-report-release] and the dangers this entails for renters.
Whilst I largely indorse the conclusions and recommendations by Choice regarding these issues, I would like to bring to the attention similar software in use by property management agencies, holding data on rental properties that belongs to property owners, such as PropertyMe, Property Tree or Console Cloud. Practically every single agency in Australia uses one of these 3 systems, where all data related to the rental of the property is uploaded to the servers of this unrelated third party. The agency has an agreement with the third party software provider, where all data is handed over to that software provider, for them to commercialise and basically to do anything that they see fit with it, without involving the actual owner of that data, the property owner. The software provider makes the agency warrant that they have the right to provide a perpetual licence regarding the property owners’ data, but the agency does not explicitly ask the property owner for this consent, when signing up. When you let the agency know later on that you do not agree with this practice, you are told to find another property manager, because they have no option but to use one of these systems.
I would have thought that this same type of software (such as PropertyMe) would also be used for the tenant analysis and collecting of tenants data that is described in the above articles, but only software packages like Ailo, Tenant Options, Rental Rewards, Snug, 2Apply and Simple Rent are mentioned there, so apparently these are separate. Similar issues apply however, as described above.
Whilst I understand that Choice, in the articles above, advocates for the rights of renters, property owners are essential in providing properties for rent in the first place and their rights should not be overlooked. I consider the fact that property owners have no choice but to agree that their data is simply handed over to a third party (and are in fact paying for the “privilege” of using that software), who can eventually accumulate all the data on every single property for rent that is managed by an agent (which is 70-80% of all rental properties) in Australia (in case one party acquires all the (other) providers of similar software, for example) is extremely undesirable and I believe this to be in violation of the Privacy Act, if not currently in letter, at least in spirit. The only choice one would then have is to manage the property without an agent, which is not always feasible, when the rental property is not a reasonable distance from one’s place of residence for instance.
Does anybody know of any property agent that does not use any of these ‘convenient and user-friendly’ online solutions? Has anyone who rents out property through an agency been informed about the implications of using these online software packages for the privacy of their data and has anybody been offered options to not use any of these systems?
