Tenants/Prospective Tenants

Personal information is collected from tenants or potential tenants in the course of a tenancy application and any subsequent tenancy as is necessary for the agent to verify the potential tenant’s identity, toprocess and evaluate the application and to manage the tenancy.

Personal information collected in the application and during the course of the tenancy, including through property inspection reports, may be disclosed to other parties including to the landlord, employment and personal referees, as well as to tradespeople, owners’ corporations, government and statutory authorities, financial institutions and other agents and operators of tenancy reference databases and to third parties as required or authorised by law.

Information already held on tenancy reference databases may also be disclosed to us. If the tenant fails to comply with their obligations under the tenancy agreement, that fact may also be disclosed to the landlord, other agents and operators of tenancy reference databases. If this information is not provided, we may not be able to process the application and manage the tenancy.

In this respect, we have agreed to follow the principles as outlined in the Commissioners guidelines in dealing with personal information provided by tenants.

Best practice would be to only request information that is reasonably necessary to verify a tenant’s ID, and to simply sight the ID documents and note any details that may be necessary to keep (for example, if it is necessary in future to confirm the identity of the tenant for providing a reference or providing access if they are locked out of a property), without storing the documents. This will reduce the amount of ID information that will be disclosed if an agency is subject to a data breach.