How to interpret the pending residential tenancies legislation and how it affects you as a landlord

There are changes to legislation which are in parliament currently, waiting to be passed. These changes impact the prospective tenants information and how this is stored.
47B - Prospective tenant not to be requested to disclose prescribed information
A landlord or agent, must not request a prospective tenant to disclose prescribed information.
Whilst 'prescribed' information has yet to be determined, I would assume this to be bank statements, whether the tenant has any bond claim history, and any personal protected information such as, ethnicity, gender identity, disability. The tenant may choose to offer this information, but we cannot request it.
As most agencies use a platform to collect this information for an application, there are commercial aspects at play here that may impact on how the information is collected, and provided, and it will be interesting to see how this is rolled out, and ultimately monitored.
52a - Premises to be offered for rent at fixed amount
This one seems like a no-brainer. Most agencies currently only offer a rental as a fixed amount.
This does not prohibit the renter from offering more, and a signboard can be used as long as it does not state an amount of rent. Which again, is already an existing practice.
52b - Special provision relation to assessments etc of prospective tenants
This relates to the platforms we use. It specifies that a rating cannot be given or applied to a prospective tenant, based on how much rent has been offered, and that a person cannot require or receive payment for the provision of an assessment.
There are 2 parts to this, the first one, some platforms apply a rating based on if the application is completed in full, has the applicant attended the property, has the applicant met income/servicing for the rental amount etc. However, most good property managers ignore this part, as we make our own judgements based on the information provided. This will likely have little effect on the industry.
The second part of this clause relates to some companies offering a $20ish fee, to complete a "verification" check to fast track the application, and it sells it to the tenant that it's a way to get the home, when in actual fact, it does very little in the way of improving their chances. It's essentially an ID and credit check, but doesn't confirm if the tenant previously paid rent on time, or if the tenant left damages and cleaning at their last rental. Therefore, most property managers do not use it, and will rely on receiving a good reference on a tenant (plus a million other things, which is a blog post for another day!)
76b - Dealing with tenant information
This relates to tenant applications for properties. This clause discusses that not only must we ensure the information is protected from misuse, interference or loss, but there are time limits around destroying the information after a certain period of time.
The privacy act has previously governed what information can be shared, and there are processed for this when we check references, but now this would be covered within the Residential Tenancies Act also.
Tip #1 - have a great property manager
Essentially, most of these changes will have minimal effect on a landlord.
It will impact real estate agents, and commercial providers in this space, and modify how they do business. But ultimately if you have a great property manager, you don't need to know any of this!
Privacy is a real concern for all of us, and ensuring information is safe and secure should be important for every business (hello health insurance provider who shall not be named!)
Any good business owner will ensure that their systems use two factor authentication, changes passwords regularly, has a policy around users within the system, and overall procedures around the protection of information.
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