Landlords should not be at ease in light of recent reports characterising the Auckland rental market as being under significant demand pressure. Your applicant base expanding does not make it easier for
you to find your next tenant. In fact, it should mean quite the opposite. Now is as good a time as any for all landlords and letting agents
to review your vetting process and to reassure yourself that it will lead you to the most meritious tenant at each and every turn.
There are, of course, several elements to vetting a tenant-applicant and we have covered some of there here,
here and here.
APIA will continue to facilitate the appropriate content to support landlords through this process, but for today, I want to talk a bit about
carrying out a credit check and handling private information lawfully.
What prompted this article? Late last week, an APIA member requested some technical support to carry out a credit check. He engages a letting
agency that (quelle horreur!) does not carry out a credit check before recommending a tenant-applicant to its landlord-client
and understandably wanted to run a check himself before accepting the agency’s recommendation. A particular question on the credit check form
prompted a review of the entire tenancy application itself upon which it was discovered that the form had not sought any permission for landlords to
carry out a credit check on any applicants. The support process terminated then, and no credit report was generated in that instance.
Some learnings from these events warrant pointing out for all landlords:
1. Collection
The Privacy Act allows you to collect personal information of your tenants for a lawful...
