A couple of weeks ago we received a press release from a company called Equifax who are a data analysis company that specialises in credit checks, among other things.

Those “other things” include being asked by the NSW state government to establish its proposed ratings system for apartment developers which is, we probably all agree, a good thing.

The main thrust of the press release was that Equifax’s National Tenancy Database (NTD) could do a lot of the tenant checks that rental agents currently do “manually” i.e. calling up your references, employers and previous landlords or agents.

But it goes further than that. Their checks would include tenants’ credit ratings, criminal records, company directorships, bankruptcies and even, it seems at first glance, whether or not they have taken their landlords or their owners corporations to a state tribunal with any kind of claim.

Since we recorded the podcast, Equifax have assured as that they only mentioned tenants rights and claims as an example of how the burden on rental agents has increased - something they claim would be reduced by using their database.

They have no plans to include tenants' assertion of their rights on the National Tenancy Database reports.

We have to take them at their word but the information on claims against landlords and owners' corporations is out there, on the record somewhere, so it's an area worth watching

In any case, if you’re a property investor, you may think this is a good thing.  But we are pretty uneasy about how data mining could play out for tenants who, after all, make up half the residents of strata schemes in Australia.

By the way, we’re still digging and this will be the topic of an upcoming column in the AFR.

Elsewhere on the pod, we discuss why developers have been pushing hard to have some of the hard-won and well-thought-out environmentally responsible planning controls scrapped.

As is always the way these days, no sooner had we talked about it than the government asked “how high?” when the developers said “jump!”

We also look at why apartment purchasers are drifting back to lifestyle developments, rather than low-cost, no-frills blocks.

And we discover a point of NSW strata law that seems to mean that if your owners corp loses a case against you at the tribunal, they can’t pay their expenses out of the admin fund but instead have to raise a special levy from all the other owners except you.

That’s all in this week’s podcast.

TRANSCRIPT IN FULL

Jimmy  00:00

We've got a stack of stuff to get through today... A new process for assessing tenants, a thing about how your owners corporation can't charge you for what it costs them to take you to NCAT. You've got a couple of stories as well?

Sue  00:14

Yes, about new proposed planning laws, and how developers are really arching up against those, and also, how apartments with lots of facilities are suddenly back in fashion again.

Jimmy  00:36

Right. I'm Jimmy Thomson. I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review.

Sue  00:41

And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain.

Jimmy  00:44

And this is the Flat Chat Wrap.

[MUSIC]

Sue  00:59

So, what's this new scheme about landlords, trying to check up on tenants?

Jimmy  01:03

Okay, so this arrives (as so many press releases do these days), as a survey of property managers. It's quite interesting. They say that property managers are being overworked, unnecessarily.

Sue  01:17

What's a property manager, is that a strata manager or building manager?

Jimmy  01:20

No, it's an agent, a rental agent.

Sue  01:23

Oh, I see.

Jimmy  01:25

So, property rental agents are being overworked, because of the pandemic, partly; because of tenant's loss of income and impacting their ability to make rental payments. A higher volume of tenancy applications, compared to properties available for rent.

Sue  01:44

Yes,