The Greens are calling on the NSW Government to take immediate action on the pervasive use of third party rental services.
Greens MP and Housing Spokesperson Jenny Leong said:
“Renters need urgent protections from third party services who are preying on and profiting off the housing crisis.
“Reports today that third party rental services could be actively facilitating rent bidding, and contributing to the soaring cost of rent, are deeply disturbing.
“And we know from the countless stories from renters in our community that these third party services regularly try to sell additional, and unnecessary, services like background checks to profit off renters desperation.
“Alarm bells should be ringing that these third party services have an immense amount of power, and an immense amount of personal information.
“Too often renters are given no choice but to hand over huge amounts of personal information, dating back years, to these services just to be considered for a rental property.
“Renting in NSW is stressful enough, without the added - and very legitimate – fears around personal information that recent high profile data breaches have exposed.
“The NSW Government needs to step in and take immediate action to review, regulate and provide much needed oversight to the pervasive use of third party rental services.
“We need to ban rent bidding, stop intrusive rental applications, and massively strengthen renters' data protections.”
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