This was published 5 months ago
Opinion
I thought the online rental application would be a doddle. It wasn’t
Jo Stubbings
Writer and reviewerI’ve always enjoyed real estate. Attending auctions to watch live drama for free, checking out McMansions, dreaming about tiny attics with French windows and ivy. I even had a Saturday morning job in property management once, until the agency boss discovered me filing my nails over a condition report.
So when my cousin asked me to help fill out an application form for a unit she wanted to rent, I was up for it. Should be a doddle. It wasn’t.
Rent tech apps are selling themselves as the ideal way for tenants to find the shoebox of their dreams.Credit: Peter Rae
Applying to be a tenant today is harder than reinstating the Barry Award (God bless him). Not only due to lack of supply – radio news bulletins are hourly reminders are the Greek chorus to this tragedy – but because the paper form has gone digital. And when things go digital and haven’t been tested properly on human beings, it is, what the French call, “une salade”.
There’s a number of rent tech apps on the market selling themselves as the ideal way for tenants to find the shoebox of their dreams, and for agents and owners to manage them. These include 2Apply, Kolmeo, Ignite, tApp and Snug. Kolmeo’s target market is surely pre-pubescents with website headings like “Kolmeo makes ‘adulting’ fun”.
But there’s nothing fun about it. I can’t speak for all rent tech platforms but 2Apply, at least, appears to have only the real estate agents’ wellbeing at heart.
Spruiking itself to property managers, it promises “peace of mind” by finding the right tenants through Equifax’s “industry-leading National Tenancy Database”. And it’s the tenants who foot the bill for their own background check. This costs around $30 and, in the words of the app, helps your application “stand out from the pack!” Translation: if you don’t fork out, you don’t stand a chance.
This, and other failings, has Choice calling on government to reform privacy protection for tenants – or “renters” in new real-estate speak.
In theory, creating just one tenancy application form online is eminently sensible. It saves you having to repeat your own good details for every new real estate agency you come across in your property search.
In practice, the process is intrusive, baffling and time-consuming.
Gavin the goldfish: “Swims in circles when not lying on back.”
For starters, the 2Apply application is divided into nine sections, or rather, chapters, of your life about which you must cough up some pretty curious facts. I’m thinking about the section marked “Pets” in particular. “Tell us some more information about your family pets,” it says in bad English and, I sense, with a sharkish smile.
As a lover of dogs, cats, birds or “others”, you’re then invited to give the name, type, breed, size and age of your hairy/scaly beloved. We dutifully key in Lucky, dog, mongrel, small, 17. Then we add pet number two to the form – Gavin, goldfish, small. Age? Rather not say.
As if this isn’t enough, we’re asked to attach a photo and write a short description of each pet. For Lucky, we settle on “sleeps a lot” to allay the owner’s fears of a compulsive skirting-board scratcher. For Gavin, it’s “swims in circles when not lying on back”.
Perhaps most galling is the obligation to provide at least two years’ employment history – when you’ve been retired for years and know full well that your former employers have either gone to God or are sunbaking on a remote island, sipping piña coladas and remembering zilch about the past – and you.
And here’s the thing. There is no “grey” in this rental software. Only green and red. You must fill in every box – encouraging the telling of porkies – so you achieve an endorphin-boosting green tick of approval. If you fail to do so, and write a note explaining that the employment section doesn’t fit your situation as a long-time retiree, you’ll be tagged with the red exclamation mark of shame.
The creators of this software seem to believe that no one over 55 rents properties. Otherwise, they’d never have created such user unfriendliness or, worse, gaslighting glitches. My cousin and I thought we were going mad when we entered and saved her date of birth at least 10 times. At least 10 times the form wiped this fact from the face of the earth. “Maybe I was never born,” Jen concluded.
It took us an intense three hours to tick all the boxes and gather, photograph and upload supporting documents. (BTW did you know that your driver licence has a licence number on the front of the card AND a “card number” on the back in 6 pt?). During this awful time, when I wanted to swear and scream and punch holes in walls, I restricted myself to “FRRUIT!” should my cousin feel badly.
We emailed the thing off. Three times. It bounced back three times and crashed the computer.
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