Tenancy and real estate

The real estate industry handles a lot of personal information: real estate agents may work with names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, income levels and places of employment of their clients on a daily basis.

Your personal information is likely to be handled by real estate agents when you:

• apply to rent a property
• are put on a tenancy database
• sell or buy a property.

Real estate agents covered by the Privacy Act 1988 must comply with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). The APPs tell organisations how they may collect, use, disclose and secure personal information.

The APPs also give you a right to access information the agent holds about you and correct it if it is wrong.

Note: the use of ‘real estate agent’ includes property managers.