How digital ID could raise tenant trust

With property managers regularly seeing over 300 expressions of interest for a single apartment, gathering exhaustive amounts of information about prospective tenants has become the norm.

Tenants can be asked to provide private information including passports, marriage certificates, visas, social media accounts, medical records and employment contracts, leading to some commentators expressing wariness about the “alarming amount of personal data” renters must give up in order to secure a place to live.

In this context, data security is more important than ever before.

“As an industry, real estate and property management hasn’t seen much change over the past 50 years, especially regarding data and information privacy,” said Jeremy Goldschmidt, CEO of the self-service property management platform RentBetter.

“There’s an enormous amount of personal information that is shared, creating unnecessary risk, but also unnecessary friction in the rental experience felt by everyone across the sector.”

Recently, RentBetter made a major move towards amping up data security for prospective tenants by linking up with the digital identity verification service ConnectID.

ConnectID counts major big four banks among its existing clientele. One feature in ConnectID’s favour is that it allows users to verify their identity in real-time without the need for ConnectID to see or store the data.

Mr Goldschmidt said: “We’re in a time when Australian residents are being hit with a rental crisis, there have been numerous data breaches at large public companies, and consumers are generally quite alert to the risks of identity fraud.”

“The technology means we’re able to verify identity, but also reduce the duplication of sensitive information and consequently associated risk, all while creating a stronger, trusted experience for landlords and tenants.”

As well as increasing data security, RentBetter and ConnectID assert that the new integration will also reduce costs for property managers.

Andrew Black, managing director of ConnectID at AP+, explained that “the oversharing of sensitive data during the rental process is all too common, but storing and securing personal data can be costly, particularly for smaller agencies, and in the event of a breach, devastating.”

“That’s why digital ID is so exciting for the industry,” said Mr Black. “Not only can we start addressing these growing privacy and security challenges, it can be done in a way that helps raise tenant trust but also be a solution that businesses of any size can adopt.”