Rent squeeze spawns scams: Tenants warned to be aware of red flags in market
As the State’s rental market undergoes a squeeze amid soaring prices and lack of properties, renters are being warned to be alert to scams designed to take advantage of those desperate to secure a roof over their heads.
In the past year, the Residential Tenancies Authority, received more than 420,000 calls and conciliated more than 21,000 disputes.
RTA chief executive officer, Jennifer Smith, says that rental scams are circulating at the moment and people in the market need to be aware of red flags.
Speaking to InQueensland, Smith said while the scams did not appear so far to be widespread, people looking for properties to rent need to be aware.
She said one scam involved people being asked to pay their bond upfront in order to get ahead of the queue.
In other examples, properties are advertised that are not actually available for rent by people who are not agents or landlords.
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Smith urged prospective renters to do their homework, look up the agency and call it and to use the RTA’s online median rents quick finder rather than rushing in to pay exorbitant rental prices or paying up front when a rent appears exceptionally low.
Smith said people need to be aware of scams.
“I don’t think they are widespread but be sensitive to the fact that they can be around at this point in time.”
Smith said that rental prices in some coastal regions had increased more than 10 per cent due to supply and demand factors.
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She said the RTA was also taking a lot of calls from people, anxious about their rights to continue living in a rental property.
And Smith said that modelling showed a predicted increase in the future number of calls for help from the RTA.
“There is a lot of anxiety in the market, particularly for tenants who are concerned about staying in the home and want to know what to do to secure their tenancy. They are wanting to do everything right to make sure their tenancy can’t be ended,” Smith said.
She said people were enquiring about their rights and responsibilities and this was exacerbated by the uncertainty of the times.
In the financial year 2020-21, the RTA took 423,221 calls from people, including 7071 to the COVID-19 hotline. This was slightly down on the previous year’s 426,615 total calls but the number of COVID-19 hotline calls was 30,786 in 2019-20, the first year of the pandemic.
And in the past year, the RTA conciliated 21,163 disputes compared to 19,882 the previous year.
The number of Covid-19 related disputes which were conciliated went from 1791 in 2019-20 to 1080 in the last year.
In relation to conciliated disputes, Smith said that in about 70 per cent of cases both parties were satisfied with the result.
Smith said Queensland was the only state which enabled renters to conciliate their disputes via a three-way phone conference, rather than the more costly option of going to a tribunal hearing.
“Call us, it could be the difference between you staying in your property or not,” Smith said of her advice to tenants involved in a dispute.
She said that more than one in three Queenslanders rent.
