How to screen tenants
the right way.

Declining an applicant solely because they receive Centrelink, a housing voucher, disability support pension or other government income is potentially unlawful under the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 (WA) if it amounts to discrimination on the basis of a protected attribute such as disability, age or family status.

The question that matters is whether the applicant can afford the rent, not where the income comes from. Government income is stable, predictable and often more reliable than casual employment. Apply the same rent-to-income assessment you would to any other applicant and make your decision based on that calculation, not the income source.

Self-employed applicants should provide all of the following: a current ABN (verify at abn.business.gov.au), two years of ATO Notice of Assessment documents, three to six months of business bank statements showing consistent income, and an accountant's letter confirming their annual income or drawings.

Do not accept self-generated payslips as income verification. Call the accountant independently using a number from their own website to confirm the letter is genuine. Check the ABN registration date and make sure it is consistent with how long they claim to have been trading. An ABN registered recently for someone claiming years of income is a flag that needs a direct explanation.

You can ask an applicant to provide a National Police Certificate and many landlords do, particularly for share houses. There is no WA law that prohibits asking. Note that the certificate must be requested by the applicant themselves, you cannot obtain one about them directly.

A tenant can decline to provide one and their refusal alone cannot lawfully be the only basis for declining their application. If you act on a police check result, the same proportionality rules apply as with any other screening finding. You cannot rely on spent convictions under the Spent Convictions Act 1988 (WA), and a blanket policy of declining anyone with any criminal history risks indirect discrimination under the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 (WA).

Under the Spent Convictions Act 1988 (WA), certain older convictions are considered spent, in general terms after 10 years for adult offenders and 5 years for juvenile offenders, subject to conditions including the length of any sentence and whether further convictions occurred during the spent period.

An applicant with a spent conviction is not required to disclose it. If it appears on a police check, you cannot lawfully act on it as a basis for declining the application. Treating a spent conviction as grounds for refusal is unlawful. If you are unsure whether a particular finding is spent, seek legal advice before acting on it.

Yes, in several meaningful ways. Each room tenant needs to be screened individually against the full process, including their own income check and rental reference. The 35% rent-to-income guideline applies to each person's individual room rent contribution, not the total property rent.

Practical compatibility with existing tenants, sleep schedules, smoking, willingness to share common areas, is reasonable to discuss. What compatibility cannot mean is selection based on cultural background, language, religion or other protected attributes under the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 (WA).

Also note that renting 4 or more rooms to unrelated tenants in WA may require a lodging house licence under the Health (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1911. Check with your local council before operating at that scale.

Accessing eCourts is not a privacy breach, it is a public register. But how you use what you find matters. Under the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 (WA), indirect discrimination occurs when a screening criterion that appears neutral in practice disproportionately disadvantages people from a protected group including race, age, disability, family status, sexual orientation, gender history, breastfeeding and others.

Automatically declining any applicant with an eCourts listing, regardless of what it was for, how old it is or whether it was resolved, could in some circumstances constitute indirect discrimination if that blanket approach disproportionately excludes a protected group. The safer and more ethical approach is to assess each finding in context, document your reasoning, and be able to articulate why that specific result on those facts justified the decision you made.

Under WA tenancy law, you are not legally required to provide reasons in your written notification to the applicant. A simple notification that the application was unsuccessful is sufficient. You should not disclose what a reference said, what a database check revealed, or any other specific finding, referees share information in good faith and the people involved often remain in contact.

However, "no requirement to disclose" is not the same as "no requirement to justify." Under the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 (WA), you cannot decline on the basis of protected attributes including race, sex, age, disability, family status, sexual orientation, gender history, breastfeeding, religion and others. If a complaint is lodged with the Equal Opportunity Commission, you may be required to explain the decision. The protection is documented internal reasoning that demonstrates the decision was based on legitimate screening criteria, not the absence of communication.

Document your reasoning at the time of the decision, factually and specifically. Notify the applicant of the outcome in writing without disclosing the underlying detail. Those are two separate things and both matter.

The 35% guideline means that a tenant's weekly rent should not exceed 35% of their gross weekly income. Above this threshold, the tenant is considered financially stretched, meaning unexpected expenses or a small change in circumstances can quickly lead to rent arrears.

It is an industry benchmark, not a statutory requirement. Apply it as one factor among several, particularly for applicants with stable government income or non-traditional income patterns where rigid application could miss legitimate financial capacity.

To calculate it: weekly rent divided by gross weekly income. A $650 per week property and a $2,500 per week gross income gives 26%, comfortable. A $650 property and a $1,600 gross income gives 41%, high risk. The ratio should be calculated precisely, not estimated.

Checking publicly available social media as part of a screening process is generally considered acceptable in Australia, provided it is proportionate and relevant to the tenancy decision. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner notes that social media checks should be reasonable and not involve accessing private information.

In practice this means checking public profiles for obvious red flags or inconsistencies with the application, not attempting to access private content or accounts. Document any findings and how they informed your decision. As with any other screening criterion, applying it to some applicants and not others creates indirect discrimination risk.

Under the Residential Tenancies Act 1987 (WA), if you find personal information about a prospective tenant in a tenancy database, you must notify them in writing within 7 days. The notice must include the name of the database, the name of who made the listing (if available) and information about how they can have the listing removed or amended. Keep a copy of this notification for at least 12 months.

A listing does not automatically mean decline, consider when it was made, the reason, and whether it is satisfied. A listing from 8 years ago for a small resolved debt is very different from an active listing from last year.

Under the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2024 (WA), tenants have the right to request a pet. If you do not respond in writing within 14 days of receiving the request, consent is automatically granted. You can only refuse on approved grounds. All decisions, approval or refusal, must be in writing with documented reasons.

Build a 14-day response workflow into your process and treat every pet request as a time-sensitive item from the moment it arrives in writing.

TICA (Tenancy Information Centre Australasia) and NTD (National Tenancy Database) are two separate private tenancy databases used in Australia. They do not share data, a listing on one can be completely absent from the other. Running both significantly increases the likelihood of surfacing a relevant history.

Both databases can only list tenants for specific reasons under the Residential Tenancies Act 1987 (WA), and both require you to provide Form 18A to the applicant before you run any check.

Under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner expects personal information to be retained only for as long as necessary for the purpose it was collected. For unsuccessful tenancy applications this is typically 30 days from the decision, unless a complaint, dispute or legal matter is on foot, in which case retain until that is resolved.

After that period, securely destroy paper records and delete digital records, including email attachments and shared drive copies. Document your retention and destruction process. Successful applicants' information is retained for the duration of the tenancy and a reasonable period after, generally 7 years from the end of the tenancy, aligning with broader business record-keeping requirements.