Rent apps, payment fees and tenant data: the Queensland tenancy rules

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Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

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Renting a home in Queensland has become a largely digital experience. The listing is online, the application is uploaded through a portal, the rent leaves the tenant's account through a payment platform, maintenance is requested in an app and the routine inspection produces a folder of photographs. Each of those steps can be more convenient than the paper version. Each can also carry a fee, or collect far more information than the tenancy needs.

Between June 2024 and May 2025, the Queensland Parliament's rental reforms took effect in stages, and several of them were aimed directly at these points. Tenancy law now says that a tenant must have a way to pay rent that costs nothing beyond ordinary bank charges. It says an applicant cannot be forced to apply through a platform, limits the documents that can be requested, and names information that cannot be requested at all. And it sets fixed deadlines for destroying what was collected.

The rules sit in the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008 and are administered by the Residential Tenancies Authority (RTA). They bind lessors and their agents, not software companies as such, which has consequences explored below. This guide takes the tenancy in order: applying, paying, and what happens to the data.

Source: Residential Tenancies Authority guidance on the rules in force from 30 September 2024 and 1 May 2025.

Three dates that changed rental technology

The reforms arrived in stages, and the stage decides which rule applies to which agreement.

The RTA uses the term "managing party" for whoever runs the tenancy from the owner's side: the lessor personally, or the agent or property manager acting for the lessor. The duties described in this guide fall on that person. Where an agency uses a platform supplied by a technology company, the agency remains the one answerable to the RTA for how the platform behaves towards the tenant.

Applying for a rental: the standard form

Since 1 May 2025, according to the RTA, an application for a residential tenancy must be completed on a standardised form: Form 22 for general tenancies and moveable dwellings, and Form R22 for rooming accommodation. A managing party may no longer design a longer form of its own, and an online application process has to reproduce the standard form's questions, not add to them. The RTA notes one exception to the form requirement, for the category of government and community housing providers the Act calls relevant lessors, in respect of general tenancy agreements.

The supporting documents an applicant can be asked for are grouped into three categories: documents that verify identity, documents that show the applicant's financial ability to pay the rent, and documents that go to the applicant's suitability as a tenant. No more than two documents may be requested in each category. An applicant is free to offer more, and the RTA says a managing party may accept additional documents so long as they have not been requested, encouraged or solicited. An online form with a third "upload" slot marked as optional sits uneasily with that wording, and the safer design is one that asks for two.

Some information is off limits altogether. The RTA lists four things a managing party must not request: details of legal action taken by the applicant, including matters before the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal; notices to remedy a breach given to the applicant; the applicant's rental bond history or claims; and credit statements or bank transaction details. Income can be evidenced without a line-by-line account of how a person spends it, and the rule draws exactly that line.

Platforms cannot be the only door

The reform that most directly concerns rental application platforms is the rule on how an application may be submitted. The RTA states that a managing party must provide at least two different methods for applicants to submit their applications, and that one of them must not be restrictive.

A restrictive method, as the RTA explains it, includes one that requires the applicant to submit through an online platform or to a third party who is not a real estate agent, and one that causes the applicant to incur a cost, such as an application fee or a background check fee. The law does not prohibit platforms. An agency may go on using one, and many applicants will prefer it. What the law requires is an alternative for the applicant who does not want to create an account with a third party or pay for a report: for instance, returning the completed form to the agency by email or in person.

The RTA's article on compliance, published in July 2025, gives the maximum penalty for failing to provide at least two submission methods as 20 penalty units, and the same maximum for using an application form that does not comply.

Checking identity without keeping the document

Identity documents are the most sensitive item in an application, because a copied licence or passport is what a fraudster needs most. The Queensland rules give the applicant a choice. The applicant may provide copies of identity documents, or may instead allow the managing party to sight the originals in person.

Where the originals are sighted, the RTA says the managing party is prohibited from keeping a copy or recording the details of the document without the applicant's consent. Its compliance article adds the practical detail: a property manager may take notes at the sighting, limited to information reasonably necessary for assessing the applicant's suitability, but taking a photocopy, a scan or a photograph requires consent. Keeping identity copies without consent carries a maximum of 20 penalty units.

For platforms, the point is that an upload of identity documents cannot be the only route. An applicant who would prefer to show a licence across a counter has a statutory right to do so.

Advertised rent and the end of the bidding field

The first of the three dates, 6 June 2024, removed a feature that some application forms and platforms had carried: a box inviting the applicant to state how much rent they were prepared to pay. Under the amended Act, a rental property must be advertised or offered at a fixed amount, a managing party must not invite or solicit an offer of rent above that amount, and must not accept one if it is volunteered. The same reforms stopped the practice of taking more rent in advance than the Act allows, even when an applicant offers it to strengthen an application.

Tenants Queensland, the statewide tenant advice service, sets out the rent in advance limits in its fact sheet on rent: no more than two weeks for a periodic general tenancy, no more than one month for a fixed-term general tenancy, and no more than two weeks for rooming accommodation. The same fact sheet records that rent may not be increased more often than once every 12 months, a rule that predates the bidding ban and applies however the rent is collected.

Paying rent: two methods, one without added fees

Rent payment was the other area where technology had introduced costs. Before the reform, some tenants found that the only method offered was a payment platform or a branded rent card that charged a fee on each transaction, so that paying the rent on time cost more than the rent.

From 30 September 2024, the RTA says, a managing party must provide a tenant with at least two rent payment options. One of them must not incur more than standard transaction costs and must be reasonably available to the tenant. The Act's list of approved ways to pay is long standing: cash, cheque, deposit to an account nominated by the lessor, credit card, an EFTPOS system, deduction from pay or a pension or benefit, and any other way the parties agree.

Everything turns on what counts as a standard transaction cost. The RTA's explanation is that bank fees or other account fees usually payable for transactions, such as fees for direct debits, are standard. Fees charged to a tenant by an online rent payment platform provider are not. So if a platform charges the tenant, the RTA says, the managing party must also offer another method that does not incur fees beyond the usual bank costs. A direct transfer to the agency's trust account from the tenant's own bank is the most common example of a method that meets the test.

The second condition, that the fee-free method be "reasonably available", is assessed case by case. The RTA gives two illustrations: whether paying in cash is reasonably available depends on how far the tenant is from the place where cash is accepted, and whether internet banking is reasonably available depends on the tenant's access to a reliable internet connection and a device. A fee-free method that exists on paper but that the particular tenant cannot realistically use does not satisfy the rule.

The scale of what the rule addresses is easy to illustrate. As a worked example with assumed figures: a platform fee of $1.50 on each weekly payment comes to $78 over 52 weeks. The amount is small beside the rent, but it is a charge for meeting an obligation the tenant already has, and the reform's answer is that a tenant must be able to avoid it.

Being told the costs, and changing the method

A choice between methods is only useful if the tenant knows what each one costs. The RTA states that a managing party must provide written notice about the fees or costs associated with the rent payment methods. Tenants Queensland describes the same duty for agreements that began after 30 September 2024, saying the tenant must be advised in writing of any costs associated with paying rent, and notes that a failure to do so can attract a fine. The RTA's podcast on the reforms also refers to further disclosure requirements that began on 1 May 2025.

The method of payment is recorded in the tenancy agreement, and it can be changed during the tenancy in two ways described by the RTA. The parties may change it by mutual agreement, confirmed in writing. Or a change may be sought without agreement, in which case the managing party must offer two alternatives within 14 days. Tenants Queensland adds that when the managing party is the one offering a change, the offer must again include at least two alternatives, one of them free of added cost. The tenant cannot simply be moved onto a new platform because the agency has changed its software.

Tenants Queensland summarises the position on apps in one line: a tenant is not obliged to use a third-party payment platform unless it causes the tenant no added cost and is reasonably available.

Receipts and the rent record

A digital payment leaves a trail, but the law does not rely on that. Tenants Queensland's fact sheet sets out the record-keeping duties: a receipt must be given immediately for rent paid in cash; for rent paid by cheque, a receipt must be given within three business days if the tenant asks; and for other methods, the tenant is entitled to a record of payments within seven days of asking.

That last entitlement is the one that matters with platforms. A tenant who pays through an app sees a list of transactions the platform chooses to display, and it may show the date the payment was initiated and not the date it reached the trust account. The statutory rent record is the managing party's record, and it is the one that counts if a dispute arises about whether rent was late. Where the two differ because of processing time, the question of when rent was "paid" can become a real one, and the RTA's free dispute resolution service is the first place such disagreements go.

How tenant information must be handled

The reforms of 1 May 2025 added something Queensland tenancy law had never had: rules on the life of the data.

The RTA's guidance defines personal information broadly, as information or an opinion about a specific person or someone who can reasonably be identified, and says expressly that it includes photographs showing a person's possessions or standard of living. Information gathered in the application process may be collected only for the purpose of assessing the applicant's suitability as a tenant and for managing the rental property. It must be stored securely, and it may be accessed only by authorised persons.

Then come the deadlines. For applicants who do not become tenants, the RTA says, personal information collected during the application process must be destroyed within three months of the start of the successful tenant's agreement. For the tenant, personal information collected for the purpose of managing the premises must be destroyed within seven years of the agreement ending. The RTA notes that the seven-year requirement applies only to tenancy agreements that were active on, or began after, 1 May 2025.

The three-month rule is the demanding one in practice. A popular listing may draw dozens of applications, each with identity and income documents, and all but one must be gone within three months of the tenancy starting. An applicant who applies for several properties through the same agency or platform may reasonably wonder whether the file follows them. The purpose rule answers that: information collected to assess one application is held for that purpose, and reuse for a later application depends on what the applicant has agreed to.

"Destroyed" also has to mean destroyed. A file deleted from an agency's screen but retained in a platform's archive or backups has not obviously met the requirement, and since the duty falls on the managing party, the terms on which its software provider stores and deletes data are part of the managing party's own compliance.

Where the Privacy Act adds to the tenancy rules

The Queensland rules are not the only ones. The Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 applies to organisations with an annual turnover above $3 million and, according to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, to certain smaller businesses whatever their turnover, including those that trade in personal information and operators of residential tenancy databases.

That matters for the technology layer. A small agency may fall outside the Privacy Act, yet the rental application platform it uses, or the tenancy database it checks, is likely to be inside it, with duties to secure information, to use it only for the purpose of collection or a permitted related purpose, to give access on request, and to notify serious data breaches. For a tenant, this means two possible routes: the RTA for a breach of the tenancy Act by the managing party, and the federal privacy regulator for a breach of the privacy principles by a covered organisation.

Since 1 July 2026, anti-money-laundering obligations have applied to real estate agents who broker sales. Those duties attach to sales and purchases, not to residential letting, so they do not change what may be asked of a rental applicant.

Who enforces the rules

The RTA is both the adviser and the enforcer. It publishes the forms and fact sheets, runs a free dispute resolution service, and investigates and may prosecute offences against the tenancy Act. Its compliance article of July 2025 was written to walk property managers through the requirements described here.

A tenant or applicant who believes a rule has been broken can raise it with the managing party in writing, then seek the RTA's dispute resolution, and may report a suspected offence to the RTA for investigation. Claims for money, such as a refund of fees wrongly charged, go to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal if they are not resolved.

The reforms do not ban the rent app or the application portal. They make each one optional for the tenant, and they put a date on the data.

Seen together, the three stages follow one idea. Technology may make renting easier for both sides, but the cost of the convenience, in money or in personal information, is not to be passed to the person with the least power to refuse it.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →