Outrage over banned rental act on Gumtree
Online marketplace Gumtree has backed down following a rental property fail on its website that was in breach of NSW tenancy laws.
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Online marketplace Gumtree has backed down following a rental property fail on its website that was in breach of NSW tenancy laws.
Gumtree rental listings had previously allowed house hunters to bid for rental properties on its website, but the practice was called out by the Tenants’ Union of NSW, which said it was in breach of NSW anti-rent bidding laws.
The Tenants’ Union of NSW lodged a complaint with Fair Trading NSW last August about the ‘make an offer’ function on Gumtree’s website, which appeared alongside all of its listings, Tenants’ Union CEO Leo Patterson Ross told the ABC.
It has been illegal for real estate agents to solicit or encourage rent bidding – which is when househunters offer more than the asking price to secure a rental property – in NSW since December 2022.
In August last year, the NSW government extended the laws to cover landlords and third-party platforms such as Gumtree.
However, it remains legal for prospective tenants to offer to pay an amount higher than the advertised price, and for landlords or real estate agents to accept higher offers.
Mr Patterson Ross said that Gumtree is “not really built for real estate and so every single listing has an offer system and they’ve never bothered to change it and it doesn’t appear, at least from the outside, that Fair Trading has been able to stop them”.
However, it appears the function has now been removed from Gumtree’s rental listings after Gumtree chief product officer Coen Horrevoets made a commitment earlier this week to remove the ‘make an offer’ function from its rental listings.
“Gumtree is visited by millions of Australians each month where our ‘make an offer’ function appears across multiple categories throughout our classifieds without it being specifically designed for rental properties,” Mr Horrevoets said.
He confirmed that Gumtree had not received any notification from the NSW government to remove the feature.
Mr Patterson Ross said that tenants offering higher rents and rent bidding remained common in NSW as tenants compete fiercely in what is a tight rental market, with stock in Sydney at a record low.
“It happens both illegally under the current laws, and legally where the tenants are offering the money above [the advertised price],” he said.
But the NSW government has ruled out a ban on prospective tenants making unsolicited bids on rentals, with claims it would lead to an increase in overall rental prices.
“If we move to say that there’s only one price advertised and that’s the only price that’s taken, what will happen is that property owners will actually then list a price that’s substantially higher than what the normal price would actually be,” NSW Fair Trading Minister Anoulack Chanthivong said.
“So in one sense, we are normalising and embedding a premium on what the real true fair market price would actually be.”
Originally published as Outrage over banned rental act on Gumtree
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