Rant: Landlords and your data. | GTAMotorcycle.com

Rant: Landlords and your data.

monkeyfarm

monkeyfarm

Well-known member
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All offence intended, where applicable.

I am helping my younger sister fill out a rental application form and she needs a guarantor. My mom is retired so she doesn't qualify and I'm next in line (why she didn't ask our dad is out of the scope of this rant). They are asking for a treasure-trove of data, all legal, according to all the sources I've checked. That being said, I have some objections+questions ... objestions?

They are asking for my letter of employment, paystubs, and T4 ... my letter of employment contains my hourly rate and pay schedule, can't they do the math? What the heck is the rest of that info collected for? I have rented before, paystubs was it. You can reach out to the CRA if you want my T4, they can contact me for my consent. It'll be a "no".

They are looking for a co-signer or a guarantor, but the forms only list applicant. I'm nitpicking because I'm frustrated, but shouldn't the form explicitly state co-signer or guarantor? I'm not the one living at the friggin' place.

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Lastly, after they collect all of my data, what's my guarantee that some bumblef**k somewhere isn't goin to either sell my data or accidentally leak it. No one likes to be on the receiving end of identity theft, and no, I don't trust some random property management company to safely store and manage my data. I asked them for data retention and storage and encryption information. If it's legal for them to ask all of this qualifying information of me, I should be able to ask for some qualifying information of my own. The fair price of doing business.

Rant over.
 
monkeyfarm said:
All offence intended, where applicable.

I am helping my younger sister fill out a rental application form and she needs a guarantor. My mom is retired so she doesn't qualify and I'm next in line (why she didn't ask our dad is out of the scope of this rant). They are asking for a treasure-trove of data, all legal, according to all the sources I've checked. That being said, I have some objections+questions ... objestions?

They are asking for my letter of employment, paystubs, and T4 ... my letter of employment contains my hourly rate and pay schedule, can't they do the math? What the heck is the rest of that info collected for? I have rented before, paystubs was it. You can reach out to the CRA if you want my T4, they can contact me for my consent. It'll be a "no".

They are looking for a co-signer or a guarantor, but the forms only list applicant. I'm nitpicking because I'm frustrated, but shouldn't the form explicitly state co-signer or guarantor? I'm not the one living at the friggin' place.

View attachment 56918

Lastly, after they collect all of my data, what's my guarantee that some bumblef**k somewhere isn't goin to either sell my data or accidentally leak it. No one likes to be on the receiving end of identity theft, and no, I don't trust some random property management company to safely store and manage my data. I asked them for data retention and storage and encryption information. If it's legal for them to ask all of this qualifying information of me, I should be able to ask for some qualifying information of my own. The fair price of doing business.

Rant over.
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Letter of employment and paystubs are a combo that will highlight fraud, T4 will show that you were able to work the amount indicated on the former for at least 1 running year.

Co-applicant is the term used to attach you as a guarantor - it means you are as responsible for each monthly rent payment as her and they don't need to go after her first. Landlords will chase down whomever they feel is the quickest and cheapest way to recover debt - you or her.
 
Plenty of the REIT's ask for all sorts of things that in my opinion make little sense.

Most of the private apartment buildings ask for a lot less in my experience and are actually easier to deal with.

Got a problem? A REIT will act like they need to "budget" the expense and try pushing it to never. You need to get the LTB involved for even small things. Private places get it done and move on.
 
jc100 said:
You could ask the landlord if they have read the documents contained in this Privacy Guide for Businesses - Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

However, you (actually your sister) aren’t in a real bargaining position here. She wants something from them so they could just turn around and say “no problem, we’ll offer the place to the next applicant”.
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At which point I can ask for a written reason for the denial and see what they come back with. All of which does not help my sister and ultimately makes this whole experience needlessly difficult, I know, I know...

I understand the need for landlords to cover their butts, I feel like I should be able to do the same. Of course, cue the inevitable "if you don't like it, rent somewhere else", which feels a bit like a bs hollow statement. Why? Ethics and respect should go both ways.
 
jc100 said:
You could ask the landlord if they have read the documents contained in this Privacy Guide for Businesses - Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada

However, you (actually your sister) aren’t in a real bargaining position here. She wants something from them so they could just turn around and say “no problem, we’ll offer the place to the next applicant”.
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I don't think PIPEDA restricts much when the application is credit related.

Landlording isn't a fun game -- they are bilked a lot by nice applicants who turn out to be really unsavory characters.
 
Mad Mike said:
I don't think PIPEDA restricts much when the application is credit related.

Landlording isn't a fun game -- they are bilked a lot by nice applicants who turn out to be really unsavory characters.
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It wouldn't restrict it, but it would govern the storage and disclosure of that information.

Being a tenant is no better, seems to be a two way street. Dealing with a landlord who requested we paint over the poor patch job from the previous tenant, before he returns our "key deposit". Or the building administrator who denied, and then lied about, the cockroach problem. Our current landlord is useless, and I'm glad that's as bad as it is. I can fix a basement water pipe leak, or a mold problem, a garage door that jumped the track, etc...
 
Sister was moving out of her two bedroom on Birchmount near Lawrence. $300 per month, subsidized and we made less than the maximum. When we went, the lot was full of high end cars. Landlord eventually said she was moving her son in instead. Apparently, a doctor of philosophy doing a post doc, wasn't equivalent to a doctor of medicine doing an internship, in her mind.

On the other hand:
 
Dimitri said:
If it was anything more then like $50 it's not legal to take a deposit. Might want to look into it.
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It was $500 because they were "special keys with a special key fob", and you're not wrong. When we went to the LTB, they outlined the process required to make a formal complaint. It was a drawn out process and the lawyer who counseled us advised we could lose because of the "special keys and key fob" in our agreement. We had already signed a new lease at our current place so I just bought a 1L can of white pain and went over the spots I could see, until the paint ran out.
 
Lawyer is an idiot. LTB would rule during the preliminary that painting, hell maintenance to a unit of any kind, can't be used to hold back the deposit.

Only used the LTB myself once. And that conversation between them and my ex-landloard lasted a whole 8 minutes on a 3 way call. Yes they ruled in my favor and agreed my landlord had to pay my $40 application fee.
 
Baggsy said:
Sister was moving out of her two bedroom on Birchmount near Lawrence. $300 per month, subsidized and we made less than the maximum. When we went, the lot was full of high end cars. Landlord eventually said she was moving her son in instead. Apparently, a doctor of philosophy doing a post doc, wasn't equivalent to a doctor of medicine doing an internship, in her mind.

On the other hand:
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I'm sorry to hear...

Yeah that's just ****, I've heard of other landlords also getting pushed into such a position because the costs of taking it to court would have been too high. I especially love (sarcasm) his tenant's bit about getting on his knees and swearing on his children's lives that he would pay up, but then not paying for 3 years. What are the odds of recovering anything from a broke tenant though. Jail doesn't solve the issue either, landlord is still out a ridiculous amount. I don't really have an answer here.
 
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Dimitri said:
That's illegal.
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Black and white, the landlord clearly never ran the agreement past a lawyer or anything

Edit: Or did they did initially, then they started freestyling on it with a pen lol
 
Mad Mike said:
Landlording isn't a fun game -- they are bilked a lot by nice applicants who turn out to be really unsavory characters.
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That's just it. Tenants playing the system. Owners running out of of options. Cash for keys not working in some situations these days - which should not exist in the first place.
I recently helped my retired mother get into a nicer rental unit. T4s/pay stubs/LOE/credit report/6 months upfront and over asking. I'm ok with it.
 
I have two different buddies who got completely screwed by scamming tenants, and both thought they'd done due diligence by checking employment references and pay stubs.

In the first case from a few years ago, landlord owned a townhouse in Oshawa, but ended up moving to BC for work. Rented to a family in the spring, everything seemed above board, called employer reference and got a pay stub, all good. Rent stopped being paid a few months in. After a couple of months of broken promises (yes, naive), it becomes clear they won't pay. Serves eviction notice, which is ignored. Has to apply for the sheriff to evict, more time. Gets approval for sheriff, but adjudicator delays eviction date because it's winter. All told, almost eight months without seeing a penny. Shows up with sheriff, tenants are gone, but townhouse is trashed and a dumpster's worth of garbage is left behind. All told, damage is in excess of $20k, plus ~$16k in lost rent.

More recently, a co-worker bought a house in Hamilton as a rental unit. Rented it in 2019, seemingly to decent tenants. Sometime into early Covid days of 2020, rent starts arriving late. Then stops. Notice to evict is delivered, but ignored. Tries to escalate to get sheriff, but everything is closed due to Covid. Still hasn't had a hearing, but it's scheduled soon. Has spoken with neighbours who were convinced the rental was a halfway house due to all the coming and going. Spoke to police due to concerns about drug dealing being done from the house, and basically gets told to pound sand in a polite way. Will be almost two years without rent by the time it's said and done, and Lord knows what damage has been done.

So with the rental market as competitive as it is, I'm not surprised landlords are asking for first-born children in the application. They can, and there's enough nightmare tenants out there, along with a painfully slow resolution process, that they're going to ask for too much rather than not enough every time...
 
Yeah buddy is renting out a house in Barrie, tenant didn't pay for 6 months. About to rule on eviction and he paid, then promptly stopped again.

He's now filing for removal to move a family member into the property.

Poor chap. If he didn't have cheap rent and a good job he'd be screwed.
 
Everything sucks. Renting sucks. Landlords suck, but I understand their position.

@monkeyfarm just make sure (if you're cosigning) that your lil sis is moving somewhere the landlord isn't ******. Also that the place isn't a scam of course lol. I've seen some too-good-to-be-trues listed on kijiji that are obviously scams to get info.
 
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