Rental crisis drives surge in inspection outsourcing demand

Daily Telegraph

4 days ago

There has been growing demand in outsourcing rental inspections with prospective tenants hoping to combat the strain of Australia's rental crisis.
As more tenants are feeling the pressure to secure a home, they are turning to alternative methods to assist with the process.
One platform tenants have been turning to is Airtasker, where requests for rental inspection tasks in June rose by 166 per cent annually.
Airtasker CEO Tim Fung said the rise may be the result of more tenants struggling to find places to live.
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'It's become so hard to get a rental property, the demand for these properties is really high,' Mr Fung said.
'If you don't move quickly, you risk missing out and people are getting smart with how can I jump on top of these opportunities faster than before?'
The price for outsourcing rental inspections varies from $40 to, at the upper, about $200.
The platform allows users to post a task in minutes, describing what they need done, when and where with taskers coming back to posters with a price offer.
Tenants Union of NSW CEO Leo Patterson Ross said there are a couple of factors that jump out regarding outsourcing rental inspections, starting with the volume of potential inspections combined with time pressures.
'There might be multiple homes on at the same time and when you have a short time frame to find a new place, you are trying to get to as many of the viable ones as possible and put in applications for as many as possible,' he said.
'For other people, it's also about having someone else check over it can help find issues like someone who has a background in cleaning, property management even and they might spot issues that an individual might not think to look for, there is some level of additional service.
'There is a third group of people who are just out of town, they might be moving to a new city so it's not worth it to continue travelling back and forward to visit places on a property that might not pan out.'
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Mr Patterson Ross said there are some risks. 'This isn't a regulated industry and you don't have any quality control really of the people doing inspections for you,' he said.
'Some people offering it might have some expertise you feel is worth paying for, others might not, and might not give you the information that you do want or have the ability to check.
'If it's just having a body attend then that might not actually add any value to the process of finding a place.'
Mr Patterson Ross said there is also a risk of conflict of interest arising over time with relationships between those completing inspections within the industry without certain license and regulation around them.
This also impacts the ability to get to know an agent.
'There's quite a lot of relationship within the process of application, where we know if an agent takes a shine to you, they might help you with other applications, with getting a head start on an application or getting to inspect a place that isn't being advertised and so on,' he said.
Mr Patterson Ross said outsourcing was also not a practical option for all.
'Generally, we don't really want to continue down this path where renters with more resources and capacity to pay have an easier time finding a home, this is fundamentally a need that everybody has,' he said.
'We should make sure that everyone is able to find and get into a home relatively easily so this kind of arms race that people are feeling more and more pressure to beat up the rent or hire someone to represent them and get a foot in the door – it's an indication that the rental sector is not performing well at its job of actually finding people homes.'
Mr Fung explained that those using Airtasker could choose people based on their reviews and ratings systems, which would users find people they could trust.