Correspondence etiquette

What is the rule for disclosing contact details of the landlord to the tenant and vice versa. Frequently when I’m corresponding with the agent on things, they just forward my email without filtering out the contact details to the tenants and vice versa.

The tenant shouldn’t be contacting me directly however by exposing my details, they would know how to. Doesn’t this create a problem?

 

Depends upon your instructions to the agent but read their privacy policy which may have something along the lines of "....we will disclose xyz to our business partners etc in the course of undertaking our duties..."

 

Very poor form by the agent.

All my leases are done like this to protect the Landlord and control how and to who notices (correspondence and communication) may be issued etc:

 

How can you enter a contract with an unknown party?

 

(The Lessor's name is the bit blanked out in the above example) as for contact details, that is C/- the agent of course.

 

Oh I see. You just blacked it out for the forum.
That would be the way to do it

 

I dont see anything in the agreement that states what is done. But i thought it there would have been a standard practice amongst the property management world how to take care of this.

I had a friend who had the tenant show up at their front door to demand XYZ. Not sure how they got the address but from the loosely protected emails I see flying around by my agent, I'm not surprised how they got hold of it.

My contract itself with the tenant doesn't show any of my details except my name - which i think is the correct way of doing it. My previous agent had all my details on the form, at that time, i was new to the investment property world and didn't know any better to question the fact.

 

perhaps the best thing to do is to assume the agent will breach your privacy so don't give them your home address, main email, etc. Mobile should be pretty safe though.

 

Section 48 of the Act (SA's one, each states is different) specifies we have to provide the tenant with the owner's name and a method of contact. Cant be c/o agency.

However, would still delete it off if had to forward an email. Probably prefer to avoid just forwarding an email though and start fresh with my own words.

 

I would never just forward an email from an owner to a tenant, or from a tenant to an owner.

 

Thats what I thought would happen. But in reality, there are lazy people out there.

 

We are here to create a medium between the tenant and owner, so it's generally poor form to facilitate contact between them, but it's not breaking any rules to do so. Plenty of agents include the tenants details on the lease and forget to remove email addresses from correspondence.

@D.T. you're specifically required to supply direct contact details!? That's frustrating.

 

Yes, but i can only think of one occasion where a tenant utilised the details and complained about an answer i had given (and owner backed me up of course).