Tenant screening is the single highest-leverage thing a landlord controls. A great tenant is invisible, pays on time, looks after the property, and renews. A bad tenant costs more in two months than a year of rent increases delivers. The good news: most of the screening signals are findable in the application if you know what to look for.

What you can legally check

Under the Privacy Act and state Equal Opportunity / Anti-Discrimination Acts, you can verify:

  • Income (payslips, employer reference)
  • Rental history (previous agent / landlord references)
  • Identity (100-point check)
  • Credit history (with applicant consent)
  • Tenancy database listings (TICA, NTD, TRA)

What you cannot do:

  • Refuse based on family status (kids), source of income (welfare, single parent payment), national origin, race, religion, age (with limited exceptions), gender, sexual orientation.
  • Ask questions designed to elicit those protected attributes.

The line is not always intuitive. "How many people will be living in the property?" is fine (legitimate occupancy question). "Are you planning to have children?" is not. "What is your employment?" is fine. "Are you currently receiving Centrelink?" is illegal in most states (source of income is protected).

How to read a TICA report

The Tenant Information Centre of Australia (TICA) is the largest of the three tenancy databases. A listing on TICA does not automatically mean a bad tenant , context matters.

Lookups will show:

  • Default listings: unpaid rent or bond, terminated lease, abandoned property. These are serious and should prompt direct conversation with the applicant.
  • Court / NCAT-VCAT-QCAT listings: an order against the tenant. Investigate the underlying reason.
  • Inquiry listings: previous landlords or agents who searched the applicant. Common, neutral.

A single listing on a 5-year tenancy history with a 3-year good record since: usually fine, especially if the applicant volunteers context. Multiple recent listings or unexplained gaps: walk away.

Reference calls that actually surface signal

The standard reference question "was the rent paid on time?" gets you a "yes" that means nothing. The two questions that surface real signal:

To previous Portfolio Manager: "Would you re-lease to this tenant?" If the answer is anything other than an immediate "absolutely", probe.

To employer: "How long have they been in the role and is the role expected to continue?" Tenure and job stability matter more than salary.

Application red flags

  • Inconsistent employment dates between resume / payslips / application form.
  • No formal lease history (always lived with family, always with friends). Not disqualifying, but ask for character references and consider a guarantor.
  • Applying urgently for a property significantly above their budget. Often signals they've been refused elsewhere and need to commit before checks come back.
  • Pushback on the bond. The standard NSW/VIC bond is 4 weeks rent. Reluctance to lodge it is a leading indicator.

Application green flags

  • Multi-year tenure at current rental address with a single Portfolio Manager.
  • Steady employment 18+ months.
  • Clear, complete application returned within 24 hours.
  • References who answer the phone on the first call and remember the tenant by name.

Where the discrimination line actually catches people

The two patterns NCAT / VCAT have ruled against in recent landlord-tenant cases:
1. "No pets, no children" advertising language. The pets part is fine post-2025-26 reforms (with the right caveats), but "no children" is direct family-status discrimination and has been ruled against.
2. Refusing applications from a particular postcode or suburb. If you have a pattern of refusing applicants from postcodes that correlate with a protected attribute, that's indirect discrimination.

The protection: use the same documented checklist for every applicant. Document why you accepted or declined each one. The defence in discrimination cases is "we applied identical criteria, here is the paper trail".

Why this is hard to do well as a DIY landlord

You can run a TICA check ($24). You can call references. You can audit applications.

What you can't easily do is:

  • Cross-check 8 applications in 48 hours under time pressure
  • Maintain the documentation discipline that protects you in a NCAT discrimination claim
  • Spot the patterns that come from screening hundreds of applications a year

That's the case for professional management , not that you can't do it, but that the time cost and risk cost together usually exceed the management fee. We screen 80-120 applications a week across the BPG portfolio. If you'd like to talk through a specific tenant question or get a second opinion on an application you're considering, that's a five-minute conversation we're happy to have.