Have you visited an apartment you are interested in renting? Are you a landlord interested in renting out an apartment? Collecting data from prospective tenants is permitted, provided that this information is appropriate for the purpose of selecting a suitable tenant according to objective criteria.
General data protection principles
Landlords who collect or process the personal data of prospective tenants must ensure that they comply with the general principles of data protection:
The landlord must act lawfully, i.e. any processing of personal data must comply with the applicable law. Data collection is deemed to be unlawful if it clearly violates legal norms, such as the provisions of the Criminal Code (obtaining data by threat, trickery or violence) or tenancy law.
The landlord must act in good faith. This means the data subject should be able to recognise what data is being collected and for what purposes. Collecting information from third parties without the knowledge of the prospective tenant violates the principle of good faith.
The landlord must act for a specific purpose, i.e. the data may only be collected for purposes recognisable to the data subject and must be further processed in a manner compatible with those purposes.
The landlord must act proportionally, i.e. must only collect and process data that are objectively necessary to achieve the purpose, while safeguarding the rights of the data subjects as far as possible. The landlord may thus only request personal data that are directly relevant to the conclusion of or compliance with the lease and whose disclosure does not unnecessarily (or excessively) violate the privacy of the data subjects.
Collecting data from prospective tenants
The collection of data by landlord from persons interested in entering into a lease should enable the landlord to select a suitable tenant according to objective criteria. Normally the landlord obtains this information through a form that prospective tenants complete after visiting the property.
For example, the landlord must be able to assess whether the prospective tenant can pay the rent; this requires information on the tenant’s financial circumstances. The data processing must meet an actual need, not a theoretical or relatively remote one. However, these data may not be kept for any longer than is required. Once a lease has been signed with the selected tenant, the landlord must destroy the application forms from the other applicants, unless he has specific justification (e.g. if the applicants have agreed to be placed on a waiting list for accommodation).
More detailed information can be found on our website in German, French or Italian in the pdf file ‘Guidelines on application forms for renting an apartment’ at the bottom of the web page. There you can find the categories of data that the landlord can require from prospective tenants and explain what questions are permitted.
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