Rental agents demand bank access from prospective tenants, drawing privacy complaints
Rental agents across the Netherlands are increasingly demanding sensitive financial information from prospective tenants, sometimes even before allowing them to view a property, according to multiple reports and warnings from the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, or AP).
Applicants are often asked to submit payslips and bank statements, but in some cases, rental agents now require a direct bank link, allowing them to access income and expense data via third-party apps. The AP has received 50 complaints about these practices so far this year and says the number is growing.
“If you request a lot of sensitive personal information, there must be a valid reason,” AP vice chair Monique Verdier told NOS. “But the reports we receive often show that agents don’t have clear reasons for asking, and they don’t communicate any justification to applicants.”
According to housing advocacy group Woonbond, the line is being crossed when data is requested before a property is even offered. “In practice, we see agents asking far in advance for detailed income information,” said senior housing advocate Marcel Trip.
The AP's website states that rental agents may request bank statements and payslips to assess whether a potential tenant can afford the rent. But several agents are pushing those boundaries.
Britt Orchard, of Verra Makelaars in Rotterdam, confirmed that bank link requests are used to prevent fraud. “It still happens that people forge bank statements or payslips,” she told NOS. “But we only ask for a bank link after someone has viewed a property and expressed interest—not before.”
Orchard claimed that agents cannot view a prospective tenant’s transaction history directly. “We only receive a report from the app people use to share their data,” she said, though she admitted she was unsure what specific bank data might be accessible. The NOS contacted the app developers for clarification but received no response.
Hanna Sadiqi, who spent two years looking for a rental home in Amsterdam, described how three different agents required her to set up a bank link via a data-sharing app just to access rental listings or receive viewing invitations.
“If I didn’t provide the link, I couldn’t respond to a property or get invited to view it,” she told NOS. Now that her search is over, Sadiqi has decided not to agree to such demands again. “It didn’t feel right. I don’t know who has access to my data. In the end, I found a place through an agent who didn’t ask for a bank link.”
But refusing to share this information can significantly reduce a prospective tenant’s chances, according to Orchard. “We’re getting more responses per property than ever. The person who submits all the required documents has the best chance of being selected.”
Trip warned that many tenants comply out of fear. “Tenants might have serious concerns about sharing so much personal information and about how secure the databases are. But due to the housing shortage, they feel pressured to agree anyway,” Trip told NOS.
Verdier of the AP noted that the current imbalance of power between landlords and tenants is dangerous. “The fact that more people are responding to fewer available rentals does not justify collecting excessive information. There must be other ways to manage tenant selection without requiring so much in advance.”
One of the companies that required a bank link before allowing any interaction with listings was Bouwinvest, one of the agents Sadiqi registered with. When contacted by NOS, Bouwinvest stated it had since changed its process.
“In response to earlier feedback, we reviewed our rental process,” the company said in a statement to NOS. “We now request data in stages, aligned with relevant points in the rental process. This prevents asking for sensitive information too early from people who may not even be eligible. We’ve also shortened our data retention period.”
