Our Response to Legislation Changes in Queensland

As communicated earlier this month, the Queensland Government have made changes to rental laws, some of which were put into effect from May 1st, 2025.

It is vital that our Queensland clients take note of the changes below, which we encourage you to explore in your own time. While we have made every effort to ensure you are compliant with the new legislation, it is ultimately your business’ responsibility to ensure that your processes align with your agency’s own interpretation of the law.

To read about the legislation changes in more detail, you can follow this link to the RTA website.

Live Walkthrough + Q&A Webinar

To help you understand what’s changed and how to make the most of the updated fields and settings, we’re hosting a live walkthrough of the new form and workflow. You’ll see exactly what’s different and how it aligns with the new legal requirements.

We’ll also be running a live Q&A session during the event, so you can ask questions and get the clarity you need directly from our team.

Don’t miss this opportunity to get up to speed and feel confident using the updated 2Apply form. If you can’t make it, register anyway and we’ll send you the recording.

Date: Tuesday 3rd June, 2025

Time: 2pm AEST

Register Now

Important Changes to References

We are continuing to make adjustments to the References section of your form in order to align with new Queensland legislation. As such, please note that automatic reference requests will be temporarily unavailable from the 28th of May, 2025 for a period of time.

We are working diligently to complete this work as soon as possible, with the guidance of the RTA, and we will notify you once this work is completed. In the mean time, all reference checks, whether employment or personal, must be requested manually by you

In the current state of your 2Apply form, it is mandatory for your applicants to provide contact details for their employer. However, once the above work is completed, these fields will be optional. I.e., an applicant can choose whether or not to provide the contact details of their employer.

Please note that this change applies to the References section only, and you can still request information such as the applicant’s employment company, dates of employment and income in the Financials section.

Updated Changes to 2Apply & InspectRealEstate before May 30th, 2025

We have been working directly with the RTA to further improve your 2Apply form to further aid in compliance with the new legislation. With their recommendations, we have implemented the following changes:

Link to standardised application form:

  • You will soon be able to upload your own own copy of the standardised application form.
  • A link to this form will be made available to applicants on the first page after opening an application link.
  • There will also be a setting to remove this link if required, which will be found in Settings > Applications > 2Apply > General > Standardised Tenancy Application Form.

Living history:

  • This section will soon be renamed ‘Rental History’.
  • There will no longer be a requirement to enter a minimum number of years worth of rental history.
  • The ‘Type of Ownership’ field will be renamed ‘Contact’.
    • Only 2 options will be displayed in this dropdown: Property Manager OR Owner.
  • The available fields will be limited to:
    • Address
    • Contact first name
    • Contact last name
    • Contact email address
    • Contact mobile
    • Contact phone
    • Date started living here
    • Date finished living here

Financials:

  • The question ‘Are you currently retired?’ will be removed.
  • After adding an employment item, only the following fields will be visible:
    • Occupation
    • Company name
    • Start date
    • End date (or the ‘I’m still in this role’ tick box)
    • Gross income (new field)
    • Take-home income amount
  • All requests for employer contact details will be removed.
  • The question ‘Is this a self employment?’ will be removed.
  • All requests for accountant and solicitor details will be removed.

Pets:

  • Pet terms and conditions will be removed.
  • An optional field will be added, called ‘additional information about pets’. As an example, an applicant may want to note the pet’s age, temperament, training, whether the pet is kept inside or outside, etc.

Other changes:

  • Along with requesting the number of occupants, we are adding a field to request the number of occupants under the age of 18.
  • The field requesting any special conditions will be removed.

Updated Changes to 2Apply & InspectRealEstate on May 7th, 2025

  • The number of applicants intended to reside at a property will now display for both the ‘Just Me’ AND ‘Other’ categories. 
  • Previously, we made the ‘About Me’ question optional. We’ve now improved the wording for compliance and added a setting that allows you to remove this question entirely from your form if you wish to do so. To update this setting, go to Settings > Applications > 2Apply > Field Visibility.
  • We’ve added a helpful note to the Identification Documents section of your 2Apply form, encouraging applicants to include at least one form of Photo ID, such as a passport or driver’s licence. We’ve updated the instructions to now say ‘include 2 documents’ instead of ‘include a minimum of 2 documents’ by removing the word ‘minimum’.
    • The Identification Documents section now includes the ImmiCard as a document type.
  • The pets section of your form now only asks for the number and type of pets intended to be kept at the premises; all other questions have been removed.
  • The updated Entry Notice (Form 9) has been implemented for all InspectRealEstate users, with the adjusted notice period for entry to a tenanted property (from 24 to 48 hours).
  • The vehicles section of your form has been updated to remove vehicle make and model, in addition to vehicle registration number which was removed previously

Overview of Changes to InspectRealEstate & 2Apply ahead of May 1st, 2025

Live in all systems by Thursday May 1st, 2025

RTA Standardised Tenancy Application Form

If you use 2Apply, your account will be configured to the best of our understanding to comply with the legislation changes, as prescribed by the RTA standardised tenancy application form (Form 22).

To meet the requirement of offering two application submission methods — one of which must not involve a third-party form provider — 2Apply will make the standardised tenancy application form available for all applicants at the start of the application process. This setting will be enabled by default. To access this Setting, go to Settings > Applications > 2Apply > General. Below is how this screen will look for applicants:

We also encourage you to consider where else you might make the standardised application form available to applicants, especially if you choose to disable the setting above. For your convenience, we will make Form 22 available in your Lettings Messages as an Email Attachment in the dropdown menu by May 1st.

You will need to manually attach the form by navigating to Messages > Lettings > Select a Message and choose Form 22 from the dropdown under the Email Attachments section and update your message accordingly. You may also consider adding a link to Form 22 in your listing descriptions on listing portals.

In line with the standardised form, you will find a number of changes to your 2Apply form, such as:

Removal/ disabling of the following fields:

  • Rent price editing
  • Dependant’s name and age
  • Gender
  • Being a smoker
  • Student status
  • Reason for leaving past rental property
  • Employment address
  • Vehicle registration number
  • Emergency contacts

Removal of mandatory status for all pet-related questions, aside from the number and type of pets intended to be kept at the premises.

The ‘Agent Questions’ tab will no longer be available to you when customising your 2Apply form, as these questions are not part of the new standardised tenancy application form.

Employment history:

While applicants will still be able to add multiple current employments, only current employment information will be requested. A section of the application form will remain for applicants to add additional income (e.g. Centrelink payments) or indicate whether they are paying rent by other means (e.g. savings).

Adjustments to documents & categories:

Approved document categories will include the following:

  • Identification documents;
  • Financial documents;
  • General documents.

Applicants will be required to submit two (2) documents in each of the Identification and Financial document categories, with the option to add more should the applicant wish to do so. There will be no mandatory requirements for General documents.

Collection & storage of personal information

2Apply proactively made changes to its Data Retention Policy in late 2024 to align with state legislation Australia-wide, and is therefore already compliant with the Queensland-specific legislation around data privacy and deletion timeframes. These are as follows:

Unsuccessful applications:

  • All data from unsuccessful applications will be deleted 60 days after submission.
  • This includes all documents submitted and information entered during the application process.

Successful applications:

  • All data from successful applications will be deleted 3 years after submission.
    • This includes all documents and information entered during the application process.

Data retention for reporting:

  • Agents will still retain a record of the application submission for reporting purposes.
    • This record will only include the applicant’s name and some basic contact details.
    • No other data from the application will be stored.

Prospect data:

  • Data on prospects who enquired about a property will remain available.

Data Recovery:

  • We no longer facilitate data recovery requests
    • Users will need to download and store their data in another system, as IRE will no longer be used for historical application data storage outside of the timeframes stated above.

Recommended Actions for Approved Applications:

  • Approved applications should be saved into the agents’ trust accounting software.
    • This is necessary for maintaining records for insurance purposes.

Rules of entry

We are aware that the Entry Notice (Form 9) has not yet been updated on the RTA website to reflect the requirement to give tenants 48-hours of notice prior to entry to a tenanted rental property. We will closely monitor for these changes, and will implement the new version of Form 9 for all InspectRealEstate users once released by the RTA.

We encourage you to check the Delay Times settings in your system in relation to your inspections. You can do this by heading to Settings > Letting > Delay Times.

Supporting your business

Should you have any questions or require assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact our Support team by initiating a Live Chat via the Support button at the top of your InspectRealEstate system between the hours of 8am and 6pm AEST, Monday to Friday.

We’d like to thank you and your business for your ongoing support of Reapit, InspectRealEstate and 2Apply – It is greatly appreciated!