Snug's mission is to help renters with secure, stable and affordable housing. We believe in better renting, and everyday our team works towards improving the rental market.
Snug started its journey transforming tedious paper applications into an easier online rental application solution to help renters find and secure their home faster. Renters can now create a personal profile on Snug and gather their rental references from current and past property managers to share with prospective incoming property managers. Renters are in total control as they can remove references or delete their profiles completely at any time.
Snug is a private rental reference platform. Snug is not a public blacklist tenancy database to which agents can subscribe. We firmly believe that Snug's rental references have brought increased transparency and efficiency to fair and fast referencing, benefitting both renters and agents.
Snug greatly regrets the circumstances which led to Mr Ghandi’s complaint to the ACT Tribunal.
Unfortunately, because Snug was not represented at the hearing, the Tribunal did not have all the facts. In particular, the Tribunal was not aware that tenants can delete references and their online profile at any time, or that Snug’s Customer Support had told the parties how to remove the incorrect reference. We believe this information may have led to a different outcome, but we have decided not to contest the Tribunal’s findings and will pay the compensation ordered to Mr Ghandi.
In our quest to make renting easier Snug always strives to learn from our mistakes. We do acknowledge that we could have done more to assist Mr Ghandi by taking down the incorrect reference. So we have changed our processes and trained our staff to remove incorrect or disputed references (where the dispute is substantiated) on request. We are adding more content to the platform to further improve our support for renters and property managers.
We also acknowledge that the reference question concerned was unclear. We took the question down immediately and will improve the wording in line with the Tribunal’s suggestions. We are comprehensively reviewing all our reference questions to ensure that they are clear and balanced, to avoid misleading or retaliatory responses.
To provide further protection for renters, we will separate rental references from other parts of their profiles and will automatically delete tenancy information from our platform after 3 years.
Since our launch in 2017, Snug has built significant trust within the rental community due to our transparency, accountability and responsiveness to stakeholders. Over 74,000* property managers and self managing owners have completed rental references and numerous positive testimonials from renters and property managers alike around the ease and speed of Snug rental applications demonstrate the significance of our contribution to better renting. Snug will continue working tirelessly towards our shared vision to provide every renter in Australia with a place they can call home.
For more information, please contact:
Founder & CEO, Justin Butterworth
* Based on Snug data of unique agencies processing references, enquiries or applications, year to 31 Dec 2023.