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Staff Reporter
Property managers that work in ethnically-diverse areas may benefit from a series of new translations of a Real Estate Institute of Australia (REIA) tenancy fact sheet.
The REIA, in partnership with the Department of Immigration & Citizenship (DIAC), has translated the ‘REIA Consumer Fact Sheet – Renting a Property – Tenant’ into the top ten new and emerging community languages, namely:
Arabic, Hazaragi (Dari), Farsi (Persian), Mandarin (Chinese), Karen (Myanmar), Hakha-Chin (Bangladesh, Myanmar, India), Tamil (Sri Lank, India), Kurdish, Nepali and Dinka (Southern Sudan)
REIA president Pamela Bennett said the new translations come at a time when tight vacancy rates have spurred competition in the private rental market, “which poses particular challenges for new Australians with little or no English”.
The pilot initiative extends free telephone interpreting services to selected real estate agents around Australia and feedback shows the service has been successful in helping non-English speaking residents to communicate with real estate agents.
“Approximately 76 agencies nationwide have used the fee-free interpreting service, 227 times in total and interpreters have been used to facilitate phone calls between real estate agents and clients in more than 30 languages,” Ms Bennett said.
“There has been a strong uptake of the service, particularly in NSW, Victoria and QLD, where we’ve seen high settlement rates.”
The translated pages can be found by clicking here.
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