Terms of Use

If you browse, create an account or otherwise access any content, data or services via the WelcomeMat.com.au platform (including its website, mobile site or apps), you agree to and are bound by these terms of use and our Privacy Policy.

These terms of use and our Privacy Policy form the basis on which you may access and use our website, including any subdomains of our website, mobile site, and apps (together called “our platform” in these terms of use).
We reserve the right to change any or all of our terms of use or other conditions for using our platform at any time by publishing the new terms or conditions on our website or otherwise making them available to you. Your ongoing use of our platform constitutes your acceptance of those terms. Should you object to any of our terms of use or other notices on our platform you may cease using our platform. Otherwise, any continued use of our platform will constitute your agreement to be bound by these terms of use and our Privacy Policy.
We do not warrant that content, links, or subdomains contained on, or associated with our website will be available and accessible to you at all times. We may change the path or location of a link or sub-domain, or redirect content contained within a link or subdomain on our website at any time without prior notice to you.
Information on our platform and in any WelcomeMat.com.au publication should not be regarded as a substitute for professional legal, financial or property advice.
WelcomeMat Holdings Pty Ltd (together with any related entities “WelcomeMat”) owns and operates our platform. We make no warranty as to the accuracy or reliability of the information contained therein and disclaim all liability and responsibility (to the extent permitted by law) for any direct or indirect loss or damage suffered by you or any other entity relying on anything contained in, or omitted from, our platform.

Restrictions on use of our platform

In accessing or using our platform you agree that you will not:

1. use any automated device, software, process or means to access, retrieve, scrape, or index our platform or any content on our platform;
2. use any device, software, process or means to interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of our platform;
3. undertake any action that will impose a burden or make excessive traffic demands on our infrastructure that we deem, in our sole discretion to be unreasonable or disproportionate site usage;
4. use or index any content or data on our platform for purposes of constructing or populating a searchable database of properties, building a database of property information or competing with us in any manner that we have not specifically authorised;
5. transmit spam, chain letters, contests, junk email, surveys, or other mass messaging, whether commercial in nature or not;
6. use our platform or any content from our platform in any manner which, in our reasonable view, is not acceptable or not for the purpose which the platform or content was made available;
7. violate the rights of any person, including copyright, trade secret, privacy right, or any other intellectual property or proprietary right;
8. pose as any person or entity or attempt to solicit money, passwords or personal information from any person or commit any fraudulent, illegal or tortious act;
9. act in violation of any of these terms of use or other condition posed by us or any applicable law;
10. reproduce, republish, retransmit, modify, adapt, distribute, translate, create derivative works or adaptations of, publicly display, sell, trade, or in any way exploit our platform or any content on our platform, except as expressly authorised by us;
11. transmit or attempt to transmit any computer viruses, worms, defects, Trojan horses or other items of a destructive, disruptive, fraudulent or illegal nature; or
12. otherwise use our platforms for any purpose that is unlawful.

We reserve the right to take legally permitted action which we reasonably believe is necessary to prevent unauthorised access to or use of our platform or any breach of the above restrictions, including, but not limited to, instituting technological barriers, or reporting your conduct to any person or entity.

Copyright

The subject matter on and accessible from our platform and any publications that we may publish is copyright owned by us and our licensors.

Third party links and advertising

Our platform may include advertisements and hyperlinks to websites operated by third parties. Those third party websites do not form part of our platform and are not under the control of or the responsibility of WelcomeMat. When you visit those websites you leave our platform and do so entirely at your own risk. WelcomeMat and its related entities make no warranty as to the accuracy or reliability of the information contained on any third party websites, and disclaim all liability and responsibility for any direct or indirect loss or damage which may be suffered by you through relying on anything contained on or omitted from such third party websites. The display of a third party website, content or other material does not imply an endorsement or recommendation of that third party by WelcomeMat.

Editorial content

Any editorial content or articles on our site are of a general nature only and do not consider your personal objectives, financial situation or particular needs. Editorial content should not be regarded as advice or relied upon by you or any other person and we recommend that you seek professional advice before acting on the content.

Application Information

In this section ‘Application Information’, means information in your WelcomeMat account including your personal information and rental property preferences together with any files, images, data, text, or other material that WelcomeMat has permitted you to store or upload on our platform when using the WelcomeMat platform.

You may set up a WelcomeMat account using our online registration process so we can notify you by email when properties are listed on our platform that may be of interest to you and so you can use our platform to submit an application to rent a particular rental property (a “Rental Application”) to a provider of affordable housing that has listed their rental property on our platform (an “Affordable Housing Provider”). We may also communicate with you from time to time using the email address in your Application Information regarding any Rental Application you may have submitted or to provide updates about our platform or to share our newsletters with you. It is your responsibility to ensure that your Application Information is accurate and kept up to date.

WelcomeMat may (acting reasonably) at any time, without liability to you, remove, alter or disable access to any or all of your Application Information in its sole discretion without prior notice to you. Without limiting the previous sentence, WelcomeMat may do so if WelcomeMat considers that the Application Information is:

1. in breach of any law or regulation;
2. misleading or deceptive;
3. not provided for the bona fide purpose of securing a rental property;
4. inappropriate having regard to the purpose of our website;
5. likely to cause offence;
6. materially incorrect;
7. obscene;
8. defamatory;
9. fraudulent or otherwise unlawful; or
10. corrupted, due to the presence of a virus or other disabling code.

You retain all of your ownership rights in your Application Information.
We will treat any Application Information that is personal information (within the meaning of the Privacy Act 1988) in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Tenant Rental Applications

You may submit a Rental Application through your WelcomeMat account to an Affordable Housing Provider in respect of a property listed on our platform by such Affordable Housing Provider.  You may submit a new Rental Application for each property you are interested in.

The Affordable Housing Provider will notify you via the WelcomeMat platform or by any other means it deems appropriate & if you have been shortlisted as a potential tenant for the relevant property or selected as the successful tenant. 

You acknowledge and agree that:

1. WelcomeMat does not own or control any Affordable Housing Properties;
2. you may only set up one WelcomeMat account on our platform for yourself and you must be over 18 years of age to submit a Rental Application to an Affordable Housing Provider;
3. you will only submit a Rental Application for yourself and not any third party, unless you have been expressly authorised to do so on behalf of that third party;
4. when we display affordable rental properties on our platform, we rely on the information provided to us by Affordable Housing Providers or other third parties, which we do not independently validate. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness or suitability of the affordable rental properties, their eligibility criteria or your eligibility, and you should self-evaluate all of these and the rental tenancy terms offered by the Affordable Housing Providers of the affordable rental properties for yourself;
5. your submission of a Rental Application does not guarantee that you will be considered by the Affordable Housing Provider as a potential tenant or that your Rental Application will be successful;
6. Affordable Housing Providers, or the property managers they may work with, may seek additional supporting information from you as part of your full tenancy application or otherwise, including seeking further evidence of your identity, income or tenancy history. It is up to you whether you would like to share any such information with them;
7. if your account has been dormant for an extended period of time, we will contact you by email to confirm that you wish to continue to be a registered user of our platform. If we do not receive a reply from you within 10 business days we reserve the right to close your WelcomeMat account;
8. all WelcomeMat features and products are subject to change, development and discontinuation.

Generous Owners

You acknowledge that and understand that any registration by you as a ‘Generous Owner’ on our platform is with the intention of wanting us to introduce you to an Affordable Housing Provider to manage your property. 

You also acknowledge that if an Affordable Housing Provider does manage your property following the introduction, WelcomeMat may receive a referral fee from the Affordable Housing Provider, and the property (when vacant) may be advertised as affordable rental housing on our platform.

We will treat the details of any ‘Generous Owner registration’ that is personal information (within the meaning of the Privacy Act 1988) in accordance with our Privacy Policy. 

Developers and Investors

You acknowledge that and understand that any registration by you as a ‘Developer’ or ‘Investor’ on our platform is with the intention of wanting us to:

1. introduce you to an Affordable Housing Provider to manage your property;
2. help find a purchaser for your property;
3. help you find a property to purchase; or
4. help you obtain advice on property developments. 

You also acknowledge that if we do refer you to a third party following your registration, WelcomeMat may receive a referral fee from the third party. 

We will treat the details of any such registration that is personal information (within the meaning of the Privacy Act 1988) in accordance with our Privacy Policy.  

Warranties

You represent and warrant that:

1. your use of our platform will comply at all times with these terms of use and any reasonable and lawful directions we make to you in relation to your use of our platform from time to time;
2. you will keep your username and password by which you access our platform confidential and secure at all times; and
3. you accept all liability for any unauthorised use of any username and password issued except for unauthorised use resulting from any act or omission for which WelcomeMat is found by a competent court to be negligent.

Indemnity

You agree to indemnify WelcomeMat and its affiliates (and their officers, agents, partners and employees) against any and all loss, liability, claim or demand, including reasonable legal fees arising out of, or in connection, with your breach of these terms of use.

Linking to our platform

If you link to our platform, it is on condition that you do not:

1. attribute a link to WelcomeMat content as being a link to your own or someone else’s content (for example, use your own logo to link to our content);
2. attribute a link to our site and then link somewhere else;
3. frame our content in such a way as to present it as your own or as belonging to anyone other than us or our licensors; or
4. unless prior consent has been obtained from WelcomeMat, link to our content as part of a website that aggregates property listings and/or information or competes with us in any manner.

We reserve the right to require that you do not link to our content and we may exercise this right by giving notice to you. We reserve complete discretion in relation to our exercise of this right, which may be due to the matters or circumstances above, or any other matter or circumstance we consider is reasonable.

Limitation of liability

Consumers are protected by the consumer guarantees contained in the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth), which cannot be excluded by law. These terms of use do not exclude those guarantees. To the extent permitted by law, our liability for breach of any consumer guarantee or any implied warranty or condition that cannot be excluded is restricted, at our option to:

1. the re-supply of services or payment of the cost of re-supply of services;
2. the replacement or repair of goods; or
3. the payment of the cost of replacement or repair.

We make no representations about the suitability of the information, products, and services posted or advertised on our platform or publications for any purpose. All such information, products and services are provided "as is" without any express or implied warranty. We disclaim all implied warranties and conditions with regard to the information, products, and services, posted on, or delivered in connection with, our platform and publications.

TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL WELCOMEMAT BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR ANY INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL LOSSES OR DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFIT, LOSS OF REVENUE, LOSS OF GOODWILL, LOSS OF CUSTOMERS, LOSS OF CAPITAL, DOWNTIME COSTS, LOSS OF OR DAMAGE TO REPUTATION, LOSS UNDER OR IN RELATION TO ANY OTHER CONTRACT, LOSS OF DATA, LOSS OF USE OF DATA, LOSS OF ANTICIPATED SAVINGS OR BENEFITS SUFFERED OR INCURRED BY OR AWARDED AGAINST YOU UNDER OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH THESE TERMS OF USE OR THE PLATFORM. NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY HEREIN, THE AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF WELCOMEMAT AND ITS RELATED ENTITIES TO YOU FOR ANY CAUSE OF ACTION WHATSOEVER AND REGARDLESS OF THE FORM OF THE ACTION, WILL AT ALL TIMES BE LIMITED TO $50.00.

Governing law

Your use of our platform, these terms of use, our Privacy Policy and all of our legal terms and notices will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of New South Wales, Australia, and by using our website you irrevocably and unconditionally submit to the jurisdiction of the courts of that State.