I'm sure it differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction around the world, but the application processes are categorically insane. Feed all of your personal information, very very personal information, into this form with this provider that will keep it on file and definitely do nothing else with it for X years, or you can't have anywhere to live. It wasn't even so bad when there was only one provider so at least you didn't have to repeat this with multiple different platforms, but the last time I was in the rental market every different agency had their own platform.

I'm sure if you called you could still manage to do an old-fashioned style form, but not only is that a huge inconvenience, I'd be very worried that agencies would just ignore it if the property was popular and had good competition.