Privacy policy

This website is operated by [brokerage legal name], a brokerage registered under the Trust in Real Estate Services Act, 2002 in Ontario, and by [salesperson name], a registered salesperson with that brokerage. In this policy, “we” means the brokerage.

Questions about this policy, or about the personal information we hold about you, can be sent to our privacy contact at [email address] or [mailing address].

When you create an account: your name, email address, telephone number, and an encrypted form of your password. Providing a telephone number is required because the terms of the brokerage’s Virtual Office Website agreement with the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board require us to identify registered users before showing them sold price information.

When you request a home valuation: the property address you enter, its basic characteristics, and your name, email address and telephone number.

When you contact us about a property: your name, email address, telephone number, the property concerned, any message you write, and any preferred viewing date.

When you save a search: the search criteria you saved, linked to your account.

Automatically: standard web analytics through Google Analytics, including pages viewed, approximate location derived from IP address, device and browser type, and how you arrived at the site. Cookies are used for this, to keep you signed in, and to count how many homes you have opened — see the next section.

We also record the exact wording of the consent you were shown, the method by which you gave it, and the date and time — so that we can demonstrate compliance with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation.

What we record. The searches you run — the city, neighbourhood, price range, number of bedrooms and property type you asked for, and how many homes matched; the listing pages you open; when sold prices are shown to you; valuation requests; and how long each page is actually visible on your screen.

What we do not record. Where you move the map, how far down a page you scroll, anything you type into a field but do not submit, and anything at all about what you do on other websites.

If you have an account, these records are linked to you. That is their purpose: knowing that you have been looking at three-bedroom semis in one neighbourhood means we can be useful when you get in touch, instead of starting from nothing. Your agent can see this alongside your other dealings with us.

How we tell one browser from another. We place a cookie on your device holding a random identifier. It exists so we can count how many homes have been opened from this browser, because a limited number are free each month before we ask you to register. The identifier says nothing about who you are, we do not share it, and it is not used to follow you anywhere else on the internet.

Before you have an account, what you do is counted against that browser, not against you. We do not know who you are and we do not try to find out.

If you register, we will ask whether to add your earlier browsing to your account. We ask because you would not expect us to do it silently. If you say yes, the homes you looked at on that device before registering become part of your account and your agent can see them; if you say no, or simply never answer, they stay unlinked and are deleted on the schedule below. You can change your mind afterwards and have that earlier history erased at any time, from the preferences page in your account.

We honour your browser’s privacy signal. If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, we record none of this.

To provide the services you asked for: showing you listings and sold data, producing valuation estimates, sending search alerts you requested, and responding to your enquiries.

To meet our obligations to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board under the brokerage’s data agreements, which require registered users to be identifiable.

To contact you about real estate services, where you have consented to that. You may withdraw that consent at any time.

To understand how the site is used, so we can improve it, and to understand what you are looking for so that the homes we show you and the advice we give you are relevant to it.

We do not use your information for any purpose incompatible with those, and we do not sell it.

We share personal information only with service providers who process it on our behalf, under contract, and only as needed to run the site: our hosting and database providers, our email delivery provider, our mapping provider, and our analytics provider.

We may also disclose information where required by law, by RECO, or by the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board under the terms of our data agreements, and to our insurers or legal advisors where necessary.

Where a service provider stores or processes information outside Canada, that information may be subject to the laws of the country concerned, including lawful access by its authorities. Our database is hosted in Canada.

Browsing from a device that never registers is kept for 6 months, then deleted. That includes the device identifier itself. Six months is long enough that someone who spends a season looking before making an account still gets the benefit of it, and short enough that we are not holding browsing indefinitely on people who never asked us for anything.

Once records are linked to your account, they are kept for 24 months and then deleted. Twenty-four months because that is the length of a real house hunt with room to spare — people often look for a year or more before they move — and there is no reason for us to hold it longer than it is useful to you.

Before those records are deleted they are reduced to monthly totals — how many searches were run for two-bedroom condominiums in Leslieville in a given month, for instance. Those totals contain no names, no accounts and nothing that can be traced back to any person, and we keep them indefinitely, because they are what show us how the local market is moving. Totals covering very few people are not displayed to anyone, so that an individual cannot be identified from them.

We keep lead and enquiry records for [retention period] from your last interaction with us, and account records for as long as your account remains open plus [retention period]. Records we are required to retain under real estate legislation are kept for the period that legislation requires.

Information is stored in an access-controlled database with row-level security, transmitted over encrypted connections, and accessible only to the salesperson and brokerage personnel who need it. Passwords are stored in hashed form and are never visible to us.

You may ask us what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it if it is inaccurate, or ask us to delete your account and associated records. Write to [email address] and we will respond within 30 days, as PIPEDA requires.

You may withdraw consent to marketing contact at any time, by using the unsubscribe link in any message we send or by writing to us. Withdrawing consent does not affect messages we are required to send about a transaction you are party to.

If you ask us to delete your account, the record of what you did on the site is deleted along with it.

If you agreed to add your pre-registration browsing to your account, you may withdraw that at any time from the preferences page. Doing so deletes that earlier history; what you have done since, while signed in, is unaffected.

You may decline analytics cookies through your browser settings, and you can stop us recording how you use the site by turning on Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track in your browser.

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your information, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of this page, and where the change is significant we will notify registered users by email.