Privacy policy.

BY THE HOME OWNER LTD, trading as ByHomeOwner, is the data controller for the personal data described here. It is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (registration reference ZB206713). If you have a question about this policy, or you want to exercise a right set out below, contact us through our contact page.

• Account data — name, email address, telephone number, password credentials, account type and settings.
• Identity verification data — the identity document you present, a selfie or short liveness capture, and the result of the check. The check itself is carried out by our identity verification provider, Veriff. We receive and keep the outcome, a provider reference, timestamps, the policy version, the document type and issuing country, and whether a name and date of birth were read from the document (not the name or date of birth themselves). We do not keep copies of your identity documents, selfies or face data.
• Property authority evidence — the documents you upload to show you may market a property, and the reviewer's decision. These are stored privately and each time one is opened it is recorded.
• Listing and enquiry data — listing content, saved searches, messages you send and receive, viewing requests and offers.
• Payment data — where you buy an optional paid service, our payment processor handles your card details; we receive a record of the transaction, not your card number.
• Technical data — IP address, device and browser information, and pages visited, used to keep the service secure and working.
• Text you give our AI tools — for example a search typed in your own words, or listing details when you ask us to draft a description.

• To provide the marketplace — account, listings, search, messaging and alerts. Basis: performance of our contract with you.
• To verify identity and authority to market a property — required before a listing goes live. Basis: our legitimate interest in preventing property fraud and protecting other users, and our contract with you. Where the identity check involves biometric processing for face matching, we rely on your explicit consent, which we ask for and record before the check starts. You may withdraw it, although we cannot publish a listing or room without a completed check.
• To prevent fraud, abuse and money laundering and to keep records of decisions. Basis: legitimate interests and legal obligations.
• To send service messages such as enquiry notifications and verification reminders. Basis: contract. Marketing emails are sent only with your consent, and every one has an unsubscribe link.
• To run AI features you choose to use — turning a typed search into filters, or drafting listing text. The text you enter is sent to an AI model provider to produce the result. Basis: performance of our contract with you.
• To improve the service using aggregated, non-identifying analysis. Basis: legitimate interests.

• Other users, to the extent you choose — a published listing and the messages you send are visible to the people they are addressed to. We do not publish a private owner's, buyer's or renter's telephone number or email address on a public page. Agents and service partners may choose to show their business contact details on their profiles.
• ByHomeOwner Support staff — messages may be reviewed for safety and dispute handling, for example when a chat is reported. Each time staff open a chat it is recorded with who opened it, when and why.
• Our identity verification provider, Veriff, which performs the document and face checks on our behalf. We send Veriff a reference to your account; you give your document and selfie to Veriff directly in its check screen.
• Service partners you ask to contact you — where you request quotes, we pass your enquiry to a maximum of three businesses, and only after you have agreed to that specific disclosure.
• Suppliers who run the platform for us — Lovable Cloud for website hosting, database, file storage, email delivery and error reporting; Stripe for payments; an AI model provider (Google's Gemini models, reached through Lovable's AI service) for the AI features above; and map providers — OpenStreetMap for map tiles and Google Maps for embedded maps and Street View — which receive your IP address and the area being shown when a map loads.
• Authorities, where the law requires it, or to investigate suspected fraud.

We do not sell your personal data.

Our main database and file storage are hosted in the European Economic Area (Sweden). Pages are delivered through a global network, and some suppliers — for example payments, maps and AI — may process data outside the UK. Where personal data is transferred outside the UK, we rely on UK adequacy regulations or the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses. Data is encrypted in transit.

We keep personal data no longer than necessary for the purposes described in this policy, including keeping records of verification decisions and payments where the law or fraud prevention requires it. You can ask us to delete your data at any time using the rights below.

You can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, or transfer it to another provider. You can withdraw consent at any time, including for marketing and for biometric identity checks. We respond within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk), though we would like the chance to put it right first.

Access to verification data is restricted to the small number of staff who need it. Verification decisions are recorded, each time staff open an ownership document or a member's chat it is logged, and data is encrypted in transit. No system is perfectly secure, so we also keep incident procedures and will notify you and the regulator where the law requires.

The service is not intended for anyone under 18 and we do not knowingly collect their data.

Cookies and similar technologies are explained in our Cookie Policy. We will update this policy as the service changes and will tell account holders about material changes. See also our Terms of Use.