PRIVACY POLICY HOUSEGEKKO

Who we are

Housegekko is owned by Beyond BV, officially registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce as Beyond B.V., under No. 58595694. Throughout this document we will use our name for this site: Housegekko.

Housegekko is here to help you, our visitor, get closer to your dream home or support you in your work as a real-estate professional. Your privacy is of the utmost importance to us. As part of our service to you we have to use your personal data. A practical example of this is that you expect us to pass your request on to a real-estate agent or to email you about new properties on offer. At every stage of the process we handle your data with the utmost care. In this privacy policy we would like to explain to you – in as clear a language as possible – what we do, why and what it means to you.

First of all, we promise you that:

We are transparent about the way in which and purposes for which we use your personal data
We do not store your personal data for longer than we need it
We do not sell your personal information without your consent
We use appropriate techniques to protect your personal data
You have a great deal of control of your own personal data
We are accessible and available if you wish to communicate with us about your privacy at funda

In this document, we use a number of terms that we would like to clarify in advance:

Housegekko platform: the whole of housegekko.com
Object: a residential or commercial property for sale or to let
Object data: items such as photos, address details, floor plans and other characteristics of an object

Who is covered by this privacy policy?

At Housegekko we treat our visitors – and therefore their personal data – with care. We want to enable you as a visitor to find, modify and use your personal data in the way that suits you best, always keeping our privacy promise. Would you like to know more about privacy at Housegekko? We have listed everything for you below. This policy applies to all personal data obtained about you as a result visiting and/or using our services on the funda platform, regardless of whether you are a potential buyer, tenant, seller, landlord or otherwise visiting Housegekko.

For what purpose does Housegekko use personal data?

What personal data does Housegekko use?

Housegekko uses the following personal data:

Personal information with which you create an account, such as an email address and password
Personal data with which you optionally enrich your account, such as name and gender
Personal data that facilitates your search, such as the objects you store and the comments you store with an object
Personal data that you provide in order for us to provide you with a service, such as your new address with our change-of-address service, contact requests that we forward to the real-estate agent, a review of your real-estate agent on funda or the financial data needed for our paid services
Automatically generated personal data, such as IP addresses, browser data and search behaviour
Feedback data, such as personal data that you fill in on feedback forms relating to our platform or personal data that you provide to us via the "Report an error" option
Customer contact information, such as emails you send to funda
Object data, insofar as these can be traced back to an individual

How does Housegekko get personal data?

Most of the personal data we have has been provided by you as a Housegekko visitor, for example, when you create an account, make a contact request for a real-estate agent or use Housegekko’s change-of-address service.

If you decide to log in to Housegekko via a social media channel such as Facebook, we will receive your email address and your public profile via the social media channel.
In addition, Housegekko uses automatically generated information such as the click behaviour on our platform, your IP address and browser data. This takes place, among other things, by using cookies or similar techniques (for more information, see our cookie policy).

Housegekko will also consider object data such as photos, address details and other characteristics of an object for sale or to let as personal data insofar as these can be traced back to an individual. Housegekko obtains this information through the real-estate agent who works on behalf of the seller or lessor.

When you give your e-mail address to an owner, they can pass on your email address to Housegekko so that the object you offer can be linked to your account. As a result of such a link you will receive additional information about your property and in some cases can leave a review about your real-estate agent. If you already have an account with Housegekko, you can also ask Housegekko to link your account to your object or to an object that you have bought or rented. Housegekko does this only after verifying your identity with the owner.

A friend, family member or other known person may also give your email address to Housegekko, allowing us to forward you a specific object that may be of interest to you.

How does Housegkko use personal data?

There are various legal grounds for using personal data: together, these form the reason why we as a company are authorized to use personal data. Housegekko uses personal data in order to prepare for and execute a contract, on the basis of consent or, in some cases, in order to comply with a legal obligation. It is also possible that we have a legitimate interest in the use of you personal data. This is the case, for example, if we use personal data to improve our platform and the services we offer on it, for our customer contact, or if we use personal data to make the platform safer and more reliable, or for marketing purposes. By marketing purposes we mean (market) analyses, sending newsletters, targeted advertisements and other content and profiling (see below under "What about profiling?""). Below we have indicated the legal grounds for the main activities which involve personal data use.

You will often provide us with personal data in order to purchase a service, such as to be able to search for homes using an account, to get in touch with a real-estate agent or another service provider on the funda platform or to be able to use our change-of-address service. We will then use your personal data in order to provide that service and thus to be able to fulfil our contractual obligations. In addition, we use these personal data in order to improve our services, for marketing purposes or for the security of our platform, i.e. because we have a legitimate interest in this.

If you decide to review an owner or prospective buyer, Housegekko will use your personal data on the basis of permission.

At Housegekko, we use object data in order to fulfil the contractual obligations that we have with the owner in question or their trade association. In addition, we have a legitimate interest in the further processing of this object data, as this will enable us to improve our services, our marketing and the contact with the relevant real-estate agent, seller, landlord, buyer and tenant.

Also automatically generated personal data such as search behaviour, browser data and IP addresses we process in order to be able to provide and improve our services and to improve customer contact and our marketing.

Customer-contact data we primarily use to ensure that our customer contact runs smoothly and also to improve our services. We therefore process customer-contact data to fulfil our contractual obligations andon the grounds of legitimate interest.

If you give us feedback or report something, funda has a legitimate interest in using your data, because we can use these to improve our services.

We use all of the above personal data to generate statistics and determine categories so that we can improve our services, enhance our security and conduct more targeted marketing. We therefore have a legitimate interest for this. For more information, see "What about profiling?".

In the case of a select group of personal data, we (also) use these because we are legally obliged to do so. For example, data used for billing purposes and data we use to record that you no longer want to receive Housegekko 's newsletters.

How long is personal data stored?

We only store your personal data for as long as we need it for the purpose for which we use it, to provide you with the best possible service or to comply with our legal obligations. We use the following criteria to determine how long we store personal data:

If you use our services such as creating an account, we will retain your personal data for as long as we need them for the provision and improvement of that service or until you delete or have them deleted
If you have consented to receive emails, we will retain your personal data until you revoke that consent. When you revoke your consent, Housegekko will continue to store the personal data that is necessary to prove when you gave your consent and when you withdrew it
Personal profiles that are available to Housegekko based on profiling (see below under "What about profiling?") are stored for a maximum of 13 months
We retain financial information such as invoices for as long as we are legally required to do so
In principle, we will continue to publish object data 1 year after the date on which the object was signed off as sold. The real-estate agent in question can indicate with funda that an object may no longer be published on the funda platform. We retain object data for as long as we need it to provide and improve our services
If cookies or similar techniques are placed on your computer, we indicate the storage period of these cookies in our cookie policy. Wherever possible, funda limits this period to the minimum necessary for carrying out the linked functionality

With whom does Housegekko share personal data?

We never sell personal data to third parties unless you have given your explicit permission, for example when applying for a mortgage offer. We do, however, work with third parties to provide and improve our services, to secure our platform, to maintain customer contact and to market our products. We will then often share (parts of) your personal data with them. For example, we share your personal data with a real-estate agent (for example because of a contact request) or with a financial service provider if you supply your data to our platform for that purpose. We also work together with parties who provide Housegekko with communications or perform platform monitoring, hosting parties, research and analysis agencies, advertising platforms, the supplier of our data management platform and partners who provide services on behalf of Housegekko, as in the case of our change-of-address service. We have made agreements with these third parties to protect your personal data, including agreements on the technical and organisational measures to be taken by these third parties to protect the personal data used. To the extent that these third parties use personal data at a location outside the EEA, they do so in compliance with the appropriate safeguards, such as the ones specified in standard contractual clauses drawn up by the European Commission.

If we use personal data for analysis purposes (including profiling), they will be pseudonymised or anonymised wherever possible. With third-party advertisements on our platform, there is a possibility that these third parties collect personal data such as your clicking behaviour on the platform. For more information, please see our cookie policy.

It speaks for itself that Housegekko publishes object data on the Housegekko platform. In addition, Housegekko sends object data to visitors via email or push notification if these fit with their search criteria. We also share object data through our social-media channels. Visitors can also share objects on social media or via email using the funda platform. Furthermore, Housegekko offers real-estate agents and selected other parties (such as municipalities) the option to show objects on the website.

Should it arise that (one or more parts of) the Housegekko company are transferred to a third party, then as part of this takeover (personal) data used by funda can also be transferred to this third party. If this situation occurs, Housegekko will inform you in good time via the Housegekko platform.

How does Housegekko protect personal data?

In order to prevent someone else from unlawfully using or processing your personal data, we have taken the appropriate technical and organisational measures. We use, among other things, physical (access) security, passwords, password encryption, bot detection and data encryption. These security measures are reviewed by a professional third party and we will add to or tighten them where necessary.

What about social media?

Housegekko does not include social-media functionalities such as like buttons or pixels on the Housegekko platform. We ourselves have accounts on social-media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. If you follow these, like or look at them, you provide us and these channels with personal data.

If you communicate with Housegekko via a social-media channel, the registration of our communication falls within the domain of the chosen channel, and the conditions of that channel will apply. This privacy policy applies only to the extent that Housegekko uses these data for its own purposes.

If you share an object from the Housegekko platform via a social-media channel, Housegekko only sends the object information to the social-media channel in question.

What about profiling

In short, profiling is the collection of characteristics, interests and data from you as a visitor. Based on this, a profile will be created in order for you to receive targeted and relevant information. Housegekko does this on the basis of data generated using cookies and similar techniques (see our cookie policy), combined with other personal data such as what you enter in your account, which objects you view and what you are searching for.

Housegekko only uses profiling to personalise information on the Housegekko platform and to display mailings and advertisements that are relevant to you. No objects or other content will be kept away from you based on our profiling.

What are your rights?

You have control over your personal data. You are entitled to clear, transparent and comprehensible information. You can always view, modify or delete your personal data entered through your account. In addition, you can contact us to view your personal data used on your behalf free of charge. You can also request Housegekko to change or delete your personal data. Under certain circumstances, we may also hand over your personal data. In addition, you may object to the use or request us to restrict the use of your personal data.

If you have subscribed to a Housegekko newsletter and no longer want to receive it, you can always unsubscribe by clicking on unsubscribe in a newsletter.

Cookies and similar techniques can easily be removed or blocked by you. Please refer to our cookie policy for details.

If you make a request regarding the way in which we handle your personal data, we may always ask you to identify yourself. If you send a copy of your passport or other ID for that purpose, we will ask you to black out your passport photo and BSN number.

Questions or comments?

Do you have any questions or comments about privacy at Housegekko? Do you disagree with the fact that or the way in which Housegekko uses your personal data? Or would you like to get in touch with Housegekko? If so, please send an email to EMAIL.

We take all questions, comments and requests seriously and will be happy to stay in touch with you about your privacy at Housegekko, even if something is not to your satisfaction. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Dutch Data Protection Authority.

This privacy policy was updated on 24 May 2018, making it the 2nd version. Click here to save this version of the Privacy policy. Housegekko reserves the right to change this privacy policy and encourages you to review this page regularly. We will announce any changes to our privacy policy by email or on our platform.