What we collect, and why.
Who we are
Open Home Real Estate, 12/9 Trickett Street, Surfers Paradise. Questions about this policy go to micah@openhomerealestate.com.au.
What you give us
When you book a walk-through, the site keeps the address, your name, your mobile number and the time you picked, and passes them to the agent so they can confirm by text. The same keeping rules as a message apply.
When you message us from a listing or the home page, the site keeps the conversation: what you typed, the agent’s replies and any files they send, and a mobile or email if you choose to leave one so we can tell you when there is a reply. It is stored in Australia and kept, so the conversation can be picked up again; ask us and we delete it. Email and text delivery pass through providers who may hold copies overseas. Our agent reads and answers messages in Telegram, whose servers are outside Australia; a copy of each reply goes to our own email when email is switched on. Your mobile or email is used to reply to you about that conversation and for nothing else.
Saved searches and saved homes stay in your browser. They never reach us and we cannot see them.
What the site notices on its own
We count page views ourselves, on Google Cloud in Sydney. The count keeps the page, the site you came from and the kind of device. It does not set cookies, does not identify you, and gives us aggregate numbers only. Four things are counted without identifying you: a conversation started, a contact left, a walk-through booked, an open home added to a calendar.
The site sets one cookie, and only for agents who sign in to Open Home: it keeps them signed in.
Some of what you see is loaded from other services, and their servers see your IP address when it loads: property photography and film from our image host, maps from OpenFreeMap and OpenStreetMap, and the 3D tour from Panoee when you open it. Each has its own privacy policy.
The Open Home app
The app is for agents who work with us. You can only use it with an account we set up for you.
Your account holds your name, your agency, your mobile, your email if you gave one, the Open Home email address if we gave you one, your role, your profile card if you have one, who invited you, and when you last signed in. It is stored on Google Cloud in Sydney.
You sign in with a passkey, which Face ID or your passcode unlocks on your iPhone. Your face and your passcode never leave the phone and never reach us. We keep the passkey’s public key, which can check a sign-in but can’t make one, with a label for the device and when it was made and last used. The app keeps your session in your iPhone’s Keychain, on that phone only. A session lasts 30 days from when you last used it, or 12 hours for the owner and admins. When you finish setting up or add a passkey, our team is told in Telegram, with your name, your agency and the device’s label.
Each request from the app carries an identifier Apple gives the app on your iPhone. We use it only to slow down repeated sign-in attempts, and we don’t store it.
Photographs you take or pick in the app are saved to your iPhone’s Photos. The app doesn’t send them to us, and this page will say where they go before it does. The app asks for your camera and your photos and nothing else: not your location, your contacts or your microphone.
Staff can keep notes about the people they work with: a call, an appointment, a task, a request not to be contacted. The owner and admins can read every staff member’s notes; other staff read only their own. Only the person who wrote a note, or the owner, can change it, and a deleted note is hidden with its earlier versions kept, so a mistake can be undone. Notes are stored on Google Cloud in Sydney and copied each night to our own reporting database on Google Cloud. Ask us to erase what we hold about you and we do.
The app’s street map loads from OpenFreeMap straight from your phone, so OpenFreeMap sees your phone’s IP address and the area you’re looking at. The app has no advertising, no analytics and no crash reporting, and it sends no push notifications.
We keep sign-in records after they end, marked ended, so we can tell who had access and when. Our audit log is never changed or deleted. Our servers’ logs are kept for 400 days. Backups of the listings and enquiries database are kept for 14 weeks, and of the notes for 7 days.
To delete your account, open Settings in the app, or You on this site, choose Delete my account and confirm with your passkey. Your sign-in ends on every device, your passkeys are removed, and your name, mobile and email are cleared. Your listings, signed forms and notes stay with the agency, under Former agent, and the audit log keeps its record. The owner’s account is closed by asking us.
What we never do
We do not sell your details, rent them, or add you to a list you did not ask to join. If another agency introduces a buyer to a home we are selling, we share what the sale needs with that agency and no more.
Your access
Ask and we will tell you what we hold about you, correct it, or delete it. If you are not satisfied with how we handled it, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner takes complaints at oaic.gov.au.