Privacy policy

BroadBricks Realty Group Inc., Brokerage (“BroadBricks,” “we,” “us”) respects your privacy. This policy explains what personal information we collect through this website, why we collect it, how we protect it, and the choices and rights you have. We handle personal information in accordance with Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable Ontario law, and consistent with the Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) and TRESA obligations that apply to a brokerage.

What we collect

• Information you give us. When you create an account, request a home valuation, ask about a listing, or contact us, we collect your name, email, phone number (if provided), the message you send, and any property address or details you enter.
• Account & consent records. If you register, we store your account profile and timestamped records of the consents you give (agreement to the consumer terms of use, and any express consent to receive marketing email under CASL).
• Saved activity. Homes you favourite and searches you save, so we can show them back to you.
• What you tell us you are here for. The “I am a…” selection on your account — buying, selling, renting, landlord, investing — which you may change or clear at any time in your account settings. We use it only to order the tools and dashboard cards we show you. It is part of your profile, so deleting your account deletes it with everything else.
• Affordability figures, if you choose to save them. The buying-power tool can store the gross annual household income, down payment, other monthly debt payments, interest rate and amortization you enter, so your estimated range follows you as you browse. These are figures you type; we do not obtain them from anyone else. No credit check is performed and nothing here is a pre-approval — the estimate is arithmetic on your own numbers, using the mortgage stress test. They are visible to you alone: row-level security ties the record to your user id, your agent does not see the inputs, and no figure is shared with a lender. Clearing the form deletes the record immediately; otherwise it is kept until you delete it or close your account.
• Watch My Home. Addresses you choose to watch (your own home or any address), any optional property details you provide, and your digest preferences. This information is visible only to you, is used to prepare your monthly street update and any estimate, and to follow up if you ask about selling. You can delete a watched home at any time from My Home (which stops its emails and removes the record) or export it. We retain it only while you watch the home, plus the record-keeping period below.
• Rental applications. If you apply for a rental through this site, we collect your name, email, phone, self-declared employment status and employer, self-declared annual income, desired move-in date, your references, and any documents you attach. The application is visible to you and to the landlord or property manager receiving it, and to our brokerage staff handling it — nobody else.
• Tenant screening, if it is run. Screening is consent-first: we record your express consent before any screening is initiated, and none is initiated without it. The screening itself happens on the provider’s systems, not ours. We never receive or store the report, a credit score, a SIN or banking details — only the provider’s reference number and a coarse status (requested, completed, declined) so the landlord and you can see where the application stands. Screening criteria are limited to neutral factors and may never be used to discriminate on a ground protected by the Ontario Human Rights Code.
• Rent reporting, only if you ask for it. Reporting your rent payments to a credit bureau to help build your credit history is opt-in and off unless you turn it on, and you can withdraw at any time in one click. A withdrawal is recorded as its own consent record, and reporting stops from that point; it cannot undo what a bureau has already received.
• Technical & usage data. Basic technical data needed to serve the site securely (e.g. your IP address and browser for security and session cookies), and — only if you accept analytics — anonymous, aggregate usage statistics (see Cookies & analytics). We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

Why we collect it (purpose)

• To respond to your enquiries and prepare the valuations you request.
• To create and operate your account and remember your favourites and saved searches.
• To provide real estate brokerage services and comply with our regulatory obligations.
• To send you market updates only if you have expressly opted in, and to keep the CASL consent trail that lets you withdraw that consent.
• To secure the site, prevent abuse and spam, and improve how it works.
• To estimate what you could afford, from figures you enter yourself, and to show you which homes fall inside that range.
• To pass a rental application to the landlord or property manager you applied to, and — only with your express consent — to have a screening provider run a tenant screening and report its status back.
• To report your rent payments to a credit bureau, if and only if you have asked us to.
• To understand what you are looking for and route your enquiry to the right agent, where you have given behavioural-insights consent (see behaviour trail).
• To show how much interest a listing is attracting, from non-identifying daily counts (see interest counters).

How we record what you do on the site (behaviour trail)

If you have an account and have given us behavioural-insights consent, we keep a record of certain actions you take on the site so that the agent helping you knows what you are actually looking for, and so we can tell an active enquiry from a casual one. No consent, no record — the trail is not written at all for a visitor who has not granted it, and withdrawing consent stops new entries.

The events we record are exactly these, and no others:

• viewing a listing;
• reaching the sold-price sign-in prompt;
• saving a search;
• clicking a link in an alert email we sent you;
• using a calculator;
• requesting a home valuation;
• claiming a home in Watch My Home;
• requesting a tour;
• requesting a call with the broker;
• choosing or changing your “I am a…” selection;
• submitting a rental application;
• your sale moving to a new stage, once you are selling with us — recorded when our staff move your sale to its next stage, not by anything you click.

Each entry holds the type of event, when it happened, and non-identifying context such as which calculator you used. It holds no message content. We use it to prioritize and route enquiries to the right agent, and to prepare for a conversation with you. It is visible to you, to our brokerage staff, and to nobody else — row-level security enforces that at the database, not just in the app. You can withdraw behavioural-insights consent at any time in your account settings, and the trail is deleted with your account.

Listing interest counters (not analytics, and not about you)

Separately from everything above, we keep a daily tally per listing — how many views, favourite-adds, watchers, sold-price prompts and shares each listing had on each day — which is what the “BroadBricks interest score” on a listing is computed from. We are describing it here rather than leaving it unsaid, because it runs whether or not you accept analytics.

These counters are not the vendor analytics in Cookies & analytics and are not subject to that choice. They differ in what they are: there is no user id and no per-person row — a stored row says “this listing had three views on this day” and nothing more. To count one visit once rather than five times, we keep a short anti-repeat ledger keyed to an opaque random token in a cookie, which is not your account, your name or your IP address, and which is discarded once the day rolls over. A figure below five is never displayed at all, so a number on a listing page can never reflect a single identifiable person. No figure is used to decide anything about you, and none of it reaches a third party.

Consent

We collect, use, and disclose your personal information with your consent, except where the law permits or requires otherwise. Marketing email is sent only with your express, opt-in consent; the box is never pre-checked, and you can withdraw at any time from the unsubscribe link in every message or from your account settings. Requesting a valuation or a listing enquiry is a transactional request and does not, by itself, sign you up for marketing.

Cookies & analytics

We use a small number of essential cookies that are needed to run the site and keep you signed in. These are always on because the site cannot function without them.

Analytics are off by default. They load only if you choose “Accept” in the cookie banner. We use a privacy-friendly, cookieless analytics tool that measures aggregate, anonymous usage (for example, how many people used a calculator) — it does not build advertising profiles or track you across other sites. If you choose “Essential only,” no analytics is loaded or sent. You can change your mind by clearing the site’s stored preference in your browser; a withdrawal takes effect the next time the site loads.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal information. We share it only with service providers who help us run the site and our brokerage (for example, our hosting, database, and email providers), bound to protect it and use it only on our instructions, and with regulators or authorities where the law requires. Some providers may process data outside Ontario; where that happens, the information remains subject to this policy and applicable law.

• PropTx Innovations Inc., the operator of the MLS® system our listing data comes from: your name, email address and your use of sold-listing data may be shared with PropTx for auditing and legal purposes, as its rules require.

How long we keep it (retention)

We keep personal information only as long as needed for the purposes above or as required by law. Records that document a real estate trade, and consent and audit records, are retained for at least six (6) years to meet RECO/TRESA record-keeping requirements. Consent records are kept as an append-only history so we can prove what you agreed to and when. When information is no longer needed, we securely delete or anonymise it.

How we protect it

We use administrative, technical, and physical safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information, including encryption in transit, access controls, and row-level security on our database so your data is visible only to you and authorised staff.

Your rights: access & correction

You may ask to see the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it if it is inaccurate, or withdraw a consent you previously gave (subject to legal and contractual limits). Much of this you can do yourself in your account. For anything else, contact our Privacy Officer below and we will respond within the time PIPEDA allows.

Contact / Privacy Officer

Questions, access requests, or complaints? Contact the Privacy Officer at privacy@broadbricks.ca, BroadBricks Realty Group Inc., Brokerage. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Changes

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be posted here with a new effective date.

See also our Terms of use.