Privacy Policy

Maybank Real Estate Ltd., Brokerage and HomeFrog.ca (“HomeFrog”) is firmly committed to respecting your right to privacy by safeguarding your confidentiality and protecting your information. This commitment is fundamental to the way we do business and is a critical part of providing good customer service.

This policy will help you better understand the policies and practices we have in place relating to the management of personal information at HomeFrog.

The word information refers to personal, financial and other details about you that that you provide to us and we obtain from others outside of our organization.

This policy applies to personal customers, (including potential customers) in Canada, individuals carrying on business alone or in partnership with other individuals and signing officers and signing officers of our business customers.

Most of the information we collect is directly from you when you complete the online registration and that which you provide when corresponding to us through email, phone or fax.

When you request services, we will ask you to provide only the information that enables us to complete your request, to provide better service or to offer you products and services we believe you might be interested in.

 

Information essential for completing the online registration includes:

INFORMATION THAT WE COLLECT
We collect personal information necessary to effectively market and sell the property of sellers; to locate, assess and qualify properties for buyers and to otherwise provide professional and competent real estate services to clients. The following is a summary of the types of information we collect, most of it through the online registration form:

a) Information establishing your identity – such as your name, address, phone numbers and email address.
b) Information about your housing preferences – such as price range, number of bedrooms, finished basement, square feet, parking requirements, etc.
c) Information about your current household – such as the existence of pets, the number of people which comprise your family, whether or not you run a home business and whether or not you currently own your place of residence
d) Information about your finances – such as your credit history, expected down payment, credit score and whether or not you have qualified for a mortgage recently.
e) Information about your real estate services requirements – such as your timeframe for buying, whether or not your current home is for sale, and whether or not you have to sell your current home in order to buy another home .
f) Information about your previous attempts to search for homes – such as how long you have been searching for a home, whether or not you are currently working with a real estate agent and if you have a preferred development/community you are considering buying a new home in.
g) Information about your use of our website - We also may automatically collect general anonymous information related to your use of our websites, such as the date and time you visit the websites and the pages you visit on the websites. In addition, we collect "cookie" information from your browser to identify your computer and provide us with a record of your visits to our websites. The technology used to gather "cookie" information is provided by the Internet browser you use, and may be turned off by using your browser preference buttons. This statistical information helps us to understand how our websites are used (e.g., identifying which pages or sections are most popular and the peak activity times), which assists us in planning for future improvements to the website to better meet our customers’ needs.
h) Other information – We are committed to improve our service offerings to you. As such, we may collect non-personal aggregate information from surveys, public archives and web sites to help us understand and to manage our risks.


HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION
When you become a HomeFrog customer, we ask you for your personal information for the following purposes.

  • Verify your identity
  • To understand your real estate service requirements
  • Establish or collect commission or fees owing to us
  • To determine suitability of products and services for you
  • To determine your eligibility for certain products and services, or those of others, and offer them to you
  • Manage our risks and operations
  • To set up and manage products and services you have requested
  • To comply with legal or regulatory requirements

If we need information for any other purpose, we will identify that purpose. While we collect various types of personal information from you and other sources, we limit the information to what is necessary for the purposes we’ve identified.

 

YOUR CONSENT
We will explain your options of refusing or withdrawing consent to the collection, use or release of your information, and, given reasonable notice, we will record and respect your choices.

When you read and agree to the terms and conditions which appear in the online registration, this serves as your express consent for us to collect, use or disclose your personal information.

There are several privacy preferences available to you, subject to legal, business or contractual requirements. If you prefer, you may choose not to have us:

a) Contact you occasionally by mail, telephone, or email or all of these methods, with direct marketing offers that may be of benefit to you
b) Contact you to participate in customer research and surveys

Please note, however, that withdrawing your consent may affect our ability to continue to provide you with our professional services.

To withdraw your consent, you should contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@homefrog.ca or by mail at PRIVACY OFFICER, Maybank Real Estate Ltd., Brokerage, 1200-251 Consumers Rd,Toronto ON M2J 4R3Unless we hear otherwise from you, you are giving us your consent for the collection, use and disclosure of personal information as provided in this policy for the identified purposes.

 

SHARING YOUR INFORMATION
We share your information with other real estate brokerages for the purposes of evaluating the suitability of entering into a working business relationship with them, establishing a means to contact you on an ongoing basis and ensuring successful completion of your real estate transaction. We do not rent or share customer lists or personal information to others.

Please note that there are circumstances where the use and/or disclosure of Personal Information may be justified or permitted or where we are obliged to disclose information without consent. Such circumstances may include:

  • Where required by law or by order or requirement of a court, administrative agency or other governmental tribunal;
  • Where we believe, upon reasonable grounds, that it is necessary to protect the rights, privacy, safety or property of an identifiable person or group;
  • Where it is necessary to establish or collect monies owning to us
  • Where it is necessary to permit us to pursue available remedies or limit any damages that we sustain; or
  • Where the information is public.

KEEPING YOUR INFORMATION SAFE
We will protect your personal information by making reasonable security measures to prevent unauthourized access, collection, use, disclosure, copying, modification, disposal or similar risks.

We will take reasonable steps, through contractual or reasonable means, to ensure that a comparable level of personal information protection is implemented by the brokerages and agents who assist in providing services. Some specific safeguards include:

  • physical measures such as locked filing cabinets;
  • organizational measures such as restricting employee access to files and databases as appropriate;
  • electronic measures such as passwords and firewalls; and
  • investigative measures where we have reasonable grounds to believe that personal information is being inappropriately collected, used or disclosed.

Note that confidentiality and security are not assured when information is transmitted through e-mail or other wireless communication.

When we no longer need your personal information, we take the same care to destroy it as we do when storing it in order to prevent unauthorized access.

 

KEEPING YOUR INFORMATION ACCURATE
We endeavour to ensure that any personal information provided by customers and in its possession is as accurate, current and complete as necessary for the purposes for which we use that data. Information contained in files that have been closed is not actively updated or maintained. If you discover inaccuracies in our data, or your personal information changes, please notify us immediately so that we can make the necessary changes. When required, we will make our best efforts to advise others of any important amendments to your personal information that we may have released to them. If we do not agree to make the amendments that you request, you may challenge our decision.


ACCESS TO YOUR INFORMATION
We permit access to and review of Personal Information held by us about an individual by the individual concerned.

You also have a right to know which third parties have received information from us. We will provide a list of organizations to which we may or have disclosed the information.

If you want to review your personal information, please make your request in writing to PRIVACY OFFICER, Maybank Real Estate Ltd., Brokerage, 1200-251 Consumers Rd,Toronto ON M2J 4R3 or emailing privacy@homefrog.ca, telling us specifically as possible which personal information you are requesting. If you believe that your personal information is not correct, you may request the appropriate change, or you may request us to delete the incorrect information.

We will endeavour to provide requested information within a reasonable time and no later than 30 days following the request. Before granting access or making corrections, we will require sufficient information from you to allow us to confirm your identity.

If an individual believes any Personal Information concerning that individual is not correct, that person may request an amendment of that information by sending a request to the Privacy Officer. We reserve the right not to change any Personal Information but will append any alternative text the individual concerned believes appropriate. Where not required to be retained by the Firm, an individual may also request that we delete an individual's Personal Information from our system and records. However, due to constraints of computer technology and the fact that we backs up our systems, Personal Information may continue to reside in our systems after deletion. Individuals, therefore, should not expect that their Personal Information would be completely removed from our systems in response to an accepted request for deletion.

We reserve the right to decline access to Personal Information where the information requested:

a. Would disclose the Personal Information of another individual or of a deceased individual;
b. Would disclose business confidential information that may harm us or the competitive position of a third party;
c. Is subject to solicitor-client or litigation privilege;
d. Could reasonably result in: (i) serious harm to the treatment or recovery of the individual concerned; (ii) serious emotional harm to the individual or another individual; or (iii) serious bodily harm to another individual;
e. May harm, or interfere with, law enforcement activities and other investigative or regulatory functions of a body authorized by statute to perform such functions;
f. Is not readily retrievable and the burden or cost of providing would be disproportionate to the nature or value of the information; or
g. Does not exist, is not held, or cannot be found by us

Where information will not or cannot be disclosed, the individual making the request will be provided with the reasons for non-disclosure.

Where information will be disclosed, we will endeavor to provide the information in question within a reasonable time and no later than 30 days following the request.

We will not respond to repetitious or vexatious requests for access. In determining whether a request is repetitious or vexatious, we will consider such factors as the frequency with which information is amended, the purpose for which the information is used, and the nature of the information.

To guard against fraudulent requests for access, we will require sufficient information to allow it to confirm the identity of the person making the request before granting access or making corrections.

 

ADDRESSING YOUR CONCERNS
We have procedures in place to assist our employees in complying with this policy, as well as the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and applicable provincial privacy legislation.

We regularly monitor our procedures and security measures to ensure that they remain effective and that they are being properly administered. Our Privacy Officer is accountable for overseeing compliance with this policy.

If you have any questions about our policies and practices related to managing your personal information that have not been answered in this policy, please let us know so that we may provide further information.

We are committed to treating you with the greatest respect and consideration and providing the highest level of service. Even so, there may be a misunderstanding or times where you may feel you have been dealt with unjustly. Whatever the circumstances, our primary objective is ensuring your concerns are addressed.

We are committed to upholding this policy. If you have any questions or complaints about this policy or about how we are living up to this policy, please let us know right away:

PRIVACY OFFICER, Maybank Real Estate Ltd., Brokerage, 1200-251 Consumers Rd,Toronto ON M2J 4R3 privacy@homefrog.ca 1-800-989-5915 or 416-640-7805

If this fails to resolve your concern, you may also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada:

Place de Ville, 112 Kent St, Ottawa ON K1A 1H3, Tel 1-800-282-1376, www.privcom.gc.ca