Boffo Real Estate Privacy Policy
Boffo Real Estate is bound by the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) under the Privacy Act1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act). We take our obligations seriously and have adopted internal policies and procedures to ensure that all personal information is dealt with in accordance with the Privacy Act. Please take a moment to read our Privacy Policy as this Privacy Policy explains why we collect your personal information and how we manage it.
Please note that this policy may be updated from time to time, without notice to you, in order for us to comply with the Privacy Act or to improve our privacy practices. An up-to-date Privacy Policy will be published on our website.
In this policy, personal information means any information about you (whether true or not) which identifies you or from which your identity is reasonably identifiable.
1. Why do we collect personal information?
We collect and hold personal information about you where it is reasonably necessary for one of our functions or activities. For example, we may collect your personal information to:
- offer or provide you with our goods and services;
- communicate with you, including to email you tax invoices and receipts, notify you of changes to your rent, and provide you with information about your property;
- deal and transact with you, including to process payments, respond to any queries from you or to attend to your complaints;
- verify your identity and assess your suitability to rent a property;
- meet our legal obligations, including to enforce our contractual obligations; and
- otherwise, to conduct and manage our business.
You are not obliged to provide us your personal information. You also have the option of not identifying yourself or of using a pseudonym when dealing with us. However, we may not be able to supply you the relevant goods or services where it is impracticable for us to deal with you anonymously or with you operating under a pseudonym.
2. What kind of personal information do we collect?
The type of information we may collect and hold from time to time may include:
- your name;
- addresses;
- contact details;
- age;
- employment details including payslips;
- government related identifiers such as your driver's licence where it is reasonably necessary to verify your identity (for example, if you are a prospective tenant or a prospective purchaser engaging a proxy bidder in an auction), or where it is required to fulfil government transactions such as bond lodgement; and
- financial information, which includes bank account details, credit card information, or any other information required for our business and finance management.
We may collect other personal information that you choose to disclose to us. If we determined that we are not permitted to collect that information, then we will destroy or de-identify it.
As at the date of this policy, we are not likely to collect sensitive information. Sensitive information includes, among other things, criminal record, information about your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs or affiliations, membership of a trade union or trade association, or sexual orientation, or health information.
3. How do we collect personal information?
We will only collect personal information by lawful and fair means. This means the method of collection will not be unreasonably intrusive, involve coercion or deception, or conducted without your knowledge. Sometimes, we may be permitted to collect personal information about you without your knowledge, for example, where it is necessary to undertake a fraud investigation.
We will generally collect personal information from you directly, for example, by way of forms, face to face meetings, interviews, business cards, telephone conversations. We may also collect personal information through our website and through applications (including job applications with us) and emails.
Sometimes, we may collect your personal information from a third party, for example, through government agency, by referral, or through our business partners. Where this is the case, we will take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances (if any) to notify you of such matters, including, for example, the fact that we have so collected your personal information, the purposes for which we collect your personal information, and how we handle or manage your personal information.
4. How we use and disclose your personal information?
4.1 General
We may use and disclose your personal information for the primary purpose for which it is collected, or for reasonably expected secondary purposes that are related to the primary purpose.
For example, we may use and disclose your personal information for the following primary purposes:
- fulfilling or enforcing our contractual obligations, for example, to process your application or maintenance requests, coordinate an auction, or otherwise act on your behalf where you have appointed us as your agent;
- delivering goods or services to you, such as to conduct appraisals of your property, or to market or list your property for sale where you have engaged us for these purposes;
- assessing your suitability to rent;
- communicating with you;
- complying with our legal and regulatory obligations, such as the requirements under the Residential Tenancies Act 1995 (SA);
- verifying your identity; and
- conducting our business.
In addition, we may use and disclose your personal information for a secondary purpose that you would reasonably expect us to perform, for example:
- to facilitate communications between the vendor and prospective purchaser, or between the landlord and tenant;
- to negotiate on your behalf where you have appointed us to be your agent;
- to notify you of changes affecting your property;
- to improve the delivery of our services and customer experience; and
- to de-identify your personal information where your personal information is no longer required for any other purpose;
We may also disclose your personal information to our related body corporate in the Boffo Real Estate group, or to a third party to help us fulfil our contractual obligations. For example, we may disclose your personal information to the following third parties:
- the lessor or owner of the property that you are applying to rent;
- a tradesperson or technician, where you have lodged a maintenance request in respect of a rental property we manage;
- a government agency, for government-related activities such as lodging or managing your bond or verifying your identity;
- a national tenancy database to assess your suitability to rent;
- a specialist consultant or auctioneer, who may perform functions on our behalf; and
- to improve our customer service and satisfaction.
If we disclose your information to a third party, we will generally require the third party protect your information to the same extent that we do.
Sometimes, we may be required or authorised by law or a court or tribunal order to disclose or use your personal information. We may also be permitted to disclose your personal information for law enforcement related activities, or as permitted by the APPs.
We will otherwise only use or disclose your personal information for any other purposes with your consent.
4.2 Direct marketing
Like most businesses, marketing is important to our continued success. We believe we have a unique range of products and services that we provide to customers at a high standard. We therefore like to stay in touch with customers and let them know about new opportunities. We may provide you with information about new products, services and promotions either from us, or from third parties which may be of interest to you.
We will not disclose your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes without your consent.
You may opt out at any time if you no longer wish to receive commercial messages from us. You can make this request by contacting our Privacy Officer (contact information listed at the end of this policy).
5. Management of personal information
We will take reasonable steps to protect the security of your personal information. Our personnel are required to respect the confidentiality of personal information and the privacy of individuals.
We take reasonable steps to ensure the security of the information and only authorised persons are given access. We also take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
Where we no longer require your personal information for any other purposes, we take reasonable steps to de-identify or securely destroy it, unless we are required by law to retain that information.
6. Cookies policy
By using or accessing this website, you acknowledge and consent to Boffo Real Estate’ use of cookies in accordance with this policy. Please note that cookies and analytical information are generally not considered personal information as your identity is not reasonably ascertainable. Where we can reasonably ascertain your identity based on your cookies or online activities, we will treat that information as personal information in accordance with this policy.
This section helps to explain the occasions when and why cookies may be sent to visitors to the website. “Cookies” are text-only pieces of information that a website transfers to an individual’s hard drive or other website-browsing equipment for record-keeping purposes. Cookies allow the website to remember important information that will make your use of the site more convenient. A cookie will typically contain the name of the domain from which the cookie has come, the “lifetime” of the cookie, and a randomly generated unique number or other value. Certain cookies will be used on the site regardless of whether you are logged in to your account or not.
Like most websites, we use cookies for a variety of purposes in order to improve your online experience, for analytics and for marketing, but specifically we use cookies on the website for the following purposes:
1. Analytical Purposes: we use cookies to analyse user activity in order to improve the website.
2. Your Preferences: we use cookies to store certain user preferences on our website.
3. Marketing: we use cookies from third-party partners such as Google and Facebook for marketing purposes. These cookies allow us to display Boffo Real Estate promotional material to you on other sites you visit across the Internet. Boffo Real Estate may also share information about your behaviour on the website with third parties (including operators of third-party websites and/or social networking sites) in order to show you targeted advertisements and other content that has been customised for you.
4. Referral Tracking: we use cookies to associate user activity with the third party website that referred the user to our website, or to associate user activity that Boffo Real Estate referred to a third party website. These third party partner websites receive credit for the activity of users they refer to our website, or give Boffo Real Estate credit for the activity of users referred to such third party websites. We do not share any personal information or information about individual user activities with these partner entities.
Session cookies are temporary cookies that remain in the cookie file of your browser until you leave the Website.
Persistent cookies remain in the cookie file of your browser for much longer (though how long will depend on the lifetime of the specific cookie). When we use session cookies to track the total number of visitors to our website, this is done on an anonymous aggregate basis (as cookies do not in themselves carry any personal data). We may also employ cookies so that we remember your computer when it is used to return to the website to help customise your Boffo Real Estate web experience. We may associate personal information with a cookie file in those instances. Use the options in your web browser if you do not wish to receive a cookie or if you wish to set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie. You can easily delete any cookies that have been installed in the cookie folder of your browser.
7. Disclosure to overseas recipients
As at the date of this Privacy Policy, we are not likely to disclose your personal information to overseas recipients.
If in future we do propose to disclose personal information overseas, we will do so in compliance with the requirements of the Privacy Act. We will, where practicable, advise you of the countries in which any overseas recipients are likely to be located.
If you do not want us to disclose your information to overseas recipients, please let us know.
8. Accessing and correcting your personal information
Boffo Real Estate endeavours to ensure that the personal information it holds is accurate, complete and up-to-date. We encourage you to contact us to update any personal information that we hold about you.
You may contact our Privacy Officer (contact information listed below) to request access to the personal information that we hold about you and/or to make corrections to that information, at any time. On the rare occasions when we refuse access, we will provide you with a written notice stating our reasons for refusing access. We may seek to recover from you reasonable costs incurred for providing you with access to any of the personal information about you held by us.
We are not obliged to correct any of your personal information if we do not agree that it requires correction and may refuse to do so. If we refuse a correction request, we will provide you with a written notice stating our reasons for refusing.
We will respond to all requests for access to or correction of personal information within a reasonable time.
9. Resolving privacy concerns
If you would like a copy of Boffo Real Estate’s Privacy Policy or access to your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer at:
The Privacy Officer
Boffo Real Estate 78-80 North East Road Collinswood SA 5081
Telephone: 08 8269 7711
Email: privacy@boffo.com.au
We take all complaints seriously and will attempt to respond to your complaint within a reasonable period. If you are dissatisfied with the way we handled your complaint, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner:
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
GPO Box 5288
Sydney NSW 2001
Telephone: 1300 363 992
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
This document was last updated on 6th April 2023.
