Privacy Policy
What we collect, why we collect it, who else sees it, and how to make us delete it. We have tried to write this so you can actually tell what happens to a document when you upload it.
1 Who this covers
This policy explains how Vantage Point Data LLC (“BuyWise,” “we”) handles personal information on the BuyWise Home website, the report request and document upload pages, and the reports we deliver (the “Service”). It applies to people who request a report, real estate professionals who use the Service with clients, and people who open a report we have delivered.
It also covers something less usual: BuyWise processes documents about a property that may describe other people — sellers who completed a disclosure form, inspectors who wrote a report. Section 4 explains how we treat those.
2 What we collect
Information you give us
| What | Where from | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your email address | Signing in | To sign you in with an emailed link, send your report link, and reply to you. We do not ask for your name |
| Your account record: when you signed in, which reports you requested, and whether you have used your free report | Using the Service | To show you your reports and apply the one-free-report limit |
| The property address you ask about | The report form | It is the subject of the report. We check that it is a real property before building anything |
| Payment details | Stripe's checkout page | To take payment for a full report. You enter your card on Stripe's page; we never see or store your card number. We receive and keep the payment's status, amount, and Stripe reference |
| Documents you upload, and what we extract from them | The upload page | To build the report. See section 4 |
| Questions you type into Ask BuyWise, and the answer you were given | In a delivered report | To answer the question, and to see where the report itself falls short. See section 5 |
| Anything you write to us | Email and support | To help you |
Information collected automatically
Our servers record ordinary technical data when you use the Service: your IP address, the pages you request and when, your browser type, and the referring page. We use this information to operate the Service and to prevent abuse.
To keep automated abuse out, sign-in, report requests and checkout are protected by Google reCAPTCHA Enterprise, which assesses signals from your browser and device to tell people from bots. Its use is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
We use Google Analytics to understand site usage, such as page views, approximate geography, device type, and interactions. Google Analytics may use cookies or similar technologies and may collect technical information about your visit. We do not send property-specific personal information or inspection contents to Google Analytics.
Information from other sources
To build a report we retrieve public records and published datasets about the property — not about you. These can nonetheless name individuals: an owner of record in a property or tax record, the estate agent who listed the home, or a person listed on a publicly published state sex offender registry. We take that material as the source publishes it. If you believe a public record about you is wrong, the correction has to be made at the source; we will re-pull once it is.
Where a data source returns contact details about owners or agents that a report does not need, we discard them rather than store them. We keep an agent’s or brokerage’s name, because that is how a listing is attributed.
3 How we use it
- To produce and deliver the report you asked for. This is the main purpose and most data exists only for it.
- To communicate with you about your request, including the confirmation and delivery emails.
- To operate, secure, debug, and improve the Service — including rate limiting, abuse prevention, and diagnosing failed extractions.
- To measure quality in aggregate, such as how often an extraction step fails on a given kind of document.
- To comply with law and to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims.
- To send you product or marketing email, only where permitted, and with an unsubscribe link in every message. Transactional emails about a report you requested are not marketing and continue regardless.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We do not use your documents or questions to train our own models, and we ask our AI provider not to train on them — see section 5.
Where the GDPR or a similar law applies, our legal bases are: contract, for producing the report you requested; legitimate interests, for security, abuse prevention, and improving the Service; consent, for marketing email where required; and legal obligation, where a law requires retention or disclosure.
4 Documents you upload
Documents you upload are the most sensitive information the Service handles. We use them only to build your report: our AI service providers read each document to extract its findings (see section 5). Documents are encrypted in transit.
The original file is deleted automatically 30 days after you upload it. What we extract from it — its findings, and photos from an inspection report — becomes part of your report and is kept with it (see section 9).
Other people named in your documents
A seller disclosure names the seller. An inspection report names the inspector and their licence number. We process that information solely to build the report for the property it concerns, and we do not use it to build profiles of those people, market to them, or sell it. Under section 4 of the Terms, you confirm you are allowed to give us the document in the first place.
If you are a person named in a document someone else uploaded and you want to know what we hold or have it deleted, write to privacy@buywisehome.com. We may need enough detail to find the record, and we may have to keep material where a party to the transaction has a legal reason to retain it.
What not to send
Please redact Social Security numbers, financial account and card numbers, government ID numbers, and health information before uploading. We do not need them.
5 AI processing
We use AI service providers to read the documents you upload, to help write the guidance in your report, and to answer the questions you ask in Ask BuyWise. They process this information only to provide the Service to you. They are not permitted to use it to train their models, and they keep it only for a limited period for security and abuse prevention.
We keep Ask BuyWise questions and answers for 90 days, to find where our reports fall short. Before a question is stored we automatically mask anything that looks like an email address, Social Security number, or account or card number — but please still avoid typing them.
No decision with a legal or similarly significant effect on you is made automatically. A BuyWise report is information for a person to act on, not a decision about a person.
6 Who else sees it
We share personal information only as described here. We do not sell it.
Service providers who process it for us
| Category | What it does | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud hosting and infrastructure | Hosts the site, our servers, and your reports | The information we process, as our infrastructure |
| AI service providers | Read documents, help write reports, answer questions | Uploaded documents, property data, Ask BuyWise questions |
| Mapping and address services | Address autocomplete, address checks, and maps | What you type into an address field; the property address; your IP address |
| Property data providers | Property facts, sales and listing history, valuations, and school assignments | The property address — not your name or email |
| Sign-in and email delivery | Sign-in links and report emails | Your email address and the email’s contents, including your report link |
| Stripe | Payment for full reports | The card and billing details you enter on Stripe’s page; your email address; the report reference |
| Google reCAPTCHA | Bot and abuse protection | Browser and device signals during sign-in, report requests, and checkout |
| Google Analytics | Understanding how the site is used | Usage and device information, as described in section 2 |
These providers are permitted to use the information only to perform services for us.
Property data sources
To build a report we draw on government and commercial sources of property, neighborhood, environmental, and public-safety information. They receive a property address or its location, not your name or email.
Others
- People you send a report to. If you share a report link, whoever holds it can open it.
- Legal. We may disclose information if required by law or valid legal process, or to protect the rights, safety, or property of BuyWise, our users, or the public. Where we are permitted to tell you first, we will try to.
- Business transfer. If BuyWise is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, information may transfer as part of it. We will give notice before your information becomes subject to a materially different policy.
7 Property addresses
A property address is information about a place, but once it is the address of somebody's home it can also be information about a person. We treat requested addresses accordingly: we use them to build the requested report, we do not publish a directory of properties we have analyzed, and we do not sell address lists.
Two things worth knowing. First, when you type into an address field, your keystrokes are sent to Google to return suggestions — that is how autocomplete works, and it happens before you submit anything. Second, if you share a report link, the address and the report's contents are visible to whoever opens it.
9 How long we keep it
| Category | Retention |
|---|---|
| Your account and report requests (email, addresses, which reports) | Until you ask us to delete them (see section 11) |
| Payment records (status, amount, Stripe reference) | As long as tax and accounting law requires |
| Uploaded documents (original files) | 30 days after upload, then deleted automatically |
| Delivered reports, including what was extracted from your documents | Until you ask us to delete them; a report’s link stays live until then |
| Ask BuyWise questions and answers | 90 days, enforced by automatic partition expiry |
| Server and security logs | 30 days |
| Records we must keep (tax, accounting, legal holds) | As long as the law requires |
After the period ends we delete or de-identify the information. Backups are deleted on their own cycle, so a copy may persist briefly after deletion from live systems.
10 Security
We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect your information, including encryption in transit and at rest, and access limited to the people who need it. If the law requires it, we will notify you of a security breach affecting your information. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
Report links are private but not password-protected — anyone with the link can open the report, so share it as carefully as you would the documents inside it. If you believe your information has been compromised, tell us at security@buywisehome.com.
11 Your rights and choices
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
- Know and access what personal information we hold about you and how we use it;
- Correct information that is inaccurate;
- Delete information we hold about you;
- Obtain a portable copy of information you gave us;
- Opt out of marketing email, and of any sale or sharing for targeted advertising — though we do not do either;
- Withdraw consent where we relied on it; and
- Not be discriminated against for exercising any of these.
To exercise any of them, email privacy@buywisehome.com. We will verify your identity in proportion to the sensitivity of the request — usually by confirming control of the email address on the account — and respond within the time the applicable law allows, generally 45 days. An authorized agent may act for you with written permission.
If we decline a request we will explain why. We may have to keep information where another person has a legitimate interest in it, or where the law requires.
BuyWise is offered to residents of the United States, and all information is stored and processed in the United States.
12 U.S. state privacy rights
Residents of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas, and other states with comprehensive privacy laws have the rights in section 11, exercisable the same way.
For California specifically: in the last 12 months we collected the categories of personal information described in section 2 — identifiers, commercial information, internet activity, geolocation inferred from a property address, and the contents of documents you chose to upload — for the purposes in section 3, from the sources in section 2, and disclosed them for business purposes to the recipients in section 6. We did not sell personal information and did not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising, including any information of consumers we knew to be under 16.
Some documents you upload may contain information a state law treats as sensitive. We use it only to provide the report you requested, which is a purpose for which state law does not require an opt-out, and we do not use it to infer characteristics about anyone.
13 Children
The Service is for adults and is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child has given us information, write to privacy@buywisehome.com and we will delete it.
14 Changes
We will update this policy as the Service changes. The “last updated” date above always reflects the current version. If a change materially affects how we use information you already gave us, we will give notice — by email or in the Service — before it takes effect.
15 Contact
Privacy questions and rights requests:
Vantage Point Data LLC
775 Hampton Pl SW, Marietta, GA 30064
privacy@buywisehome.com
Security reports: security@buywisehome.com. Everything else: hello@buywisehome.com.