Hello! Welcome to Habito Plus Ltd’s (“Habito Conveyancing”) privacy policy! This privacy policy describes how Habito Conveyancing collects, uses, and protects your personal data when you sign up to and use Habito Conveyancing’s services. We’ll also explain your privacy rights, and how the law protects you.
When we use the words:
Habito Conveyancing (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hey Habito Ltd (“Habito Brokerage”)) is the data controller. That means we’re responsible for your personal data under this privacy policy.
If you want to talk to us about your data, we’re here to help. Email us at data@habito.com or write to The Data Working Group, Habito, WeWork, Moor Place, 1 Fore Street Avenue, London, EC2Y 9DT.
If you have a complaint about anything to do with your data, use those same contact details to get in touch. We’ll investigate and get back to you as soon as we can.
We’re registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) with registration number ZA915395. The ICO is an independent organisation that protects people’s data and privacy rights. If you have a complaint, we’d love the chance to help you first, but you can also complain to the ICO at any time.
This privacy policy was created on 21 May 2021. We might make changes to this privacy policy at any time. We’ll let you know if we do, usually by email. We'll highlight the changes we make so that you can clearly see them. If you’d like a copy of a previous version, email us at data@habito.com.
We collect, use, store and transfer personal data. Personal data is any information that can identify you. It doesn’t include information where you can’t be identified (anonymous data).
Habito’s conveyancing services are available to Habito Brokerage’s Plus (“Habito Plus”) customers. If you are a Habito Plus customer and decide to sign up to our conveyancing services, we might collect, use, store and transfer different types of your personal data. ‘Transfer’ means sending your information somewhere else.
If you’re buying and/or selling your property with someone else, we’ll also collect some of this information about the person you’re buying/selling with, like your spouse.
The Council of Licensed Conveyancers asks firms like Habito to give special levels of care to customers they think might be vulnerable. If you tell us that you’re vulnerable or we think you’re vulnerable, we might record that information to help us give you the right service. That information could be special category data. That’s data that’s likely to be more sensitive – things like physical and mental health conditions.
When companies process special category data, they have to have a “legal basis” to use it, which means a legal reason from the UK GDPR. The legal basis we rely on is "legal obligation” (we have to process your data because the law or regulations require us to).
Alongside that, companies also have to meet one of the legal conditions in Article 9 of the UK GDPR. The conditions we rely on are “substantial public interest," “regulatory requirements” and “support for individuals with a particular disability or medical condition.” In plain English, that means we use this data to make sure we support you in the right way. For example, you might tell us that you’re deaf, and that you prefer us not to call you on the phone. We’ll use this information to support you using live chat or email.
Here are all the legal reasons we rely on to use your data.
Here’s how we might collect personal data on our website, over live chat, on the phone, or from other companies and places.
You might give us your personal data when you do any of these things:
Our website automatically collects technical data – things like the equipment you’re using, as well as a record of what pages you’re visiting. We use cookies for this, and we have a whole cookie notice where you can find lots more detail.
We get personal data from Habito Brokerage that you gave when you signed up for Habito Plus.
Sometimes we get personal data from somewhere outside Habito Conveyancing, like:
We might use the data you gave us last time to help you the next time. That way, you don’t have to type in all your info again. If we do this, we'll always check that your information is accurate and up to date.
We use your data for one or more of the reasons we’ve listed below. We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. No surprises there.
Companies can’t use your data without giving you a legal reason for using it. This reason is called a “legal basis”. Here are the legal bases Habito Conveyancing relies on, and what they mean:
Here are the legal bases we rely on to use your data, for each purpose we use it for. Strap yourself in, it’s going to be a detailed read.
Say hello
We use your identity and contact data to register you as a new Habito Conveyancing customer and to contact you to progress and manage your property transaction.
Redeem and register your mortgage
We use your identity, contact, financial and transaction, to help you to redeem and register your mortgage.
Tell you stuff
We use your identity, contact and profile data to manage our relationship with you.
That includes things like telling you about changes to this privacy policy, asking you to leave a review or take a survey and for legal and regulatory reasons.
Work with others
We use your identity, contact and financial data to talk to Habito Brokerage, other companies or anyone else that helps you with the whole mortgage and home-buying journey.
That could include other solicitors or conveyancers, other lenders and estate agents.
Support your complaints
We use your identity, contact and marketing and communications data to manage complaints, take action to put matters right, and answer your questions.
We can use financial, transaction and special category data when it relates to the complaint you’ve made.
Ask your opinion
We collect your identity, contact, profile, technical and usage data when you complete a survey.
Follow up on your reviews
We might use your identity and contact data to get in touch to talk about a review you’ve left us, say on Trustpilot. For example, we might send you a message to say thank you, or to ask what we could have done better and how we can improve.
Keep the site running
We use your identity, contact and technical data to manage and protect our business and our website. That includes things like troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data.
Make everything better
We use your technical and usage data to analyse and test our systems, and improve our website and services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences. Quite a lot of things.
Record our communications
We use your identity, contact, profile, usage, transaction, marketing and communications data to monitor or record any communications between you and us. That includes live chat, email and phone calls.
We do this to check your instructions to us, analyse and improve our services, to help us train staff, and for quality assurance purposes (which means to help us prevent mistakes or problems from happening).
Keep us, you & others safe
We use your identity, contact, profile, usage, transaction, marketing and communications data to do checks that keep your money and personal data safe. These include identity checks, and detecting fraud and money laundering.
If you’d ever like more details about the specific legal reasons we’re relying on to process your data, just ask. We love talking data and are always happy to help.
We might share your information within the Habito Brokerage and with other companies. But we make sure they treat it as well as we do, and (of course) in line with the law. These other companies can’t just use your information for any reason – it has to be for a specific purpose and in the way we tell them to.
Here’s a list of the people and companies we might share your data with:
We work with partners in the UK, in the European Economic Area (EEA), and in countries outside the EEA as well.
If we transfer your data to anyone outside the UK or the EEA, we’ll take extra steps to protect it.
We’ll make sure the country has adequate levels of personal data protection, as determined by the European Commission.
Or, we’ll put robust, European Commission-approved contracts in place with whoever we’re transferring data to. These contracts offer the same level of protection as the EEA. For example, we rely on a contract called the Standard Contractual Clause transfer mechanism to transfer data to the US.
Get in touch if you’d like to know more about how we protect your data across borders.
We use a third party online contract management software system called Hoowla to manage your property transaction and store your information whose secure servers are based in the UK and Dublin.
Only a limited and authorised number of people can ever access your information, on a business need to know basis only.
We want to make sure your information isn’t accidentally lost, used, accessed, changed or shared in an unauthorised way. We’ve put robust security systems in place to make sure of that.
If we ever think that something’s gone wrong, we have procedures in place to deal with it. If something does go wrong, we’ll tell you – and sometimes the regulator – where we legally need to.
You can ask us to delete your data by talking to us on live chat or emailing data@habito.com. But there will be situations when, because of laws or regulations, we have to wait a certain amount of time to delete your data. We’ll keep your client matter file in relation to the sale of your property for the duration of our relationship with you and for 6 years thereafter. We’ll keep your client matter file in relation to the purchase of your property or your remortgage for the duration of our relationship with you and for 15 years thereafter. We’ll retain your information for a maximum of 10 years, if required for audit purposes.
We’ll retain financial records for 6 years following the end of the current financial year.
You have rights under the UK GDPR when it comes to your personal data. You have the right to:
