This notice explains what The Homebuyers Club app collects about you, why, who sees it and the choices you have. It is written in plain English on purpose. If anything is unclear, email privacy@thehomebuyersclub.co.uk.
1. Who we are
FAO Media Ltd (company 13826044, registered office 29a High Street, West Wickham, England, BR4 0LP) is the data controller. “The Homebuyers Club” is our trading name and registered trade mark. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (registration number to follow: [ICO NUMBER PENDING]). Your data is stored in the United Kingdom (London).
2. What we collect
Only what the planner needs to work:
- Account: your name, email address and, if you give it, mobile number.
- About you: postcode and age range.
- Your plan: target price, areas, home type and bedrooms, timing, and whether you are buying alone or with someone.
- Your numbers, which you type in yourself: income, employment, deposit saved, monthly savings, monthly debt repayments and credit indicators (missed payments, defaults, county court judgements, payday loans, whether you are on the electoral roll, how much of your card limits you use, and overdraft use).
- Your journey: which steps you have ticked and when you moved between stages.
- Your choices: every consent you give or withdraw, with the exact wording you saw.
- Emails we sent you, questions you ask the Ask assistant (only if you allow analytics), and how you use the app (only if you allow analytics).
- Technical: sign-in records and the date you last used the app.
We never collect health, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or other special-category data, and we never ask for bank log-ins. The app is for adults aged 18 and over.
3. Why we use it and our legal grounds
- To provide the service you asked for (contract): your account, Ready Score, deposit tracker, affordability figures, area finder, journey and Ask. Sign-in emails and account notices are part of this.
- To connect you with a partner (consent, given at the moment you tap “connect me”): we send the partner only the details shown on that screen.
- To email you tips, updates and nudges (consent): switch off in Settings or with the unsubscribe link in any email.
- To improve the app (consent): anonymous product analytics, switched on only if you agree.
- To keep the service secure and lawful (legitimate interests): rate limits, error monitoring with personal details removed, an audit trail of who did what in our admin tools, and records we must keep for tax and accounting.
Your Ready Score is guidance to help you prepare. It is not a credit decision, a mortgage decision or financial advice, and no automated decision about you is made from it.
4. Who we share it with
- Partners you ask to be connected to: regulated firms (mortgage brokers, solicitors, surveyors, credit report and insurance providers). We show you the fee we may earn before every introduction. They become responsible for the data they receive under their own privacy notices.
- Our service providers, who act only on our instructions under contract: Supabase (database and sign-in, London), Vercel (hosting; its servers that run our code are in the United States while your stored data stays in London), Resend (email, EU), Sentry (error reports with names, emails, postcodes and amounts removed), PostHog (analytics in the EU, only with your consent) and Anthropic (the Ask assistant processes your question to answer it; we do not send it your account details).
- Lenders and housebuilders: never your details. If you switch on “offers”, we pass their messages to you; they do not receive your data.
- Authorities, if the law requires it.
We do not sell your data. We may share anonymised statistics that cannot identify you.
5. If the business changes hands
If FAO Media Ltd or the Homebuyers Club business is sold, merged or transferred, your data transfers to the new owner, who must continue to use it under this notice and respect the consent choices you have made. We would tell you before that happens.
6. Where your data is kept
Your data is stored in London. Some processing happens on servers outside the UK (Vercel in the United States, Anthropic in the United States, PostHog and Resend in the EU). Where data leaves the UK we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses, and on UK adequacy for the EU.
7. How long we keep it
- While your account is open, so the planner can keep working for you.
- If you have not signed in for 24 months we will email you, and delete your account 60 days later unless you sign in.
- When you delete your account, your data is removed immediately. We keep an anonymised record of referrals and consent events, with your identifiers removed, for up to six years for tax, accounting and legal purposes.
8. Your rights and choices
- Change any consent in Settings, straight away, as often as you like.
- Download everything we hold about you as one file from Settings.
- Delete your account from Settings; it is immediate and cannot be undone.
- Ask us to correct or restrict your data, or object to processing based on our legitimate interests, by emailing privacy@thehomebuyersclub.co.uk. We answer within one month.
- Complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk if you are unhappy with how we handle your data.
9. Security
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Every table is protected so members can only ever read their own rows. Our team can only see member data from an account protected by two-step verification, and every export is recorded in an audit log. Nobody at the Club can see your password, because there is none: you sign in with a one-time link or Apple.
10. Changes
We will update this notice when the app changes. The date at the top tells you when. If a change affects a consent you gave, we will ask you again.
11. Contact
privacy@thehomebuyersclub.co.uk for anything about your data, or write to FAO Media Ltd, 29a High Street, West Wickham, England, BR4 0LP.