Privacy Policy

The Network Ltd ("we", "us", "our") is a real estate agency licensed under the Real Estate Agents Act 2008. Our salespeople ("Licensees") work under The Network and under Brands licensed by us, supported by our Master Brand Partners and Brand teams. This policy explains how we collect, use, store and share personal information in line with the Privacy Act 2020. It applies to this website, all our Brand websites, and our real estate services.

Our Privacy Officer can be contacted at support@thenetwork.co.nz.

We only collect information we need for our services and our legal obligations. This may include:

• name, address, phone number, email address and date of birth;
• information about property you own, are selling, buying, leasing or are interested in;
• financial or lending information where it is relevant to a transaction;
• identity documents and other information required for anti-money laundering checks (AML/CFT Act 2009);
• details you give at an open home or viewing;
• records of our communications with you, including emails, messages and notes of calls;
• information you enter into our online tools, such as the Brand Builder, quizzes and calculators;
• information about how you use our websites and respond to our advertising (see "Our websites, cookies and advertising").

You can choose not to give us information, but that may affect our ability to help you. Please tell us if your details change.

Mostly from you — when you list with us, make an enquiry, attend an open home, fill in a form, book a meeting or contact us.

We also collect information from other sources, including property portals (such as Trade Me, realestate.co.nz and OneRoof), social media lead forms (such as Facebook and Instagram), people who refer you to us, other agents and lawyers involved in a transaction, public records (such as title and council information), and business contact databases we may use to contact real estate professionals about working with us. When we collect information about you from someone else, we will take reasonable steps to let you know, as the Privacy Act requires.

We may use your personal information to:

• provide our real estate services, including marketing and selling property and communicating with buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants;
• give vendors information about interest in, and feedback on, their property;
• verify your identity and meet our legal obligations, including AML/CFT, the Real Estate Agents Act 2008 and Real Estate Authority requirements;
• supervise our Licensees, handle complaints and keep proper records;
• send you property information, updates and marketing, including by automated email and text message (you can opt out at any time);
• with your agreement, refer you to other services you may find useful (such as a mortgage broker) — if we may receive a fee for the referral, we will tell you first;
• talk with real estate professionals about joining The Network;
• run, improve and plan our business, including training and analysis; and
• enforce our agreements and protect our legal rights.

We only share your information where it is needed for the purposes above, or where the law allows or requires. This may include:

• our Licensees, their Master Brand Partner and Brand team (independent contractors working under our licence), and our Section 50 Supervisor;
• other parties to a transaction, such as the vendor or buyer, lawyers and conveyancers, and other agencies in a conjunctional or joint listing;
• the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand, for sales statistics once a sale is unconditional;
• our service providers, including our CRM, email, document storage, AML verification, accounting, property portal, photography, design, print, website hosting and analytics providers, and approved AI providers;
• third parties you have agreed to be referred to;
• regulators and government agencies, such as the Real Estate Authority, the Department of Internal Affairs (AML supervisor), the Police and the courts;
• debt collection agencies, if amounts owed to us are unpaid; and
• a buyer of all or part of our business, if that happens.

We may also share aggregated information that does not identify you.

We use approved AI tools to help us work — for example to draft messages and marketing material, summarise information, organise records and carry out routine tasks.

Some of these tools are AI assistants connected securely to our systems, such as our CRM, email, calendar and document storage. When we ask them to, they can read and work with information held there, including your personal information, to complete a task. When we use AI tools:

• we only use business or enterprise plans where the provider does not use your information to train its AI models and is bound by a data processing agreement; and
• connected AI tools are given only the access they need for the task, and we only use your information for the purposes in this policy.

Information you enter into our online tools (such as the Brand Builder) may be processed by our AI providers to produce your results.

Some of our service providers — including our AI, email and cloud providers — store or process information outside New Zealand, for example in Australia, the United States or the European Union. We only send information overseas where the provider is subject to privacy safeguards comparable to New Zealand law, or where you have authorised it after being told it may not be protected to that standard.

Our websites use server logs, cookies and analytics tools that collect information such as your browser, device, IP address, approximate location, pages viewed and search terms.

• Visitor history: our websites set a cookie (tn_vid) that gives your browser a random visitor ID for up to 12 months. We use it to record which pages you visit, how long you spend on them, which buttons you click, the advert or link that brought you to us, and your device type. If you later give us your details (for example by filling in a form or booking a meeting), we may link this history to your record so our follow-up is relevant to what you looked at.
• Website platform analytics: our website host collects basic usage statistics to keep the site running and improve it.
• Meta Pixel: we use the Meta Pixel and similar technologies to measure our advertising and show relevant ads to people who have visited our websites.
• Fonts: our websites load fonts from Google, which receives your IP address when you visit.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings (some features may not work), and control ad preferences in your Facebook and Instagram settings. Our websites may link to other websites; we are not responsible for their privacy practices.

You can stop receiving marketing from us at any time by using the unsubscribe link in our emails, replying STOP to our texts, or emailing support@thenetwork.co.nz.

We take reasonable steps to protect your information from loss, misuse and unauthorised access, including access controls on our systems and connected tools. We keep information only for as long as we need it for the purposes above or as the law requires (for example, AML/CFT records are kept for at least five years), and then securely delete or de-identify it.

You can ask to see, or correct, the personal information we hold about you — including information held in AI tools or connected systems — by emailing support@thenetwork.co.nz. We will respond within 20 working days. There is usually no charge. Some exceptions apply under the Privacy Act (for example, information relating to legal proceedings).

If a privacy breach occurs that is likely to cause serious harm, we will notify you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner as soon as practicable.

If you have a question or complaint about how we have handled your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer at support@thenetwork.co.nz. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at www.privacy.org.nz or 0800 803 909.

We may update this policy from time to time. The current version is always at thenetwork.co.nz/privacy.