Privacy Policy

Introduction

Perchli ("we", "our", "us") is a property marketplace connecting buyers with estate agents in Northern Ireland. We are committed to protecting your personal data in compliance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018, and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR).

This Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and your rights regarding your data.

Who we are

The platform is operated by Perchli Ltd, a company registered in Northern Ireland. Our registered address and company number will be published here once incorporation is complete.

For data protection enquiries, please contact us at privacy@perchli.com.

Data we collect

Account information

When you create an account, we collect your name, email address, and password (hashed and stored securely). If you use magic-link login, we only need your email address.

Property search activity

We collect information about your property searches, saved searches, favourites, and recently viewed properties to provide personalised recommendations and search alerts.

Enquiry and viewing data

When you enquire about a property or book a viewing, we collect your name, email, phone number, and any messages you send. This data is shared with the relevant estate agent to process your enquiry.

Usage data

We collect information about how you interact with our website, including pages visited, features used, and device/browser information. This helps us improve our services.

Activity timestamps + re-engagement detection

We record when authenticated users last accessed the platform so agents can be notified if a previously-idle buyer returns to the market. We only store timestamps — never the content of pages you visit, properties you view, or actions you take. The signal drives two classifications shown to the relevant agent:

• Lapsed: when 30+ days have passed since your last authenticated request
• Re-engaged: when you return after a 30+ day idle period (the agent assigned to your prior enquiry receives a sanitised notification — your name, property reference, and "re-engaged after N days" only — no financial data)

You can object to all of this processing under UK GDPR Art. 21 via the "Agent intelligence features" toggle in your privacy settings (available in your account once the platform launches). Toggling it off immediately stops new scoring, classification, and AI summaries from being generated for your activity. Existing historical scores are preserved for audit but not refreshed.

Vendor prospect invitations

If you've enquired about a property AND indicated on your profile that you also have a property to sell, the estate agent you enquired with may invite you to have your property valued. Each agent can send you at most one invitation every 90 days, and you'll never receive more than three invitations across all agents in any 90-day window. Every invitation includes a link to turn off these emails. You can also turn them off at any time from your privacy settings — toggling this off immediately suppresses every agent's outreach to you, regardless of any prior interaction.

Engagement signals shown to estate agents

When you have submitted an enquiry to an estate agent, the agent's CRM displays an engagement score and classification ("temperature" — cold, cool, warm, hot — and "intent flags" such as "proceedable" or "vendor prospect") so they can prioritise responses. The score is computed from your existing platform activity:

• Enquiries you have submitted to that agent
• Properties you have favourited and the recency of your activity
• Whether your saved-search criteria match a given property
• Phone-reveal clicks on the agent's listings (last 30 days)
• AI search and chat activity (last 30 days, count only)
• Repeat visits to a specific property
• Completed viewings and any feedback you submitted
• Any active offer you have submitted, including its mortgage status

No new data is collected for this purpose — every signal listed above is data you already provide while using the platform. Classification is advisory only; it does not affect your access to any property or service.

Payment data

Payment processing is handled entirely by Stripe. We do not store your card details. Stripe may set cookies for fraud prevention purposes — full details will be in our Cookie Policy at launch.

How we use your data

• To provide and improve our property search and marketplace services
• To manage your account and authenticate your identity
• To process property enquiries and viewing bookings
• To send saved search alerts and property notifications
• To process subscription payments for estate agent accounts
• To communicate with you about your account and our services
• To compute an engagement score and intent classification on your enquiries (shown to the relevant agent only — see "Engagement signals shown to estate agents" above)
• To detect and prevent fraud or abuse of our platform
• To comply with legal obligations

Legal basis for processing

We process your personal data on the following legal bases:

• Contract: Processing necessary to provide you with our services (account management, property search, enquiries)
• Consent: Where you have given consent, such as for non-essential cookies or marketing communications
• Legitimate interests: To improve our services, prevent fraud, and ensure platform security
• Legal obligation: Where we are required to process data by law

Third parties

We share data with the following third-party services to operate our platform:

• Stripe — Payment processing for agent subscriptions and listing upgrades
• Google Maps — Interactive maps on property pages and search (requires functional cookie consent)
• OpenAI — AI-powered property search and chat assistance (queries are processed but not stored by OpenAI for training)
• SendGrid / Resend — Transactional email delivery (search alerts, viewing confirmations, account emails)
• Microsoft Azure — Cloud hosting and storage infrastructure

We do not sell your personal data to any third party.

Data sharing with estate agents

When you submit an enquiry, book a viewing, or apply for a rental property, your contact details and message are shared with the relevant estate agent. The agent becomes an independent data controller for any data they receive through Perchli.

Data retention

• Account data: Retained while your account is active and for 12 months after deletion
• Property enquiries: Retained for 24 months
• Search activity: Retained for 12 months
• Cookie consent logs: Retained for 36 months (regulatory requirement)
• Payment records: Retained for 7 years (legal/tax requirement)

Your rights

Under UK GDPR and EU GDPR, you have the right to:

• Access — Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Rectification — Ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data
• Erasure — Ask us to delete your personal data ("right to be forgotten")
• Restriction — Ask us to restrict how we process your data
• Portability — Receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format
• Object — Object to processing based on legitimate interests
• Withdraw consent — Where processing is based on consent, you can withdraw it at any time

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at privacy@perchli.com. We will respond within 30 days.

Data security

We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data, including encrypted connections (TLS/HTTPS), hashed passwords, role-based access controls, and regular security reviews.

Cookies

We use cookies and similar technologies on our website. A full Cookie Policy will be published at platform launch. Note: this pre-launch waiting-list page does not set any cookies, trackers, or analytics.

AI processing and search

Perchli offers an AI-powered property search feature. When you use natural-language search (e.g. "3-bed house near Belfast under £250k"), your search query is sent to OpenAI's API for parsing into structured search parameters.

• Only the search query text is sent — no personal identifiers (name, email, account ID) are included
• OpenAI processes queries under a Data Processing Agreement and does not use them for model training
• Search queries are not stored long-term by Perchli in association with your account
• You can use manual search filters instead of AI search at any time — AI search is entirely optional

The AI chat assistant on our platform operates under the same protections. No personally identifiable information is sent to OpenAI as part of chat interactions.

Automated decision-making

Perchli uses limited automated processing that may affect the content you see:

• Search result ordering: Properties with paid listing tiers (Spotlight, Premium) or active boosts are weighted higher in search results. This is a commercial ranking factor, not based on your personal data.
• Lead scoring: Estate agents receive automated lead scores (0–100) based on your enquiry, viewing, and search activity (full list under "Engagement signals shown to estate agents" above). The score drives a "temperature" classification (cold/cool/warm/hot) and intent flags (such as "proceedable" or "vendor prospect") rendered on the agent's CRM. This helps agents prioritise responses but does not affect your access to any property or service.
• AI applicant profiling: Estate agents on Skyline-tier accounts can request an AI-generated summary of your activity on Perchli (enquiries, viewings, searches, and — only if you have explicitly consented to share it — your financial profile). Before sending any data to OpenAI for summarisation, we pseudonymise it: your name, email, phone number, and contact details are never transmitted. The summary is one input among many to the agent's contact prioritisation; a human agent always makes the final outreach decision. You can disable this feature for your account at any time in your profile settings under "Agent intelligence features", which also short-circuits the lead-scoring and intent-classification described above.

No solely automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects are made about you. You have the right to request human review of any automated processing by contacting privacy@perchli.com.

International data transfers

Some of our third-party processors transfer personal data outside the UK and EU. We ensure appropriate safeguards are in place for all transfers:

• OpenAI (United States) — Covered by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (DPF) and UK Extension. Two flows: (1) parsing free-text property searches you type, and (2) generating activity summaries for Skyline-tier estate agents you have enquired with (pseudonymised; name, email, and phone are never transmitted; financial fields only included when you have explicitly consented).
• Stripe (EU and United States) — Certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Processes payment data with Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) as additional safeguard.
• Microsoft Azure (UK and EU regions) — Primary hosting in UK South and West Europe regions. Data residency within UK/EU.
• SendGrid / Resend (United States) — Covered by SCCs and DPF certification. Processes transactional email delivery only.
• Google Maps (United States) — Covered by DPF. Processes map tile requests and geocoding — gated behind functional cookie consent.

Children's privacy

Our services are not directed at individuals under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, please contact us.

Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be communicated via email or a notice on our website. We encourage you to review this page periodically.

Contact us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your data, please contact us:

• Email: privacy@perchli.com
• Post: Perchli Ltd — registered address to be published following incorporation

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. In the UK, this is the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). In Ireland, this is the Data Protection Commission (DPC).