How Private Buyers handles property enquiry information.

Last updated: 2 July 2026. Current PDF version: 2026-07-02 v9.

Private Buyers is a privately operated New Zealand property acquisition service and a New Zealand "agency" under the Privacy Act 2020. This page is both our privacy policy and our collection notice. It applies to property enquiries, general website questions, direct emails, phone or message enquiries, referrals, and any photos, documents, source tracking, or follow-up correspondence sent to Private Buyers.

This policy is written for New Zealand property owners, referrers, and authorised contacts. New Zealand's indirect-collection notification rules have applied since 1 May 2026, so where information reaches us through a referral or another source, we take reasonable steps to tell the person concerned before using it for investor review.

Private Buyers is not a public listing service, licensed real estate agency, valuation service, law firm, lender, or financial adviser, and nothing in an enquiry or review creates an offer, valuation, or agency relationship. Submitting information costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

• What we collect
• Why we collect it
• Who may receive it
• Storage, overseas providers, and tracking
• How long we keep information
• Your rights and complaints

View approved PDF privacy policy on this page

What We Collect, And How

We collect only the information reasonably necessary to review and respond to a New Zealand property enquiry. Depending on what you choose to provide, this may include:

• Contact details — name, email address, phone number, town or region, and your relationship to the property.
• Property details — address or area, property type, occupancy, tenancy or rent details, price expectation, timing, listing or agency status, and honest condition notes.
• Photos and documents — photos, photo links, repair notes, and any rates, insurance, council, valuation, title, tenancy, or renovation documents you voluntarily supply. Supplied files may contain embedded metadata such as capture time or location; we do not use photo metadata for any purpose other than enquiry review.
• Campaign and technical data — the QR code, flyer, advertisement, or link that brought you to us (source and UTM parameters), landing page, submission time, form metadata, and the security and delivery logs generated by our hosting and email providers. No advertising cookies are involved.
• Correspondence and review records — messages, attachments, follow-up history, and our internal screening notes relating to your enquiry.

We collect directly from you wherever possible: through the website forms, direct email, phone, or follow-up conversation. We also receive referrals, and we use publicly available New Zealand property sources — council rating information, QV and comparable-sales tools, mapping and street-imagery tools, and title records — only to assess a property that has been put to us.

Please do not send identity documents, bank account details, health information, or other sensitive material unless we specifically request it for a lawful transaction step. If sensitive or irrelevant information arrives unrequested, we restrict access to it and remove it from working records where practical.

Why We Collect It, And How We Use It

We use personal information only for the purposes it was collected for, or purposes directly related to them:

• Confirming we have received your enquiry and providing a clear first response within the stated 48-hour window for detailed property enquiries.
• Assessing whether a property may suit a direct private buyer or investor review — value, rent, rates, insurance, condition, repair risk, timing, and funding fit.
• Asking follow-up questions, requesting photos or missing details, and deciding whether an enquiry should progress.
• Preparing internal review notes, deal calculations, and — where your permission is recorded — a private investor review file.
• Keeping operational records, preventing duplicates and misuse, measuring which campaigns produce genuine enquiries, and securing our systems.
• Meeting record-keeping, accounting, tax, insurance, legal, and dispute-management obligations.

We do not sell personal information, rent contact lists, or trade leads to third parties, and we will not do so under this policy.

Collection Notices And Referrals

Whenever we collect information directly from you, we make clear at or before the point of collection: that information is being collected; why; who may receive it; that providing it is voluntary; what may happen if core details are missing; that Private Buyers holds it; and how to make a privacy request. On the website forms, the privacy summary and this policy are displayed at the point of collection and the confirmation checkbox stays locked until the summary has been opened and scrolled.

Referrers must have permission before submitting another person's contact details or property information. When we receive personal information from someone other than the person concerned and decide to use it, we will — as soon as reasonably practicable, and unless a legal exception applies — take reasonable steps to make that person aware of the collection, its purpose, the intended recipients, that Private Buyers holds the information, and their access and correction rights. In practice, a referred owner hears from us before any investor sees their information. If a referred owner asks us not to make contact again, we close the enquiry and keep only a minimal suppression record.

Who May Receive It

Your information is never placed on a public listing platform. It is used first for private internal review, and disclosure is limited to:

• Authorised Private Buyers personnel — the small number of people authorised to triage, review, respond to, and manage enquiries, each bound by our internal confidentiality and access rules.
• Approved investors or purchasers — only where the property appears suitable and your sharing permission is recorded. Investors receive a controlled review file under our Investor Review Confidentiality Standard and must not re-circulate it.
• Service providers — hosting, forms, email, storage, security, and document generation, strictly to operate the service.
• Professional and transaction participants — lawyers, conveyancers, lenders, insurers, accountants, building inspectors, or valuers, where needed for a lawful sale or review step in which you are participating.
• Authorities — regulators, courts, or law enforcement where disclosure is required or permitted by law, or necessary to prevent or lessen a serious threat to safety.

Any disclosure outside these categories will only occur with your authorisation, where New Zealand law requires it, or where New Zealand law otherwise permits it.

Storage, Security, New Zealand And Overseas Providers, And Tracking

All website traffic is encrypted in transit. Administrative access is restricted to authorised personnel and protected by strong credentials and multi-factor authentication where the provider supports it. Access follows least privilege — owner-supplied photos and documents are available only to people who need them — and investor-facing material is prepared as a controlled review file rather than raw record access.

Some of our technology providers store or process information outside New Zealand — including edge-hosting and security infrastructure (currently Cloudflare and related service providers), business and transactional email providers, and cloud file storage. Before disclosing personal information to a provider outside New Zealand, we satisfy ourselves, on reasonable grounds, that your information will be subject to safeguards comparable to the Privacy Act 2020 — for example through binding contractual terms, data-processing commitments, published security controls, or another Privacy Act pathway. Where comparable safeguards cannot be confirmed, we either do not use that provider for personal information or seek your express authorisation first.

• We do not use third-party advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or cross-site profiling on privatebuyers.co.nz.
• Campaign attribution uses link parameters (QR, flyer, and UTM codes) captured with your form submission — not cookies.
• The invite-only portal stores a login token in the browser's local storage for approved users only; it is not used to track browsing.
• Our hosting provider generates standard server and security logs (IP address, request time, user agent) used solely for security, abuse prevention, and reliability.

How Long We Keep Information

We keep personal information no longer than it is required, then delete or de-identify it. Indicative periods: general questions with no property submitted — up to 12 months; property enquiries that do not progress — up to 24 months from last contact; enquiries progressed to investor review — the duration of the discussion plus up to 24 months; records connected to a completed transaction — 7 years, consistent with New Zealand tax and business record-keeping requirements; server and security logs — up to 12 months. Stop-contact requests are kept as a minimal suppression record for as long as needed to honour them, and campaign analytics are retained only in de-identified or aggregated form. The full schedule is in the approved PDF.

Your Rights: Access, Correction, Withdrawal, And Stop Contact

You can ask for confirmation that we hold personal information about you, access it, and request correction. You can also withdraw permission for further investor sharing, ask us to delete information we no longer need, or ask us to stop contacting you. Email privacy@privatebuyers.co.nz or enquiry@privatebuyers.co.nz with "Privacy request" in the subject line, or use the Access, Correction and Withdrawal form.

• We respond as soon as practicable and no later than 20 working days, as the Privacy Act requires, and we do not charge for access or correction requests.
• We may need to verify your identity before releasing information, so records are not disclosed to the wrong person.
• If we do not agree a correction is needed, you may ask us to attach a statement of correction to the record, and we will do so.
• If you withdraw sharing permission, we stop further investor circulation from that point and tell any investor holding a live review file to stand the property down.

Complaints. Contact the Privacy Officer first — we acknowledge complaints within 5 working days and give a substantive response within 20 working days (see the Complaints and Correction Process). You may also complain directly to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at any time: privacy.org.nz | 0800 803 909 | PO Box 10094, The Terrace, Wellington 6143.

Privacy Breach Response

If we become aware of a privacy breach, we act immediately to contain it, assess it, and reduce harm, with an internal target of assessing seriousness within 72 hours. If a breach has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm, we will notify the Office of the Privacy Commissioner as soon as practicable and notify affected people directly wherever practicable — telling them what happened, what information was involved, what we have done, and what they can do to protect themselves. Every breach, notifiable or not, is recorded with the corrective action taken.

Electronic Messages And Sender Identity

Replies to your enquiry are service messages, not marketing. If we ever send commercial electronic messages, they will comply with the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 — sent only with consent, clearly identifying Private Buyers, and carrying a functional unsubscribe honoured within 5 working days. Property correspondence is sent from verified Private Buyers sender addresses, not personal forwarding addresses, and automated acknowledgements never contain an offer, valuation, or promise that a buyer will proceed.

Automated Tools And AI Assistance

We use software tools, templates, calculations, and AI-assisted drafting to organise enquiries, prepare internal notes, summarise property information, and draft documents. These tools support human review — no decision to decline, progress, or price a property is made solely by an automated system, and a person reviews owner-facing material before it is sent. Personal information is not used to train third-party AI models.

Children, Identifiers, And Scope

Our service is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. Internal reference numbers identify enquiries, not people, and are not used as personal identifiers outside our enquiry handling systems. We do not operate CCTV and do not record phone calls. External sites we link to have their own policies.

Changes To This Policy

We review this policy at least annually, and earlier if our providers, investor processes, campaign channels, or the law change. Material changes are published here with a new version number and date, and the version history is retained. Information collected under an earlier version continues to be handled no less protectively than that version promised.

Privacy Contact

Privacy Officer: The Privacy Officer, Private Buyers. Private Buyers maintains a designated Privacy Officer as required by section 201 of the Privacy Act 2020.

Email: privacy@privatebuyers.co.nz or enquiry@privatebuyers.co.nz (subject line "Privacy request")

Approved policy: Private Buyers Privacy Policy — approved PDF, version 2026-07-02 v9

Private Buyers is not a licensed real estate agency, valuation service, or public listing platform. A review response is not an offer, valuation, legal advice, or promise that any buyer will proceed.