About this privacy policy

This document is our privacy policy and it tells you how we collect and manage your personal information.

Important: Starling Real Estate means the entity operating a Real Estate business in accordance with this website.

What is your personal information?

When used in this privacy policy, the term “personal information” has the meaning given to it in the Privacy Act 1998 (Cth). If information is about you and personally identifies you, or you are reasonably identifiable from it, the information will be considered personal information. This may include your name, address, telephone number, email address and profession or occupation.

What personal information do we collect and hold?

We may collect your name, mailing or street address, contact details, age or birth date, profession, occupation or job title, complaint details and any additional information relating to you that you provide to us directly through our websites or indirectly through use of our websites or online presence, through our representatives or otherwise and information you provide to us through our service centre, customer surveys or visits by our representatives from time to time.

We may also collect some information that is not personal information because it does not identify you or anyone else. For example, we may collect anonymous answers to surveys or aggregated information about how users use our website.

How do we collect your personal information?

We collect your personal information directly from you unless it is unreasonable or impracticable to do so. When collecting personal information from you, we may collect in ways including:

through your access and use of our website;
by telephone, letter or email;
during conversations between you and our representatives;
by contracting with us or completing application forms;
by entering competitions, promotions or requesting information or material from us; or
completing surveys, providing feedback or complaining to us.

We may also collect personal information from third parties including:

from third party companies such as credit reporting agencies, law enforcement agencies and government entities;
your representatives (lawyers, accountants and financial advisers);
your employer; or
publicly available sources of information (including third party websites) or any other organisations where you have given your consent.

Cookies and website usage information

When you access our website, we may send a “cookie” (which is a small summary file containing a unique ID number) to your device. This enables us to recognise your device. It also enables us to keep track of your activity on our website for a period of time, remember your preferences, and recognise you across different websites, services, devices and/or browsing sessions. We also use cookies to measure traffic patterns, to determine which areas of our website have been visited and to measure transaction patterns in the aggregate. We use this to research our users’ habits so that we can improve our online products and services. Our cookies do not collect personal information. If you do not wish to receive cookies, you can set your browser so that your device does not accept them.

We may also record certain information about your use of our website, such as which pages you visit, the time and date of your visit and the address assigned to your devices (that is, the electronic addresses of devices connected to the internet) to analyse trends, administer the website and track your use of our website.

What happens if we can’t collect your personal information?

If you do not provide us with the personal information described above, some or all of the following may happen:

we may not be able to provide the requested products or services to you, either to the same standard or at all;
we may not be able to provide you with information about products and services that you may want, including information about discounts, sales or special promotions; or
we may be unable to tailor the content of our websites to your preferences and your experience of our websites may not be as enjoyable or useful.

For what purposes do we collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information?

We collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the following purposes:

to perform our business activities and functions and provide products and services to you;
to answer enquiries and provide information or advice about existing and new products or services and to send communications requested by you;
to provide you with access to protected areas of our website;
to assess the performance of the website and to improve the operation of the website;
to conduct business processing functions including providing personal information to our franchisor and its related bodies corporate, our related bodies corporate, and our real estate agents, employees, contractors, service providers or other third parties;
for the administrative, marketing (including direct marketing), planning, recruitment, product or service development, quality control, survey and research purposes of our franchisor and its related bodies corporate, our related bodies corporate, and our real estate agents, employees, contractors, service providers or other Starling Real Estate franchisees;
to update our records and keep your contact details up to date;
to process and respond to any complaint made by you; and
to comply with any law, rule, regulation, lawful and binding determination, decision or direction of a regulator, or in co-operation with any governmental authority of any country (or political sub-division of a country).

To whom may we disclose your information?

We may disclose your personal information to:

our employees, our related bodies corporate, our franchisor and its related bodies corporate, other Starling Real Estate franchisees, contractors and service providers for the purposes of operation of our website or our business, fulfilling requests by you, and to otherwise provide products and services to you;
suppliers and other third parties with whom we have commercial relationships, for business, marketing, and related purposes including, without limitation, web hosting providers, IT systems administrators, mailing houses, couriers, payment processors, data entry service providers, electronic network administrators, debt collectors, utilities providers, and professional advisors such as accountants, solicitors, business advisors and consultants; and
any organisation for any authorised purpose with your express consent.

We may combine or share any information that we collect from you with information collected by any of our channel partners or Starling Real Estate affiliates (within Australia).

Direct marketing materials

We may send you direct marketing communications and information about our products and services that we consider may be of interest to you. These communications may be sent in various forms, including mail, SMS and email, in accordance with applicable marketing laws, such as the Spam Act 2003 (Cth). We may also provide your personal information to our franchisor for the purposes of direct marketing.

Your choice: If you indicate a preference for a method of communication, we will endeavour to use that method whenever practical to do so. In addition, at any time you may opt out of receiving marketing communications from us by contacting us or by using opt-out facilities provided in the marketing communications.

How can you access and correct your personal information?

You may request access to any personal information we hold about you at any time by contacting us (see the details on this website). Where we hold information that you are entitled to access, we will try to provide you with suitable means of accessing it (for example, by mailing or emailing it to you). We may charge you a fee to cover our administrative and other reasonable costs in providing the information to you and, if so, we will inform you of the amount of and reasons for these costs prior to providing access. We will not charge for simply making the request and will not charge for making any corrections to your personal information.

There may be instances where we cannot grant you access to the personal information we hold. For example, we may need to refuse access if granting access would interfere with the privacy of others or if it would result in a breach of confidentiality. If that happens, we will give you written reasons for any refusal.

If you believe that personal information we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate, please contact us using the link on our website. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that it is corrected if necessary.

Do we disclose your personal information to anyone outside Australia?

We may disclose personal information to our franchisor’s related bodies corporate, our related bodies corporate and third party suppliers and service providers located overseas for some of the purposes listed above, including our data hosting and other IT service providers located in various foreign countries.

Overseas storage: Your personal information may be stored in the cloud or a server in an overseas country and, while you continue to use our services, you consent to your information being disclosed in this manner. We take reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipients of your personal information will deal with such personal information in a way that is consistent with the Australian Privacy Principles.

Security

We may hold your personal information in either electronic or hard copy form. We and our franchisor take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse, interference and loss, as well as unauthorised access, modification and disclosure. Although we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information, we and our franchisor use a number of measures to protect it, including:

using encryption to secure data;
restricting access to our systems using leading identity management tools;
using advanced email filtering to protect against phishing and malicious software;
maintaining 24/7 monitoring of our digital environment to detect and respond to suspicious activity;
conducting regular scans of our systems to identify and fix potential vulnerabilities;
maintaining physical security at our premises; and
conducting regular security audits.

Please note: As our website is linked to the internet, and the internet is inherently insecure, we cannot provide any assurance regarding the security of transmission of information you communicate to us online. We also cannot guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted over the internet. Accordingly, any personal information or other information which you transmit to us online is transmitted at your own risk.

Links to third-party websites

Our website may contain links to other websites operated by third parties. Those links are provided for convenience and may not remain current or be maintained. We make no representations or warranties in relation to the privacy practices of any third party website and we are not responsible for the privacy practices or policies or the content of any third party website. Third party websites are responsible for informing you about their own privacy practices. The privacy policies that apply to those other websites may differ substantially from our Privacy Policy, so we encourage individuals to read them before using those websites.

Contacting us or making complaints

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, any concerns or feedback regarding the treatment of your privacy, consider we have breached the Privacy Act or would like to complain about our handling of your personal information, please use the contact link on our website or contact the Starling Real Estate Privacy Officer using the details set out below.

Privacy Officer

Starling Real Estate

3/22 Magnolia Drive, Brookwater QLD 4300

Email

[email protected]

Our representative will contact you within a reasonable time after receipt of your message to understand your queries or concerns and outline options regarding how they may be resolved. We will aim to ensure that your query or complaint is resolved in a timely and appropriate manner.

Changes to our privacy policy

We may change this privacy policy from time to time. Any updated versions of this privacy policy will be posted on our website.