Privacy Policy (AUS & NZ)

LJ Hooker Corporation Ltd, LJ Hooker Franchising Pty Ltd and Atlas Franchising Pty Ltd and their franchisees, licensees and Related Bodies Corporate ("LJ Hooker", "we", or "us") recognise the importance of protecting your privacy. LJ Hooker is bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) and is committed to complying with its obligations. Our franchisees and Related Bodies Corporate are also committed to complying with their obligations under the Privacy Act, to the extent that it applies to them.  

This Privacy Policy explains how we handle your personal information and how you can contact us if you want to access or correct any personal information that we hold about you.

Personal information is information about you, or which identifies you, like your name, contact details, and our records about you. It includes sensitive information about you, such as your health information.

Collection of your personal information

We collect personal information from our clients and customers and other individuals. We only collect personal information by lawful and fair means. 

In some cases, where it is unreasonable or impracticable to obtain your personal information directly from you, we will seek to obtain it from others, such as from your representatives (e.g. solicitor, accountant or financial adviser), from publicly available sources including social media, from Strata or Bodies Corporate, from On-Site Managers, and from vendors, buyers, landlords, and tenants.

The personal information we collect will depend on the service we provide to you, and the circumstance under which we collect the personal information. It may include:

• for clients accessing our Property Services (including prospective clients): your name, age, date of birth, contact details, family details, employment details, your financial information (including assets, liabilities, income, outgoings, spending patterns, credit history, credit reference reports and property valuations), your tax file number, your insurance details, your credit card and banking details, information relating to a will or estate, references, copies of photo identification and other information necessary to provide our services
• for our contractors, service providers and business associates: your name, contact details and information relevant to obtaining third party services or providing our services
• for applicants for a job with us or with one of our franchisees: your name, contact details, job applications, references and other information relevant to assessing applicants
• for applicants for a franchise: your name, age, date of birth, contact details, family details, employment details, your personal financial information and your business financial information (including assets, liabilities, income, outgoings, spending patterns, credit history, credit reference reports and property valuations), your insurance details, your credit card and banking details, your resume, references, copies of photo identification, results of police or background checks, interview notes, and other information necessary to provide our services.

Why we handle your personal information

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

• to interact with you, to maintain our business records, and otherwise to run our business
• to provide you with our Property Services including providing appraisals of properties, acting as a real estate agent for the buying and selling of properties, leasing properties, advertising properties, business broking, providing conveyancing and property settlement services, and aggregation, connection and disconnection of utility services
• for recruitment, employment, franchisee placement and contracting purposes
• to provide you with information about services that may be of interest to you
• for any purpose required or permitted by law
• for any purpose disclosed to you and to which you have consented
• for any purpose that you would otherwise reasonably expect.

Disclosing your personal information

We may disclose your personal information to others, such as:

• your agents or representatives
• our employees, contractors, franchisees, and service providers, including IT services, and mailing houses
• our related companies and other business partners
• our professional advisers, including lawyers, accountants and auditors
• government, regulatory and law enforcement authorities
• other service providers such as energy, telecommunication, fuel, water and insurance providers for the purpose of those providers providing their services to you at your request

Disclosure to overseas recipients

We use third party suppliers and service providers located in a number of countries outside Australia, and disclose your personal information to them in order to obtain their suppliers and services.

Security of your personal information

We hold your personal information in both paper-based and electronic files.  Electronic information is stored on secure servers that are protected in controlled facilities. Details of our security systems are available by contacting our Privacy Officer.

We seek to ensure that personal information that we hold is protected from misuse, interference and loss caused by unauthorized access, modification or disclosure.  Our employees and agents are obliged to treat any personal information held by us confidentially.

We use cookies

A cookie is a small file that our web server may send to your device when you visit our websites. A cookie is stored on your machine each time you visit one of our websites, but does not identify you or give us any information about your computer. A cookie stores information such as the type of browser you use, your operating system, your internet service provider, your Internet Protocol (IP) address, your mobile service carrier, and the online address of a previously visited site.

Most internet browsers allow you to control the extent to which your device collects and activates cookies. Any information we seek to collect via cookies is used to better understand our customer's needs and the services they are seeking from us.

Marketing and opting out

We may use the personal information that we hold about you, including your contact details, to provide you with information about products and services that may be of interest to you. You may opt out of receiving all or certain types of marketing information from us at any time by contacting us on the details provided below.

Accessing and correcting your personal information

You have rights under privacy legislation to request copies of the personal information that we hold about you, and to request its correction. If you would like to access, or request correction of, the information that we hold about you, you can contact us on the details provided below.  If we refuse access, we will provide you with a written notice explaining our reasons for refusing access. We may ask you to pay our reasonable costs of providing you with access to the personal information that we hold about you.

We seek to ensure that the personal information that we hold is accurate, up-to-date and complete.  We encourage you to contact us on the details provided below to seek correction of the personal information we hold about you if you believe that it is inaccurate, outdated, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading.  We are not obliged to correct any of your personal information if we do not agree that it requires correction and we may refuse to do so. If we refuse, we will provide you with a written notice explaining the basis for our refusal.

Questions and complaints

We welcome your comments regarding this Privacy Policy. If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or if you have any questions, concerns or complaints about the way in which we have handled your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer using the details set out below

Att: Privacy Officer

Address:  Level 29, 85 Castlereagh Street, Sydney NSW 2000
Email:   customerservice@ljhooker.com

We will investigate any complaint regarding the handling of your personal information and will advise you of the outcome of our investigations in writing. You may also lodge a complaint with the Office of Australian Information Commissioner by calling 1300 363 992 or sending an email to enquiries@oaic.gov.au.

More information about your rights and our obligations in relation to privacy, and information on making a privacy complaint are available from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which can be contacted at www.oaic.gov.au or by mail to GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001 or by email to enquiries@oaic.gov.au

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time, and the current version will be available on our website.

Privacy Statement

LJ Hooker New Zealand Limited NZCN 482425, its franchisees, licencees and related bodies corporate (LJ Hooker NZ) are committed to protecting your privacy by treating all personal information as confidential and by handling it in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020. This privacy statement outlines how we collect, store, use and share your personal information.

By submitting your details on this website, you consent to the use of your personal information in accordance with this privacy statement.

What information do we collect?

We may collect personal information about you, either directly from you or from other parties and we may generate information about you when we carry out our business.

The term ‘personal information’ has the meaning given to it in the Privacy Act 2020. In general terms, personal information is any information that can be used to personally identify you. This may include your name, address, telephone number, email address, profession or occupation. If the any of the information we collect from you identifies you, or is reasonably capable of identifying you, then it will be considered personal information

The types of personal information we collect about you may include your:

• Contact information: your name, phone number, email address, postal address, physical address
• Documents that verify your identity and other personal details: such as your passport or drivers’ licence number
• Subscriptions/preferences: when you subscribe to receive our newsletter or updates, as well as content preferences to help us identify which material you want to receive
• Billing or purchase information
• Technical information: information about the device used to access the website or other social media sites, such as IP address, browser type, time zone settings and mobile network information.

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 it in different ways including:

• when you meet with one of our agents or visit a LJ Hooker office;
• when you visit our website;
• when you enquire about a property or our services;
• when you enter promotions or competitions, conducted by us, interact with our advertisements or participate in a survey or other market research activities;
• when you contact us with an enquiry or complaint in relation to our services;
• when you register, or hold an account with us;
  
  

We may also collect personal information from third parties including:

• from third party companies such as credit reporting agencies, law enforcement agencies and other government entities;
• from our related bodies corporate.
  
  

When you use our website, we may use aggregated, anonymous analytic tracking via a third party to gather information about the way the website used. In some cases we may also collect your personal information through the use of cookies. We 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 services. If you do not wish to receive cookies, you can set your browser so that your computer does not accept them.

We may log IP addresses (that is, the electronic addresses of computers connected to the internet) to analyse trends, administer the website, track users’ movements, and gather broad demographic information.

We may also work with other companies who use tracking technologies, including web beacons, to serve ads on our behalf across the internet. These companies may collect non-personally identifiable information about your visit to our website about your interaction with our mobile app or communications, including advertising and e-mails. If you object to web beacons, we recommend that you follow the instructions for deleting existing cookies and disabling future cookies.

What do we do with it?

We collect and use your personal information to provide the information and services that you request from us, and to provide you with information about other services we consider appropriate. 

When necessary, we may use your information to:

• To assess and improve our customer service to you as well as processing any complaints or enquiries made by you.
• Comply with our legal and regulatory obligations (including Anti Money Laundering/Counter Financing of Terrorism compliance and audit and reporting requirements).
• Trade promotion purposes
• Purposes related to promotion, marketing and operations
• Statistical purposes
• Defend or enforce our rights - For example, to collect money owed to us.

Who do we share it with?

Besides our staff and our related companies (LJ Hooker Corporation, Harveys Real Estate) we may share this information with third parties who enable us to provide you with our services. These include:

• Professional advisers
• Product providers
• Our service out-source providers such as IT consultants, custodians, etc.
  
  

We will only share your personal information with third parties where it is necessary to help us do what we collected your information for, where it is required by law or where you give us authority to.

We are not responsible for the privacy policies of any third party. We require these third parties to adhere to our strict confidentiality requirements for handling personal information and we seek to ensure that they comply with the Privacy Act 2020.

Where do we store it?

We use third party cloud service providers to store and process the information we collect. We use Microsoft Azure cloud servers located in Sydney, Australia. We ensure that our cloud-based service providers are subject to appropriate security and information handling arrangements and that the information stored or processed by them remains subject to confidentiality obligations.

Disclosure of information overseas

We may disclose your personal information to our related bodies corporate and third party service providers, government organisations, prospective purchasers of part of or the whole of our business located overseas for some of the purposes listed above.

We take reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipients of your personal information do not breach the privacy obligations relating to your personal information.

Direct Marketing

We may send you direct marketing communications and information about our listings 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 Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007. You consent to us sending you those direct marketing communications by any of those methods. 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 (see the details below) or by using opt-out facilities provided in the marketing communications, and we will then ensure that your name is removed from our mailing list.

We may also disclose your personal information to our related bodies corporate, our other business partners and our service providers to give you information and offers about products and services offered by us or these companies.

What are my rights?

You do not have to provide information to us. If you choose not to provide necessary personal information when requested, we maybe be unable to provide certain information or services to you.

You have the right to ask for a copy of any personal information we hold about you, and to ask for it to be corrected if you think it is wrong. If you have any questions about this privacy statement or you’d like to ask for a copy of the information we hold on you, or to have it corrected, please contact our Privacy Officer.

Contacting our Privacy Officer

• The Privacy Officer
• LJ Hooker New Zealand Limited
• L 17, 15 Customs Street West, Auckland 1010
• TEL: +64 9 526 5590

• EMAIL: nzops@ljhooker.com

Complaints

If you believe that your privacy has been breached, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact information above. We request that complaints about breaches of privacy be made in writing, so we can be sure about the details of the complaint.

Complaints will be acknowledged and you will be advised of the progress of your complaint. LJ Hooker NZ has established, and will continue to develop, quality processes for the effective acknowledgement and processing of complaints. Our complaint handling procedures and systems ensure effectiveness and we conduct internal reviews to highlight any need for improvement.

Complaints will be recorded and analysed to ensure that our complaint management processes comply with this policy. Systemic trends and recurring problems will be identified and feedback provided to the relevant departments to improve processes and your customer experience.

If you are not satisfied with our response or wish to make a direct complaint to the Privacy Commissioner New Zealand at:

Office of the Privacy Commissioner

www.privacy.org.nz

0800 803 909

Third Party websites

This website may contain links to other websites which are not under our control. LJ Hooker NZ has no knowledge of or control over the content, and availability of those websites, or of their privacy practices. We do not sponsor, recommend, or endorse the content of other websites linked to, or referenced from, this website.

New Zealand law

The information on this website has been prepared to comply with, and is governed by, New Zealand law. It is only intended for use by persons within New Zealand’s jurisdiction. LJ Hooker NZ does not make any representation that the information on this website complies with the law in any other country.

Updates to this Policy

We reserve the right to make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. Please review our website periodically to see any updates to the information provided here. This Privacy Policy was last updated on [November 2022],