Privacy Policy

House Buddy is built so that your home-search data lives on your iPhone and your iCloud account, not on anyone else's server. This page describes, in plain English, exactly what that means.

In one sentence

House Buddy collects nothing about you, has no servers, runs no analytics, sends no telemetry, and never shows ads. The only network traffic the app generates is loading the public listing pages you ask it to load (from Zillow, Redfin, or Trulia), and syncing your own data between your own Apple devices through Apple's iCloud service.

Who runs the app

House Buddy is developed and maintained by an individual developer. The contact email for privacy questions is published on the Support page.

What House Buddy does not do

• House Buddy does not have a user account system. There is no sign-up, no login, no password, and no profile stored anywhere.
• House Buddy does not run a backend server. There is no "House Buddy cloud" that holds your data.
• House Buddy does not use third-party analytics, crash reporting, attribution, advertising, or A/B-testing SDKs.
• House Buddy does not include any tracking code under Apple's App Tracking Transparency definition. The app will never ask you for tracking permission because it does not track.
• House Buddy does not sell, share, rent, license, or otherwise transfer your information to any third party. It cannot, because it does not collect any.
• House Buddy does not read your contacts, calendar, photo library, health data, or any other personal data store outside the data you explicitly hand to the app.

What data House Buddy stores, and where

Everything you create inside House Buddy — saved listings, your ratings and notes, tags, open-house entries, schedule events, photos and videos you attach to a house, voice memos you record on a tour, your buyer criteria, your mortgage defaults, your commute presets, your offer records, and any teams you create — is stored locally on your iPhone using Apple's SwiftData framework. SwiftData uses a private file inside the app's sandbox; no other app can read it.

If you are signed into iCloud and have iCloud Drive enabled, that local store is automatically mirrored into your private CloudKit database. This is your personal iCloud space — Apple operates it, the developer of House Buddy cannot see what is in it, and it does not leave Apple's infrastructure. The only purpose of that mirror is to sync the same data between your iPhone, iPad, and any other Apple devices you sign into with the same Apple ID.

If you create a shared Team inside House Buddy and invite someone via the system share sheet, that team's listings and notes are mirrored into Apple's shared CloudKit database so the people you invited can see them on their devices. Apple operates this; House Buddy still has no server in the middle. Only the iCloud identities you explicitly invite to a team can see that team's data; private (non-team) data stays visible only to you.

What the app reads from the public internet

House Buddy supports adding houses by pasting a Zillow, Redfin, or Trulia URL. When you paste such a URL, the app loads that public listing page inside an in-app web view (the same engine Safari uses) and reads the fields that are already visible to anyone browsing the page — price, beds, baths, square footage, photos, address, open-house schedule, and so on. House Buddy does not log into Zillow, Redfin, or Trulia; it does not send your account information to those sites; it does not attempt to access any private or favorited list on those sites; and it does not maintain a backend that scrapes those sites on a schedule. The load happens only when you ask for it, and the resulting data is saved locally on your device.

The app also makes outbound network requests to:

• Apple's MapKit service, for displaying the map and turning addresses into latitude/longitude coordinates. Apple's MapKit privacy policy applies.
• Apple's CloudKit service, for the iCloud sync described above.
• The image content delivery networks operated by Zillow, Redfin, and Trulia, only to download the listing photos those sites themselves expose on the pages you opened.

No other network traffic is generated.

Permissions the app may request

House Buddy asks for system permissions only when you use the feature that needs them, and explains why in the prompt:

• Location (When in Use) — used as the starting point when you build a driving route from your Schedule tab. The fix is taken once per route and never stored. House Buddy never uses background location and never tracks you between sessions.
• Microphone — used only when you tap the voice-memo button on a house to record a tour note. Recordings are stored as media attached to that house on your device (and, if the house belongs to a shared team, on the devices of the people you invited to that team via iCloud). House Buddy never records audio without your active tap.
• Photo Library (system picker) — used only when you tap the "+" tile to add a photo or video to a house. Because House Buddy uses the standard system photo picker, it never gains access to your library as a whole; it only receives the specific items you select.

Each of these permissions can be revoked at any time in Settings > Privacy & Security on iPhone.

In-app purchases

If you subscribe to Buyer Pro or Realtor Pro inside the app, the subscription is processed entirely by Apple's App Store. House Buddy itself receives only a signed entitlement record from StoreKit that says "this Apple ID has an active subscription"; it does not see your payment information, your billing address, or your Apple ID email. Apple's App Store privacy policy governs that payment relationship.

Data retention and deletion

Because House Buddy stores your data on your own device and in your own iCloud account, you control retention.

• Deleting an individual house, schedule entry, photo, voice memo, or team inside the app removes it from your device and from your iCloud mirror.
• Disbanding a team removes that team's data for every member.
• Deleting House Buddy from your iPhone and turning off "iCloud Drive" for House Buddy in Settings > Apple ID > iCloud removes the iCloud-side copy.
• Because House Buddy has no server, there is no developer-controlled database for the developer to delete on your behalf. The full set of copies are the ones on your devices and in your iCloud account.

Children's privacy

House Buddy is intended for adult home buyers and licensed real-estate professionals. House Buddy does not knowingly collect any data from children under 13.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the "Last updated" date at the top of this page will change, and material changes will be highlighted in the in-app About panel. Continued use of the app after a change indicates acceptance of the new terms.

Contact

For privacy questions, contact us via the email listed on the Support page.