Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

Ottawa Ideal Homes (ottawaidealhomes.ca) is the real estate practice of Narges Shahsavarani, a REALTOR® with Royal LePage Team Realty, Brokerage, serving Ottawa, Kanata, Nepean, Barrhaven, Orleans, and Gatineau. This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect through this website, why we collect it, how we use and protect it, and the choices you have. It applies to ottawaidealhomes.ca and every tool built into it — property search, HAI, Home Evaluation, VOW sold-data access, the blog, and our booking and contact forms.

This policy is written to comply with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and the ten privacy principles it's built on, and reflects the standards Royal LePage applies across its network.

2. Information We Collect

We only collect personal information you choose to give us, or that's generated automatically as you use the site.

• When you contact us — the contact form, "Book a Free Consultation," or "Message Narges": your name, email, phone number, and whatever message or details you include.
• When you request a home evaluation — the property address, your name, email, and phone number. We generate an AI-assisted estimate using current market and comparable-sales data; to protect your privacy (and the seller's, if it isn't your own home), we email you a confirmation link and only unlock the actual number once you click it.
• When you register for sold-price access (VOW) — your name, email, phone number, and a password (stored as a one-way hash — we never see or store your password in plain text). This unlocks closed/sold sale prices, which local board rules require to sit behind a password-protected, consent-based portal.
• When you search for or inquire about a listing — your search criteria (price range, area, beds/baths, or an address or neighbourhood you type in for map search), and, if you request a showing or more information on a specific property, your name, email, phone, and the MLS® number/address of that listing.
• When you chat with HAI — the text of your conversation, and any name, email, or phone number you volunteer during it (for example, if you ask HAI to have Narges follow up with you).
• When you subscribe to updates — your email address, via the Subscribe page or the newsletter box in the footer.
• When you comment on the blog — your name, email address (not published), and comment text.
• When you book an appointment — through our Calendly-powered booking pages: your name, email, phone (for call-type bookings), and the date/time you select.
• Automatically, as you browse — standard technical data such as IP address, browser type, device type, and pages visited, collected through Cloudflare (our hosting provider) and Cloudflare Web Analytics, a cookieless, privacy-focused analytics tool that doesn't track you across other websites.

We don't require you to create an account or share personal information just to browse listings, read the blog, or use the mortgage calculator — that tool runs entirely in your own browser, and your inputs are never sent to us.

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the personal information you provide to:

• Respond to your inquiries and follow up on the specific service you asked about
• Prepare home evaluations, market comparisons, and listing searches
• Send transactional emails — booking confirmations, inquiry receipts, email-verification links, and sold-data account confirmations
• Send newsletter and market-update emails, only if you've subscribed, and only until you unsubscribe
• Operate and improve HAI and our other AI-assisted tools
• Schedule and manage consultations and showings
• Maintain records required by Royal LePage, RECO (the Real Estate Council of Ontario), and CREA for real estate transactions and MLS® data
• Keep the website secure and prevent misuse

We never use your personal information for automated decision-making that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you, and we never sell your personal information to third parties.

4. AI-Powered Features (HAI & Home Evaluation)

HAI, our built-in AI real estate assistant, and the AI-assisted estimate behind our Home Evaluation tool, are both powered by Anthropic's Claude. When you chat with HAI or request a home evaluation, the relevant conversation or property details are sent to Anthropic's API to generate a response. Anthropic processes this data solely to return the AI's answer to us — under our agreement with them, it isn't used to train Anthropic's models and isn't retained beyond what's needed to provide the service.

Property listing data referenced by HAI (active or sold) comes from SimplyRETS, an authorized data feed of the local MLS® system. Address lookups — the Home Evaluation address field and near-me/radius search — are processed through Google's Places and Geocoding services, with OpenStreetMap's Nominatim geocoding service as an automatic fallback.

5. Cookies & Similar Technologies

This site uses a small number of strictly necessary cookies:

• vow_session — keeps you signed in to your password-protected sold-data account
• admin_session — used only by Narges and authorized team members to sign in to the site's internal admin dashboard

Both are essential, functional cookies — set only when you sign in, never used for advertising, and never shared with ad networks. We also use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which measures overall site traffic without setting tracking cookies or building a profile of you across other sites. We don't use third-party advertising or retargeting cookies.

6. How We Share Your Information

We don't sell your personal information, ever. We share it only as needed to run the services above, with:

• Royal LePage Team Realty, Brokerage — as Narges's brokerage of record, for supervision, compliance, and transaction records required under Ontario real estate law
• Follow Up Boss — our client relationship management (CRM) system, used to track and follow up on inquiries
• Mailchimp — our email marketing platform, used only if you've subscribed to updates
• Resend — our transactional email provider, used to deliver confirmation and account-related emails
• Calendly — our appointment-scheduling platform, used when you book a consultation or showing
• Cloudflare — our website hosting, database, and analytics provider
• WordPress.com / Automattic (Jetpack) — our content platform for the blog and core site pages, including the newsletter sign-up widget in the footer
• Anthropic — as described in "AI-Powered Features" above
• SimplyRETS and the local real estate board — for MLS® listing and market data
• Google — for address autocomplete and geocoding (Home Evaluation and near-address search)

Each of these providers is contractually required to protect your information and use it only to provide their service to us. We may also disclose personal information if required by law, to protect our legal rights, or in connection with a business transition (such as a change in brokerage affiliation), in which case your information would remain subject to a privacy policy at least as protective as this one.

7. MLS®, CREA & REALTOR® Data

Listing and market data shown on this site is sourced from the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) via SimplyRETS, an authorized data provider, and is owned by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) and its member boards. Sold-price data is made available only to visitors who register for and confirm a password-protected account, in line with CREA and local board rules for displaying closed sale data. See the Disclaimer section in our website footer for the full trademark notice covering CREA®, MLS®, Multiple Listing Service®, and REALTOR®.

8. Data Retention

We keep personal information only as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose it was collected: active client and inquiry records for as long as needed to provide our services and meet Royal LePage's and RECO's record-keeping requirements (which can require retaining transaction-related records for several years), newsletter subscriptions until you unsubscribe, and account data (VOW, admin) until you close your account or ask us to delete it. When information is no longer needed, we securely delete or anonymize it.

9. How We Protect Your Information

We use industry-standard safeguards to protect your information, including encrypted connections (HTTPS) across the entire site, hashed password storage (we never store passwords in plain text), access-controlled admin systems, and reputable, security-vetted service providers for hosting, email, and data storage. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure, but we work to protect your information at every step and limit access to only what each team member needs to do their job.

10. Your Privacy Rights & Choices

Under PIPEDA, you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you
• Correct any information that's inaccurate or incomplete
• Withdraw consent for us to use your information, subject to legal or contractual restrictions
• Unsubscribe from marketing/newsletter emails at any time, using the link in any email or by contacting us
• Delete your VOW or admin account, or ask us to delete inquiry records we no longer need to keep
• Ask questions about how your information is handled, or raise a concern if you believe we haven't met our obligations

To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details below — we'll respond within a reasonable time and, in most cases, within 30 days.

11. Children's Privacy

This website is intended for adults seeking real estate services and isn't directed at children. We don't knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we'll delete it.

12. Third-Party Links

Our site links out to services like Google Maps, WhatsApp, Calendly, and our social media pages. Once you leave ottawaidealhomes.ca, that service's own privacy policy applies — we encourage you to review it, as we aren't responsible for how those third parties handle your information.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, tools, or the law. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page always reflects the most recent version. If a change is significant, we'll make that clear on the site.

14. Contact Us

Questions, requests, or concerns about this policy or your personal information? Reach out directly.

If you're not satisfied with our response, you can also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at priv.gc.ca.