PicAHome ("we", "us") lets you point your phone's camera at a home in England or Wales and see information about it — its sold-price history, property details, and what's happening on the local market. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, and what we do with it. PicAHome is operated by PicAHouse Ltd. If you have any questions, contact us at admin@picahome.co.uk.

Information we collect

Account details

When you create an account we store your email address and a securely hashed version of your password (we never store your password in a readable form). We also ask for your first and last name, and optionally your phone number. Your name is required; your phone number can be left blank and the app works without it. If you ask us to arrange a valuation or an introduction to an estate agent, we will ask for a number then, so they can call you.

What you tell us about your search

So we can make the app useful to you, we ask a few optional questions: what brings you to PicAHome (buying, renting, selling or just browsing), whether you own your home, when you're hoping to move, whether you've had a valuation, the postcode of your own home, and whether you'd buy at the same time as selling. If you tell us you own a home, we also record that you are not a first-time buyer. Every one of these can be skipped.

Photos you take

When you choose a home, that photo is saved to your account so you can look back at it in My Pics. It stays there until you delete it or delete your account.

Photos taken while the app works out which home you mean

Every photo you take is also stored briefly and privately, so we can find out when the app identified the wrong house and fix it. These are kept separately from My Pics, are never shown in the app, cannot be read back by anyone using the app, and are automatically deleted after seven days. Only our own staff can see them, and only to diagnose problems with the app.

Location

When you take a photo, we use your device's precise location to work out which home you're pointing at.

Property lookups

We keep a record of the homes you've looked up, so the app can show your history and so you're never charged twice for the same check.

The postcodes and streets you look at

So we can tell you when something changes on a road you've photographed — a new listing, a price drop, a home going under offer — and so you can turn those alerts on and off road by road.

Notifications

If you allow notifications, we store a notification token for your device so we can send you app messages: reminders, alerts for streets you've chosen to follow, and a weekly summary of what changed on the roads you've photographed. You can turn any of these off in the app, or turn off notifications for PicAHome in your phone's settings.

Usage information

We collect basic analytics about how the app is used — such as which features are opened — to help us fix problems and improve the app.

Purchases

PicAHome is currently free and we do not sell anything in the app. If we offer subscriptions or packs in future, Apple will handle all payments and we will never see or store your payment card details; we would store only whether a purchase is active, so we can unlock the right features.

Why we use your information

We use your information to provide the app and its features, to identify the home you photograph, to keep your account working, to send the notifications you've chosen to receive, to understand and improve how the app is used, and to tailor the app to what you've told us you're looking for.

Under UK data protection law, our lawful bases are:

Contract — providing the app and the features you've asked for, including your account, your photos and your lookup history.
Consent — location, notifications, the optional questions about your search, and passing your details to an estate agent, for a valuation or an introduction. You can withdraw any of these at any time.
Legitimate interests — keeping the app working and improving it, including the short-lived diagnostic photos described above, and preventing abuse. We have weighed this against your privacy, which is why those photos are private, unreadable from the app, and deleted after seven days.

Estate agents

We tell estate agents how many people are looking for homes in an area — for example, "40 people are watching homes in CT11 this month". These are counts only. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not give estate agents your name, email address, phone number, location, photos or anything else that could identify or contact you — unless you say yes.

The one exception is the free valuation and the agent introduction. If you turn either on in your profile, you are giving us permission to pass your details to a local estate agent — for a valuation, so they can talk to you about what your home is worth; for an introduction, so they can talk to you about homes for sale. We record which one you agreed to, and the moment you agreed. We may not have an agent in your area yet, in which case nothing is shared until we do. You can turn it off again at any time in your profile, and we will stop sharing your details from that point — though we cannot undo an introduction we have already made.

Estate agents can also pay us to feature a home in the alerts we send you. We always label these clearly so you can tell them from ordinary alerts. You can turn any alert off at any time on the Alerts screen, or turn off notifications for PicAHome in your phone's settings.

Services we use

We share the minimum information necessary with trusted services that help us run PicAHome:

Supabase — our secure database, storage and login provider (EU-hosted), which stores your account, your photos and your lookup history.
Google — we send the coordinates of your photo to Google's geocoding service to turn them into an address.
Apple — would handle all payments if we offer purchases in future.
RevenueCat — manages and confirms purchase status.
Expo — delivers push notifications to your device on our behalf.
PropertyData — provides market and area information (homes for sale or to let nearby, planning applications, council tax, flood risk and schools). We send it a postcode or a postcode district, not your identity.
HomeData — provides live "for sale" information for a single home, used only if you run a paid Property Check. This is not currently offered in the app. When it is used, we send a property reference, not your identity.

We also use public data from HM Land Registry (sold prices) and the Government's Energy Performance of Buildings register (EPC details). These are public records, and we don't send them any of your personal information.

Where your information is processed

Your account, photos and history are stored in the EU. Some of the services above are based in the United States and may process limited information there — for example, sending a coordinate to Google, or a device token to Expo. Where that happens, we rely on the safeguards those providers offer for international transfers, such as the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

How long we keep your information

We keep your information for as long as you have an account. The diagnostic photos described above are deleted after seven days regardless. If you delete your account (in the app, under Account), we delete your personal data, including your photos and lookup history.

Your rights

You can access, correct, or delete your personal information. The easiest way to delete everything is to delete your account in the app. You can also contact us at admin@picahome.co.uk to make a request, or if you have any concerns about how we handle your data. If you are in the UK and unhappy with our response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).

You can withdraw consent at any time — turn off location or notifications in your phone's settings, turn off alerts in the app, turn off the agent sharing in your profile, or clear your answers to the optional questions. You can also object to us using your information for marketing at any time, by turning off alerts in the app or emailing us.

Children

PicAHome is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 13.

Security

We take reasonable steps to protect your information, including storing passwords only in hashed form and using secure, encrypted connections.

Changes to this policy

If we make significant changes to this policy, we will update the date at the top and, where appropriate, let you know in the app.

Contact

PicAHouse Ltd — admin@picahome.co.uk

Privacy Policy