Privacy Policy

In plain language

A home is not a transaction. The information you share with us in order to find one — or fill one — deserves to be treated with the same care.

This policy explains exactly what Rent Society collects, why we collect it, where it lives, who sees it, and how you can take it back. We’ve written it so you can actually read it. If anything here is unclear, please email us at team@rentsociety.ca and we’ll explain.

1. Who we are

Rent Society is operated by 1001622010 Ontario Incorporated (“Rent Society,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), an independent Ontario business that operates the website at rentsociety.ca and the related platform for renters and property owners in the Waterloo Region.

Rent Society is a separate legal entity from Royal LePage Wolle Realty and from Bunker Realty. We are not a brokerage. Some of the people who work with you through Rent Society are independently licensed real estate professionals who are registered with their own brokerage. When real estate services that require a licence are provided to you — for example, the preparation or signing of a lease — those services are delivered by the licensed professional through their brokerage, and the brokerage is subject to its own privacy obligations under PIPEDA, TRESA, and Royal LePage’s internal policies. Section 5 of this policy explains exactly what we share with the brokerage and when.

Our Privacy Officer is responsible for our compliance with this policy and with Canadian privacy law. Our full contact information, including how to reach the Privacy Officer, is in Section 14 at the end of this policy.

2. The information we collect

We collect only what is needed to apply for a property, to list one, and to deliver the services provided. We do not collect information for resale or for advertising, and we never sell your personal information. How long we keep information, and what happens to it when it is no longer needed, is explained in Section 8.

The categories below describe what we collect from renters and from property owners. Most renters and most owners will see only some of these categories apply to them.

Identity and contact information

Your name, date of birth, email address, phone number, and government-issued identification (driver’s licence, passport) when required to verify your identity before submitting an application.

Financial information (renters)

Your employment status, employer name, position, income, and — where you choose to provide them — bank statements, pay stubs, employment letters, and credit reports. We use this information to prepare a verified application summary for the property owner.

Housing history (renters)

Your current and previous addresses, landlord references, and rental history.

Application content and communications

The applications you submit through our platform, the messages you exchange with our team and (where applicable) your landlord, and any documents or notes generated during the process.

Property information (owners)

The details of the property you wish to rent out, photographs, financial terms, and your preferences for tenant criteria (subject to Ontario human rights law — see Section 5).

Search activity

The neighbourhoods, properties, and listings you view or save while using the platform.

Lease lifecycle information (for completed rentals)

Where Rent Society helped you rent a home or rent out your property, we retain the lease start date, end date, monthly rent, last rent increase date, and lease type for the duration of the tenancy and a reasonable period afterward. This supports the helpful reminders described in Section 4 and the ongoing landlord portal.

Technical information

Your IP address, browser type, device type, operating system, and the pages you visit on our site. We use this to operate and secure the platform.

Cookies and similar technologies

See Section 10 below for the specific cookies we use.

We do not knowingly collect Social Insurance Numbers and we do not require them to apply. Please redact any SINs from documents before uploading. If your document contains a SIN, it is your responsibility to remove it before submission.

3. Consent

We rely on your consent to collect, use, and share your personal information. Different kinds of information call for different kinds of consent:

• For information necessary to deliver the service you asked for — for example, your name, contact details, and search preferences when you sign up — your consent is captured when you create your account and agree to this policy.
• For sensitive information — financial documents, identification, credit information — we ask for express, separate consent at the moment you provide it (typically when you submit an application). You will see specific checkboxes confirming what you are agreeing to.
• For optional uses — receiving updates about new listings, hearing from us if you might be ready to buy a home in the future, receiving lease reminders during your tenancy — we ask separately and only use your information for those purposes if you opt in.
• For research and improving our services — including keeping a de-identified research record after your account is closed, as described in Sections 4 and 8 — your consent is captured when you create your account and agree to this policy. You can ask us to delete that record at any time.

You can withdraw any optional consent at any time by visiting your account settings or by emailing team@rentsociety.ca. Withdrawing consent for required service uses may mean we can no longer provide that service to you.

4. Why we collect it, and what we do with it

We use the information described above only for the following purposes:

• To help you apply to suitable properties, or to review suitable applications. We use your stated preferences, your eligibility, and your search activity to recommend properties for renters to consider, and to present owners with complete applications to review. Renters decide where to apply; owners decide on each application.
• To verify identity and prepare applications. We confirm that applicants are who they say they are, and we summarize verified information into an application package for the owner.
• To coordinate showings and communication. We schedule property tours, send confirmations, and route messages between you and the licensed agent assigned to your search.
• To support the rental process through lease signing. This includes coordinating documents, key handover, condition reports, and the move-in transition. We do not manage your tenancy after move-in.
• To support the ongoing landlord–tenant relationship (where your tenancy came together through Rent Society). This includes the landlord portal (lease records, communication history) and the tenant vault (your active lease records).
• To send you helpful, time-based reminders during your tenancy (optional, opt-in). For landlords, advance notice that you may be eligible to adjust rent at the lease anniversary. For tenants, reminders about your options as your lease term approaches. You can turn these off at any time.
• To conduct research and improve our services. We study how the platform is used — including anonymized, bucketed information that remains after an account is closed, once the details that identify you have been removed — to understand rental-market trends and make Rent Society better. Section 8 explains exactly what we keep, in what form, and for how long.
• To send you transactional emails and (with your permission) optional updates. Transactional emails — confirmations, password resets, application status — are part of providing the service. Optional updates and re-engagement emails require your opt-in.
• To meet our legal obligations. We retain certain records to comply with applicable Canadian law, including PIPEDA, the Ontario Human Rights Code, and obligations that apply when the licensed agent you work with is involved in a real estate transaction.

We will not use your personal information for any new purpose without your consent.

5. How we share your information

We share your information only as described below. We do not sell your personal information to anyone, ever, and we do not share it with advertisers.

With property owners (when you are a renter and you apply for a property)

When you apply for a property, your application goes to the owner of that specific property so they can decide whether to offer you a tenancy. To make that decision, the owner reviews your application — including your name, employment and income details, references, the contents of your application, and your supporting financial documents such as your credit report and proof of income. While your application is under review, these are shown to the owner as read-only: they can view them on screen, but they cannot download or keep copies at this stage.

If the owner approves your application and you sign a lease through us, they are then able to download and retain copies of your supporting documents, and we share the identification needed to complete the tenancy. At that point your landlord becomes the custodian of those documents under their own privacy obligations and Canadian record-keeping law, for legitimate purposes such as LTB matters, insurance, and tax records. Rent Society keeps the documents available to the landlord through their portal for a limited period after your lease is signed, after which we remove them from our system. The landlord remains responsible for the copies they have retained.

If the owner does not approve your application, they cannot download or keep any of your documents, and the raw documents you uploaded are deleted from our system within 90 days of the final decision. Your documents are only ever shown to the owner(s) of the specific property you applied to — never to other landlords, and never for advertising or marketing.

You can preview your full application, exactly as the owner will see it, before it is sent.

We never share information with owners that would expose you to discrimination prohibited by the Ontario Human Rights Code (including family status, source of income such as ODSP or Ontario Works, ethnicity, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity). Owners cannot screen applicants on these grounds and we will not assist them in doing so.

With renters (when you are an owner)

We share the property information you provide with renters who are considering or applying to your property. Your personal contact information is not shared directly with renters before a tenancy is agreed: communication is routed through our team and the assigned agent. Once a tenancy begins, you and your tenant communicate directly with each other, outside of Rent Society.

With licensed real estate professionals and their brokerage

When a real estate service that requires a licence is provided to you — for example, preparing a lease, advising on legally binding terms, or completing a transaction — your information is shared with the licensed agent working with you and, where required, with their brokerage. The brokerage has its own privacy obligations under PIPEDA and TRESA, including record-keeping obligations that may require them to retain transaction records for up to 6 years. Those brokerage records are held by the brokerage in its own systems, separate from Rent Society’s platform.

With our service providers (data processors)

We use a small number of carefully chosen service providers to operate the platform. Each is bound by contract to use your information only as we instruct, to keep it secure, and to comply with applicable privacy law.

We review these providers regularly and will update this list when it changes.

Scheduling and your assigned agent’s calendar

When we arrange a property tour for you, basic details of that showing — such as your first name, any co-applicant’s first name, the property address(es), the time, and any note you add when booking — are placed on your assigned Rent Society agent’s Google Calendar so they can run the tour. We do not add you as a guest, and we do not put your email address on the calendar entry.

When required by law

We may disclose your information when required by a valid court order, subpoena, or other legal process, or when necessary to protect the rights, safety, or property of Rent Society or others. We will challenge requests we consider overbroad.

In the event of a business transfer

If Rent Society is sold, merged, or otherwise reorganized, your information may be transferred to the new entity, subject to the same protections described in this policy.

6. International transfers of your information

Your primary data — your profile, applications, messages, and uploaded documents — is stored in Canada, in Supabase’s Canada Central region.

Some of our service providers process limited data outside Canada, as shown in the table in Section 5:

• Transactional email is sent through Resend, whose servers are in Ireland.
• Hosting of our website is provided by Vercel from servers in the United States.
• Maps and address search are provided by Google from servers in the United States.

When personal information is processed outside Canada, it may be subject to the laws of the country where it is processed, including lawful access by foreign authorities. We have contracts with each of these providers that require them to meet standards comparable to those required under Canadian privacy law.

7. How decisions are made

Documents you upload are reviewed by our team.

Approval decisions are made by property owners, with input from our team. We do not use automated decision-making to approve or reject applicants.

8. How long we keep your information

We keep your information only as long as we need it for the purposes described in this policy, or as required by law.

Renters whose application did not lead to a tenancy (rejected, withdrew, or paused for 120 days)

• Raw uploaded documents: Deleted within 90 days of the final decision or 120-day inactivity flag.
• Verified summary and application metadata: Retained for 12 months from the date the search ended, to support our obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code and PIPEDA.
• At 12 months: The record is de-identified into our long-term analytics database (see below). If you opted in to staying in touch, your name, email, phone, and stated preferences move to our re-engagement database with no link back to the analytics record.

Renters who rented a home through Rent Society

• Raw uploaded documents: Available to your landlord in their portal for 90 days after the lease is signed, then deleted from Rent Society’s system. Your landlord retains their own copy under their own obligations.
• Verified summary, lease lifecycle data, and communication records: Retained for the duration of your tenancy and for 2 years after the tenancy ends, to support the landlord portal, your tenant vault, lease reminders, and dispute defence.
• After tenancy + 2 years: The record is de-identified into our long-term analytics database. If you opted in to staying in touch or to homeowner outreach, your name, email, phone, and stated preferences move to our re-engagement database with no link back to the analytics record.

Property owners

• Account and property records are retained while your account is active.
• Records of completed tenancies follow the same schedule as the tenant side: live for the tenancy + 2 years, then de-identified.
• The brokerage involved in a transaction retains its own transaction records for 6 years under TRESA, in its own systems.

Re-engagement database (opt-in only)

If you opted in, we keep your name, email, phone, and general preferences (neighbourhood interest, budget band, bedroom preference) for 3 years from your last engagement with us. The clock resets every time you open an email, click a link, or contact us. You can unsubscribe at any time and we will delete this record immediately.

Long-term analytics database

When a record reaches the end of the retention periods above — or when you close your account — we permanently remove the information that directly identifies you: your name, contact information, date of birth, government identification, exact address, uploaded documents, and messages. What we keep for long-term market research is a de-identified record that contains none of those details.

This de-identified record holds only bucketed data — for example an age band, an income band, a credit band, a rent band, a coarse region (Waterloo Region as a whole, rather than a specific neighbourhood or address), an industry sector, an outcome category, and a calendar-quarter timestamp. It does not contain your exact date of birth, exact income, exact credit score, employer name, or exact job title, it holds no contact details, and it carries no identifier that links it back to you.

Before these de-identified records are used for analysis, we apply a k-anonymity rule: any combination of these bands that would describe fewer than five people is suppressed, so that no record stands out as unique. We keep the anonymized information on an ongoing basis to understand rental-market trends and improve the platform. We protect it with the controls described in Section 9, restrict access to a small number of senior team members, and never sell it or use it to make decisions about you.

We treat this de-identified data as anonymized and, on that basis, as falling outside the personal-information rules of PIPEDA. Because that is a legal characterisation rather than something we can settle on our own, we are confirming it with legal counsel and a re-identification test before we rely on it, and we will update this section if that review changes anything. Until then, we continue to handle these records with the same care we give personal information. Because an anonymized record carries no link back to you, we cannot single it out to return or delete it on request — see Section 11.

Other retention

• Marketing email subscribers: Until you unsubscribe.
• Technical logs (IP, browser, error logs): 90 days, then deleted.
• General platform messages: 2 years from the date of the message.

You may request earlier deletion at any time (see Section 11). Where we are legally required to retain certain records, we will retain only those specific records and delete the rest.

9. How we protect your information

We treat security as structural, not decorative. The following protections are built into how the platform works:

• All connections to our website and platform are encrypted in transit using TLS.
• Your data is stored in encrypted form in Canadian databases.
• Access to your information inside Rent Society is restricted by role. Agents see only the renters and owners they are assigned to work with. Administrative access is limited to a small number of senior team members and is logged.
• Sensitive documents (financial, identification) are stored in a separate secured storage area with stricter access controls than general profile data.
• We require multi-factor authentication on all administrative accounts.
• We rotate access credentials regularly and have an incident response plan in place.
• All team members are trained on privacy obligations and sign confidentiality agreements.

No system is perfectly secure. If we ever experience a security incident that creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as required by law.

10. Cookies and tracking technologies

We use a small number of cookies and similar technologies to operate the platform. We do not use advertising cookies or third-party tracking pixels for marketing.

The cookies we use fall into the following categories:

• Strictly necessary cookies (always on): These keep you logged in, remember your preferences during a session, and protect against fraud.
• Functional cookies (always on): These remember things like your selected city or saved searches between visits.
• Analytics cookies (with your consent): These help us understand how the platform is used in aggregate. You can decline these in the cookie banner that appears on your first visit, and you can change your choice at any time using the Cookie Settings link in our footer.

We do not use Facebook pixels, advertising trackers, or third-party marketing cookies. If this changes in the future, we will update this policy and ask for your consent.

11. Your rights and choices

Under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), you have the following rights with respect to your personal information held by Rent Society.

The right to know what we hold about you. You can request a copy of the personal information we hold about you. We will respond within 30 days.

The right to correct inaccurate information. If something we have on file is wrong, you can ask us to fix it.

The right to withdraw your consent. You can withdraw consent for any use of your personal information that is not required to deliver a service you have actively asked for.

The right to delete your account. You can delete your account at any time from your account settings, or by emailing team@rentsociety.ca. When you do, we permanently remove the information that directly identifies you — your name, contact information, government identification, uploaded documents, and messages. As described in Section 8, any information we keep for long-term research is first de-identified into anonymized, bucketed form that carries no identifier linking it back to you. Once a record has been anonymized in this way we can no longer connect it to you, so it cannot be singled out to be returned or deleted on request. If you would like to understand what (if anything) we are legally required to keep, email our Privacy Officer at team@rentsociety.ca and we will explain.

The right to opt out of optional communications. Every optional email contains an unsubscribe link. You can also adjust your preferences in your account settings, or email team@rentsociety.ca to opt out of all optional communications.

To exercise any of these rights, please email team@rentsociety.ca. We may ask for proof of identity before responding, to protect you from impersonation.

12. Children

Rent Society is intended for adults (18 or older). We do not knowingly collect personal information from people under 18. If you believe we have inadvertently collected information from someone under 18, please contact us at team@rentsociety.ca and we will delete it.

13. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy from time to time. When we make a material change — for example, adding a new service provider that processes your data, or changing how we use your information — we will:

• Update the version stamp of this policy.
• Email you in advance of the change taking effect, where the change affects how your existing information is used.
• Where the change requires fresh consent under Canadian privacy law, ask for your consent before the change applies to you.

Previous versions of this policy will be available on request.

14. How to contact us, and how to complain

For any privacy question, request, or concern, please contact our Privacy Officer:

Email: team@rentsociety.ca
Mail: 1001622010 Ontario Incorporated — Attn: Privacy Officer, 1386 King St. N, St. Jacobs ON N0B 2N0

We will acknowledge your message within 5 business days and respond substantively within 30 days. If your concern is urgent (for example, you believe your account has been compromised), please mark the subject line URGENT and we will respond faster.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to file a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada: