Privacy policy

The short version

The data controller is Avlas Digital (sole trader, Ireland, registered business name No. 793798, Companies Registration Office), trading as checkmyhouse.ie, Park House, The Square, Claremorris, Co. Mayo, F12 HE97, Ireland. Contact: hello@checkmyhouse.ie.

You can check a house without an account or sign-up. An account is optional: it is there for people who buy report credits or want all their reports in one place. If you buy a report, Stripe takes the payment and we keep what the order needs. We do not sell personal data and we do not build ad profiles.

What happens to an Eircode you check

When you check an Eircode or a point on the map, we look the location up against the public records listed on the About page and show you the results. The result is cached for a few hours so a repeat check is fast. If no BER certificate is matched to the Eircode, the Eircode and the address you typed are kept so we can look for the certificate; the address text is deleted after 30 days.

To see which parts of the site work, we record simple events such as “report viewed” or “pay button pressed”, with the Eircode or map point, the country your connection comes from and the type of device (mobile, tablet or desktop). These records hold no IP address, name or email and are deleted after 90 days. Our lawful basis is legitimate interest (GDPR article 6(1)(f)) in running and improving the service. We do not link checks to people.

If you buy a full report

Payment is taken by Stripe, which collects your card details and email address under its own privacy policy; we never see the card. Stripe passes us your email address, the amount and the address you paid for, and keeps the address with the order. We use them to deliver the report, answer your questions and keep the record of the sale that Irish tax law requires for six years. Our lawful basis is the contract with you (article 6(1)(b)) and that legal obligation (article 6(1)(c)).

We keep a copy of your report and its PDF so the link keeps working and we can send it again if you ask. The link contains the order reference, and anyone with the link can open that one report. You can delete the report from your account, or ask us by email, and the report, its address and the PDF are removed; the payment record stays for six years. Emails are sent through Amazon Web Services (Amazon SES, Ireland region). We do not add you to any mailing list; the email with your report may mention report credit packs in one line. Three days after a report we send one follow-up asking whether it was useful: a star rating and, if you wish, a sentence. We keep that rating with the order. We quote a sentence on this site only if you tick the box allowing it, and then without your name or the address, showing just the county and the month; you can change or withdraw it from the same link at any time. That is the only follow-up.

If someone else bought a report on the same house in the last 24 hours, the next buyer is told only that it was bought and when, so nobody pays twice by mistake. We never show who bought it.

If you open an account

An account is optional. It is your email address, your credit balance and your purchase history, nothing more. When you ask to sign in we email a six-digit code and keep a hashed copy of it for 10 minutes. After you enter it we set one cookie, cmh_account, that keeps you signed in for 30 days on that device; it holds a signed copy of your email address and nothing else. This cookie is strictly necessary for the sign-in you asked for, so it needs no consent; sign out to remove it. Your account page lists every report bought with your email address, including reports bought before accounts existed. The account stays until you ask us to close it; purchase records stay for six years under Irish tax law. Lawful basis: the contract with you.

Property records, and the people behind them

Most of what the report shows is about a place, not a person: flood maps, geology, planning files, sold prices. One record is closer to home. A Building Energy Rating certificate names the address of a dwelling, and an address can point to the household that lives there, so we treat BER records as personal data.

When an address is checked we look for its current Building Energy Rating certificate on the SEAI National BER Register and keep the details it gives about the home: the rating, the energy and CO₂ figures, the address and Eircode, the certificate number and dates, and the floor area, dwelling type and year of construction, which on older certificates come from the SEAI advisory report instead. That way the same check is fast the next time. We do not keep electricity meter numbers (MPRN) or the assessor’s details in our records. A paid report reproduces the SEAI certificate and advisory report unchanged in its PDF, as they appear on the register, including what SEAI prints about the assessor; that copy is kept with the report as described above.

Our lawful basis is legitimate interest (GDPR article 6(1)(f)): the law already requires the rating to be advertised and the certificate to be produced to prospective buyers and tenants, the report exists so that a buyer or tenant can see it before committing money, and the record is only ever shown for the single address that was checked. Certificates are kept while they are on the register; expired and replaced certificates are mentioned as history, but the documents are not reproduced.

If you own or live in a property and would rather its BER entry did not appear here, email hello@checkmyhouse.ie with the Eircode. We will stop displaying it within seven days, without asking you to prove anything beyond a working email address, and it will stay hidden if a new certificate is later published for that address. This is your right to object under GDPR article 21 and we do not contest it. Our backups are kept for 30 days, so a removed entry is gone from them within that time.

Who else sees data

We use these providers to run the service. Each sees only what its job needs.

Cloudflare hosts the site and protects it. It processes standard technical logs (IP address, request data). Cloudflare’s privacy policy.
Supabase stores our records and report files, in London (the UK, which the EU recognises as giving adequate protection).
Stripe takes payments and is responsible for card data itself. Stripe’s privacy policy.
Amazon Web Services sends our emails from its Ireland region.
Google finds the location of an Eircode you check, and runs the analytics and ads measurement described below.
Microsoft Azure Maps draws the maps in the PDF and works out travel times. It sees the location of the house.
A search provider sees the Eircode when the report looks for the sale advert of the house.
OpenFreeMap serves the map tiles on screen and sees the map area you look at and your IP address.
The public bodies whose records we read see the location or Eircode being checked, as does our sister site rentprices.ie (also run by Avlas Digital) for the tenancy registration check.

Stripe, Google, Cloudflare, Microsoft and our search provider may process data in the United States. For those transfers we rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified under it, and on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses otherwise.

Analytics and cookies

We use Cloudflare Web Analytics: aggregate visit counts, no cookies, no fingerprinting, no cross-site tracking. Google Analytics and Google Ads cookies are set only if you click OK in the cookie banner: they count which pages get used and whether our ads lead to sales. That is based on your consent (article 6(1)(a)), and you can withdraw it at any time. We never allow ad personalisation. .

Until you choose, or if you click No thanks, the Google tag runs in consent-denied mode: it stores nothing on your device and sets no cookies. It sends Google an anonymous signal that an ad click led to a visit or a purchase, so we can tell whether the advertising pays for itself. The call to Google carries your IP address and browser type; see Google’s privacy policy.

The site itself keeps a few small notes in your browser. For the open tab only: where the visit came from (for example a link from homeprices.ie, or an ad click reference if you arrived from one of our ads). It goes with a purchase to Stripe so we can see which source led to a sale, and it is gone when you close the tab. On the device: your cookie choice, and a note that you already bought the report on a house, so the button opens your report instead of charging you again.

How long we keep things

Check results: a few hours.
Address typed for an unmatched BER: 30 days.
Usage events: 90 days.
Sign-in codes: 10 minutes.
Reports and their PDFs: until you delete them or ask us to.
Accounts: until you ask us to close yours.
Payment and sale records: six years, as Irish tax law requires.
BER records: while the certificate is on the register; backups 30 days.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you can ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, and for it in a portable format. You can have it corrected, have it deleted where the law allows, restrict how we use it, object to it, and withdraw consent you gave. For buyers that means the email address, the address you paid for and the reports; for property owners, the BER entry for your address. Email hello@checkmyhouse.ie and we will answer within one month. You can also complain to the Data Protection Commission (dataprotection.ie).

Changes

If we change how we handle data, we update this page and the date at the top. Questions: hello@checkmyhouse.ie.