Privacy policy

GharKhoj helps people find, list and ask about houses, land, flats and rooms in Nepal, on this website and in the GharKhoj app for Android and iPhone. This policy explains what we collect, why, who else handles it, and what you can do about it. “We” and “us” mean GharKhoj.

The short version

• You can browse, search and use the tools without an account.
• We collect what we need to run accounts, listings, enquiries, chats and reviews.
• We don’t sell your information. There is no advertising, and no analytics or crash-reporting tools, in the app or on the website.
• Published listings, and the contact details listers choose to show, are public.
• You can delete your account at any time: see Delete your account.

What we collect

Your account

• Account details: your name, your email address and a password, which we store only as a salted hash, never as you typed it. You can add a phone number, a short bio, the district you live in and a profile photo, or pick an animal avatar instead.
• Google or Apple sign-in: if you sign in with Google or Apple, it goes through Firebase Authentication, a Google service. We receive your name, email address and an account ID from it, and Firebase keeps a record of the sign-in until you delete your account.
• Listers’ public profile: if you list property as an agent or owner, your profile shows your name, phone number (and WhatsApp or Viber numbers if they differ) and photo, plus a bio, your languages and the districts you cover if you add them. Anyone can see it. An email address you add to your profile stays private: only you and our team can see it.
• Saved homes: when you’re signed in, homes you save are kept in your account, so they show on the website and in the app. When you’re signed out, they stay on your phone.

Listings

What you enter when you list a property: the title, description, price, address, a pin on the map, the property’s details, photos, a video tour or video link, and 360° photos and videos of the rooms. Published listings are public, including the map pin.

We check new and changed listings automatically for signs of a scam: the same photo or description on another lister’s listing, a price far below the district’s usual, another phone number in the text, or many listings from a new account. To match photos we store a short fingerprint of each photo. Only our admins and moderators see these checks, and a check never takes a listing down on its own.

Enquiries, visits, chats and reviews

• Enquiries and visit requests: your name, phone number, optional email address and message, how you’d like to be contacted, the visit date and time you choose, and, for a visit from abroad, whether you want to visit in person or by video call and with which app. We also record your phone’s or browser’s time zone, so the lister sees the visit time in your time. The lister receives all of this, by email too, and so do their agency’s owner and managers. When you’re signed in, it is linked to your account. If you request a visit in the app while signed out, we keep your phone’s notification token with it, to tell you when the visit is confirmed.
• Chats: messages between you and a lister, stored on our servers. The lister gets an email with your message when you start a chat. Listers can keep private notes about a chat, which you never see.
• Reviews: your rating and comment are shown publicly, with your name, on the agent’s profile.
• Reports: if you report a listing, we keep the reason, the details you give and, if you add one, your phone number or email address. Listing reports aren’t linked to your account. If you report a review or a chat, we also keep a copy of what you reported and who wrote it, and, when you’re signed in, your account, so our moderators can act on it. The person you report isn’t told who reported them.
• Blocking: when you block someone in a chat, we store who you blocked, so they can’t message you or start a chat with you. Only you and our team can see your blocks.

Notifications

• App notifications: when you allow notifications, the app gets a token from Firebase Cloud Messaging so we can reach your phone. We store it with your phone type (Android or iPhone) and, when you’re signed in, your account.
• Notification history: we keep your latest 100 notifications so the app can list them.
• Saved searches: in the app you can save a search to hear about new matching listings. We store the search (place, type, price range, bedrooms) with your phone’s notification token, not with your account.

Location

• “Near me”: when you tap Near me, the app asks your phone for an approximate, low-accuracy location, and the website asks your browser for its location without high accuracy. We use it only to find listings within a few kilometres of you. It is sent with that search and is not saved to your account. On the website it appears in the page address, rounded to about 100 metres.
• Pinning a listing: when a lister taps My location, the app asks for a precise location so the pin lands where they are standing. The pin is saved with the listing and shown publicly on its map. Listers can place the pin by hand instead.
• The app asks for your location only while you are using it, never in the background.

Agency documents

To get the “Registered company” badge, an agency sends its company registration number, its PAN/VAT number and copies of both certificates. The certificates are private files: only the person who uploaded them and GharKhoj’s admins and moderators can open them. The numbers are visible to the agency’s owner and managers and to our team.

Camera, photos and microphone

The app uses the camera, your photo library and the microphone only when you take or choose photos and videos for a listing or your profile, or capture a 360° room. When you ask it to, the app adds a confirmed visit to your phone’s calendar; that stays on your phone.

What stays on your device

• Your currency, language and theme choices. On the website these are cookies, which our server reads to show the page your way but doesn’t store.
• Saved commute places, such as your work or school. To show travel times, a place’s location is sent to our server and on to the routing service (see below) for that request, but it isn’t stored. On the website, it is rounded to about 100 metres first.
• Recently viewed homes and your compare list.
• Rental agreements and rent receipts. They are made on your phone or in your browser, drafts are saved there, and they are never sent to our server.
• Homes you save while signed out.

The website also sets a sign-in cookie while you are signed in. It uses no advertising or tracking cookies.

Technical information

To stop spam, our server counts recent requests from each IP address to forms such as enquiries, reports and sign-ups. These counts are kept briefly in memory, not stored. Vercel, which hosts the website and the API the app uses, keeps standard request logs, such as the IP address, the page asked for and the time.

Photos and videos

• Photos are made smaller in the app or your browser before upload, and re-encoding them removes the camera’s metadata, including where the photo was taken. Our server also re-encodes every listing photo, 360° photo and profile photo before storing it, so that metadata is removed even if a photo arrives unprocessed.
• Video tours are usually re-encoded on your phone at 720p before upload, which drops the location and other recording metadata. Our server also removes the recording location from every MP4 and MOV video (the formats phones record) before storing it, including short clips the app sends as recorded and videos added on the website.
• 360° videos of rooms (from a 360 camera) are re-encoded in the app, or have their recording location removed in your browser, before they are sent straight to our storage. Our server checks each one and refuses any that still holds where it was recorded.
• Agency certificates: photos are shrunk like other photos. PDFs, and images that are already small, are stored as uploaded.

How we use your information

• To run GharKhoj: publish listings, pass enquiries, visit requests and messages between people, and send the notifications and emails that go with them (password resets, enquiries, visit confirmations and reminders, account approvals).
• To keep it safe: approve new listers, check listings for scams, review reported listings and agency documents, and limit spam.
• To show price trends: typical prices by area and month are worked out from published listings and contain no personal information.

We don’t use your information for advertising, we don’t build profiles of you, and we don’t sell or rent it to anyone.

Who can see what

• Everyone: published listings and their map pins, listers’ public profiles, reviews with the reviewer’s name, and agency pages.
• The lister: your enquiries, visit requests and chats with them. In an agency, its owner and managers can also see the team’s listings and enquiries.
• GharKhoj’s team: admins can see the data in our admin panel to run the service; moderators review listings, reports and agency documents.

Services that handle data for us

• Vercel: hosts the website, our admin panel and the API the app uses, so everything you send us or open passes through it, including sign-ins, listings, photos, enquiries and chats. Our server runs in Vercel’s Mumbai (India) region.
• Google Firebase and Google Cloud: sign-in (Firebase Authentication, including Google sign-in), our database, storage for photos, videos and documents, and push notifications (Firebase Cloud Messaging; on iPhones these are delivered through Apple’s push notification service). 360° photos taken with the app (about 30 shots, with the direction the phone pointed for each) are stitched by our own service running on Google Cloud.
• Apple: Sign in with Apple, if you use it.
• Anthropic (Claude): listers can ask for help writing or translating a listing (“Write it for me”), or fill in the form from a Facebook post they already wrote (“Import from a Facebook post”). Only when they do, we send Anthropic the listing details entered so far, or the post’s text and up to four screenshots. We don’t keep the screenshots. The app and the listing editor ask for permission before the first time, and writing help stays off if you say no.
• OpenStreetMap services: place search and addresses (Nominatim), nearby places such as schools and hospitals (Overpass), and travel times (OSRM routing, at routing.openstreetmap.de). Our server sends them the place names you search and the coordinates involved, never your name or account. Map images load straight from OpenStreetMap’s tile servers, and listing pages show a map from openstreetmap.org, so OpenStreetMap sees your IP address and the area on the map.
• Nepal Rastra Bank: our server fetches its daily exchange rates for prices in other currencies. Nothing about you is sent.
• Our email provider: delivers our emails (SMTP), so it handles what they contain, for example the name, phone number and message in an enquiry email.

Tapping “Open in Google Maps” on a listing opens Google Maps at the listing’s location; from there, Google’s own privacy policy applies.

Your information is stored on Google’s servers and handled by Vercel’s, which may be outside Nepal. Our database and files are kept in Mumbai, India.

How long we keep it

• Account and profile: until you delete your account.
• Listings: until you delete them or your account. A listing that hasn’t been confirmed as available for a while goes back to draft; it isn’t deleted. We keep up to 20 earlier versions of each listing.
• Photos: while a listing (its live version or latest draft), a profile, an agency or a video uses them; earlier versions of a listing don’t keep a photo. A photo nothing uses any more, such as one you removed from a listing, replaced, never used or whose listing you deleted, is deleted within a day, and no sooner than two days after its upload. A photo our scam checks list as evidence stays until the listing they checked is deleted or checked again. When you delete your account, your photos go with it, apart from ones someone else still uses, such as on a teammate’s listing or as your agency’s logo, which stay with them.
• Video tours: while a listing (its live version or latest draft) uses them; earlier versions of a listing don’t keep a video. A video tour no listing uses any more, such as one you removed from a listing, replaced, uploaded without saving the listing or whose listing you deleted, is deleted within a day, and no sooner than two days after its upload. When you delete your account, your video tours go with it.
• 360° videos: while a listing (its live version or latest draft) has them in its 360° tour; earlier versions of a listing don’t keep a video. A 360° video no listing uses any more, such as a room you removed from a tour, a video you replaced, one uploaded without saving the listing or one whose listing you deleted, is deleted within a day, and no sooner than two days after its upload. When you delete your account, your 360° videos go with it.
• Enquiries and visit requests: until the lister deletes their account, or you delete yours if you sent them while signed in.
• Chats: until either of you deletes your account.
• Blocks: until you unblock the person, or either of you deletes your account.
• Reports of reviews and chats: until the person reported deletes their account. If you made the report and delete your account, the report stays without your name.
• Notifications: your latest 100, until you delete your account.
• Saved searches: until you remove them, your phone’s notification token stops working, or you delete the account that phone is signed in to.
• Agency documents: until they are replaced or the agency is closed.

Apart from these, we don’t delete information on a fixed schedule.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account yourself in the app or on the website, or ask us by email or phone. Deleting in the app or on the website happens straight away. Delete your account explains how, and lists exactly what is removed and what isn’t.

Your choices

• See and change your profile in the app or on your account page.
• Turn off notifications, location, camera or photo access in your phone’s settings at any time. GharKhoj keeps working without them, apart from the features that need them.
• Ask us about your information, or for a copy or a correction, at gharkhoj7@gmail.com or on +977 976-439-8836.

Children

GharKhoj isn’t meant for children under 13, and we don’t knowingly collect their information. If you think a child has given us information, write to us and we’ll delete it.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we’ll post the new version here with a new effective date. If a change affects how we use your information, we’ll also tell you in the app or by email.

Contact

Questions, requests or complaints about your privacy: email gharkhoj7@gmail.com or call +977 976-439-8836.