Privacy Policy
Updated 17th June 2027
1. Introduction
Link Realty Limited trading as LJ Hooker Matamata (Company, we, us or our) is committed to protecting your (you) privacy and personal information.
This privacy policy explains what personal information we collect, how and why we collect it, when we may disclose it to third parties, how it is stored, and how you can access and correct it. It does not limit or exclude any rights you have under the Privacy Act 2020 (Privacy Act) or any other applicable law.
By using our property services (Property Services), our website https://matamata.ljhooker.co.nz/ (Website), engaging with our activities, or otherwise providing us with your personal information, you consent to the collection, use, disclosure, storage, and processing of your personal information in accordance with this privacy policy.
2. What personal information we collect
Personal information is information about an identifiable individual. The type of personal information we collect will depend on the service we provide to you and the circumstances of collection. It may include:
Clients and prospective clients
- Your name, age, date of birth, contact details (phone number, email address, postal address, physical address)
- Documents verifying your identity and personal details, such as a passport or driver's licence
- Financial information including assets, liabilities, income, outgoings, spending patterns, credit history, credit reference reports and property valuations
- Your tax file number, insurance details, credit card and banking details
- Information relating to a will or estate
- References and copies of photo identification
- Subscriptions and content preferences, including newsletter sign-up preferences
- Technical information: device details used to access the Website or social media, such as IP address, browser type, time zone settings and mobile network information
- Other information necessary to provide our services
Contractors, service providers and business associates
- Your name, contact details and information relevant to obtaining or providing third-party services
Job applicants
- Your name, contact details, documents verifying identity, job applications, references and other information relevant to assessing applicants
If you choose not to provide your personal information when we request it, we may be unable to provide you with our Property Services or act on your behalf effectively or at all.
3. How we collect personal information
We may collect personal information about you:
- Directly from you
- From third parties (indirect collection — see section 3.2 below)
- From publicly available sources
3.1 Directly from you
We collect personal information directly from you when you:
- Meet with one of our agents or visit our LJ Hooker Matamata office
- Visit our Website — we may use aggregated, anonymous analytic tracking via a third party to gather information about how the Website is used. We may also collect personal information through the use of cookies to measure traffic patterns, determine which areas of our Website have been visited, and measure transaction patterns in the aggregate. If you do not wish to receive cookies, you can set your browser so that your computer does not accept them. We may log IP addresses to analyse trends, administer the Website, track users' movements, and gather broad demographic information
- Enquire about a property or our services, including at open homes
- Enter promotions or competitions conducted by us, interact with our advertisements, or participate in a survey or market research activity
- Contact us with an enquiry or complaint in relation to our services
- Register or hold an account with us
- Inquire about recruitment as an agent or employee, or for contracting purposes
- Contact us over the telephone or a video call (such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom)
- Email or write to us
3.2 Indirectly from third parties (IPP 3A)
We may also collect personal information about you indirectly from third-party sources. Under Information Privacy Principle 3A (IPP 3A) of the Privacy Act, when we collect personal information about you from a source other than you directly, we will take reasonable steps to ensure you are made aware of:
- The fact that we have collected, or may collect, your personal information
- The purposes for which we are collecting your personal information
- Who we may share your personal information with
- Our name and contact details
- Your right to access and correct the personal information we hold about you
Third-party sources from which we may collect your personal information include:
- Online property portals such as (but not limited to) TradeMe Property, realestate.co.nz and OneRoof
- Strata management or bodies corporate, on-site managers, vendors, buyers, landlords and tenants — for purposes related to lease compliance or property sales and purchases
- Credit reporting agencies (for verification of credit history for leasing applications, as permitted under the Credit Reporting Privacy Code)
- Law enforcement agencies (for criminal record checks when conducting employment applications or reviews)
- Other government entities (for verification of your name, directorships, address or age)
- Your representatives, such as your solicitor, accountant or financial adviser, where it is unreasonable or impracticable to obtain information directly from you
- Our related LJ Hooker companies and franchisees
- Third-party companies that use tracking technologies (including web beacons) to serve advertisements on our behalf — these companies may collect non-personally identifiable information about your visit to our Website. If you object to web beacons, we recommend following your browser's instructions for disabling cookies
- Social media platforms
4. Why we collect personal information
Open homes
It is a condition of entry that, before entering an Open Home, you provide us with your name, telephone number and any other contact details we request, including your email address. If this information is not provided, you will be unable to enter the Open Home and we will be unable to determine or address your interest in the property. We collect this information to:
- Ensure the security of an Open Home and of any persons who attend
- Contact you after an Open Home to determine or address your interest in the property
- Contact you after an Open Home to inform you of other properties we have listed for sale or rent
- Provide feedback to our client on the interest generated in an Open Home
Buying, selling or renting a property
We may collect personal information in connection with a property sale agreement or rental agreement (Property Agreement) for the following purposes:
- Identifying and verifying your identity and the property
- Acting on your behalf in accordance with the Property Agreement
- Advertising, promoting and marketing the property for sale or rent where applicable
- Negotiating any prospective sale or rental of the property
- Liaising and exchanging information with you, the ultimate purchaser or tenant, prospective purchasers or tenants, and their legal and other advisers
- Complying with the Property Agreement, any applicable law and any dispute resolution process
- Managing, serving and signing (or arranging signing of) the Property Agreement and managing any sale or rental of the property, including assisting with exchange and preparation of statements of account
- Contacting and liaising with third parties (including goods and services providers, insurers and contractors relating to rental property maintenance) and providing those third parties with your personal information as necessary
Other purposes
We may also collect your personal information:
- To interact with you, maintain our business records, and otherwise run our business
- To provide you with our Property Services including property appraisals, acting as a real estate agent for buying and selling properties, leasing properties, advertising properties, and aggregation, connection and disconnection of utility services
- For recruitment, employment and contracting purposes
- To provide you with information about services that may be of interest to you
- To assess and improve our customer service and to process any complaints or enquiries
- For trade promotions, marketing, research and operations
- To protect and/or enforce our legal rights and interests, and to defend any claim
- To co-operate with any government, industry, legislative or regulatory authority
- For any purpose required or permitted by law, such as complying with Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Financing of Terrorism obligations
- For any purpose disclosed to you and to which you have consented or authorised under the Privacy Act
- For any purpose you would otherwise reasonably expect
We will not collect your personal information for any purpose other than as set out in this privacy policy, unless you have expressly consented to that purpose. As a general rule, we only collect personal information for purposes that would be considered relevant and reasonable in the circumstances.
5. How we share personal information
Unless expressly authorised by you or under this privacy policy, we will not disclose your personal information to any third party except where disclosure relates to the purposes for which the information was collected or where required by law.
We may disclose your personal information to:
- Your agents or representatives
- Our employees, contractors, LJ Hooker franchisees and service providers, including IT service providers and mailing houses
- Our related companies and other business partners
- Our professional advisers, including lawyers, accountants and auditors
- Other service providers such as energy, telecommunication, water and insurance providers, for the purposes of those providers delivering their services to you at your request; valuers, parties engaged to evaluate the property, owners corporations, financial institutions, building inspectors, real estate professional bodies and other third parties (including goods and services providers, insurers and consultants)
- Courts and other dispute resolution providers
- Regulators, law enforcement bodies and government agencies
- An actual or potential buyer (and its advisers) in connection with the proposed purchase or merger of any part of our business
- Third-party data providers where listing or purchase data is part of a data feed
Third party data providers we currently use include:
- Cotality (formerly CoreLogic) — property data and analytics
- REINZ - property data, statistics and ownership details
- TPS - Tenancy applications and credit checks
- VaultMRI - property CRM
Overseas disclosure
The following third-party providers may store and process your personal information outside New Zealand:
Cotality (formerly CoreLogic)
A global provider of property data, analytics, valuation tools and risk intelligence. Entity: CoreLogic NZ Limited / Cotality Australia Pty Ltd. NZ: Level 14, 10 Brandon Street, Wellington 6011. Australia: Levels 6a & 7, 388 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000. USA: 40 Pacifica, Suite 900, Irvine CA 92618. Privacy policy: www.cotality.com/legal/data-privacy-framework-policy
Where we disclose personal information to third-party providers overseas, we have conducted due diligence on the provider's privacy policy and the laws of their home country, and/or conducted a contract review to ensure their practices align with New Zealand standards.
6. How we hold and protect personal information
Security measures
We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that personal information collected, used or disclosed in accordance with this privacy policy is stored in a secure environment protected from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. Our security measures include:
- Access to information systems controlled through identity and access management
- Buildings secured with locks, monitored alarms and cameras to prevent unauthorised access
- Employees bound by internal information security policies and required to keep information secure
- Employees required to complete training on information security and privacy
- Arrangements put in place to protect your information when we send it overseas or use service providers to process or store it
- Regular monitoring and review of compliance with internal policies and industry best practice
Storage
We use third-party cloud service providers such as Office 365, MRI Vault and Property Me to store and process the information we collect. We ensure that our cloud-based service providers are subject to appropriate security and information handling arrangements and that information stored or processed by them remains subject to confidentiality obligations.
We may electronically record and store personal information we collect from you. Where we do so, we will take all reasonable steps to keep it secure and prevent unauthorised disclosure. However, we cannot guarantee that your personal information will not be accessed by an unauthorised person (e.g. a hacker) or that unauthorised disclosures will not occur. If we provide you with passwords or other security devices, it is important that you keep these confidential and notify us immediately if their security is breached.
Data retention
We will hold personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected and as otherwise permitted or required by law. We take reasonable steps to destroy or permanently de-identify personal information as soon as practicable after we no longer have a legal, regulatory or legitimate business purpose for retaining it.
Where the personal information relates to the advice, products or services we have provided, we are required by law to hold this information for seven years. After this time, provided the personal information is no longer relevant to any service we are providing, we will take reasonable steps to safely destroy or de-identify it.
Privacy breach response
We work hard to keep your personal information safe. However, if we experience a privacy breach — where there is a loss of, or unauthorised access to or disclosure of, your personal information that is likely to cause you serious harm — we will, as soon as we become aware:
- Seek to quickly identify and secure the breach to prevent further breaches and reduce harm
- Assess the nature and severity of the breach, including the type of personal information involved and the risk of harm to affected individuals
- Advise and involve the appropriate authorities where criminal activity is suspected
- Where appropriate, notify any individuals affected by the breach (directly where possible)
- Where appropriate, post a notice on our website advising clients of the breach
- Notify the Privacy Commissioner as required under the Privacy Act
7. Your rights to access and correct personal information
Subject to certain grounds for refusal set out in the Privacy Act, you have the right to access your personal information that we hold, and to request a correction if you believe it is wrong. Before we action your request, we will need evidence to confirm that you are the individual to whom the personal information relates.
If we think a requested correction is reasonable and we are reasonably able to make the change, we will do so. If we do not make the correction, we will take reasonable steps to note on the personal information that you requested it.
We may charge a fee for providing access to your personal information. We will advise you of this fee before actioning your request.
You do not have to provide information to us. If you choose not to provide necessary personal information, we may be unable to provide certain services to you.
8. How to contact us
If you wish to exercise your rights to access and correct personal information, have questions about this privacy policy, or believe your privacy has been breached, please contact our privacy officer:
Privacy officer: Gavin Van Lierop
Phone: 07 888 5677
Email: gavin.vanlierop@ljhooker.co.nz
Address: 62 Arawa Street, Matamata
9. How to contact the Privacy Commissioner
If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your personal information, you can make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner at:
- More information on how to make a complaint: https://www.privacy.org.nz/your-rights/making-a-complaint-to-the-privacy-commissioner/
10. General
We may vary this privacy policy from time to time. We will provide notice of any change by uploading the updated policy on our Website. After we provide that notice, you will be deemed to have accepted the updated privacy policy if you continue to use our Property Services, our Website, engage in our activities or otherwise provide us with your personal information.
If any provision in this privacy policy is found by a court to be invalid, void or unenforceable, whether under the Privacy Act or any other applicable law, that provision will be deemed deleted and the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect.
This privacy policy was last updated on 17th June 2026