Privacy notice

Who we are

Aurban is a Nigerian real estate business offering rentals, property management, sales, interior decoration and office branding. We are the data controller for the personal information described here.

For anything in this notice — questions, requests or complaints — contact us at our support address, or on WhatsApp using the number shown on this site.

What we collect

When you just browse. Our website and the services behind it record ordinary technical information: your IP address, the type of device and browser you use, the pages you open, and where you arrived from.

When you send us an enquiry. The details you type into a form — typically your name, phone or WhatsApp number, email address, what you are looking for, the area you want, your budget, and anything you write in a message box. If you ask to view a property or book a call, we also record the date and time you asked for.

When you use a paid service. In addition to the above, the value range of the property concerned, and the payment receipt you upload as proof of transfer. For a mandate, the address, asking price and documentation status of the property you are asking us to sell or let.

When you ask us to rent in our name. This service needs more, because we are entering into a tenancy on your behalf. We ask for your full legal name, a government identification type and number, your residential address and your occupation. We also ask for the name and phone number of one other person we can contact if we lose touch with you during the lease — we use it only after trying to reach you directly.

When you create an account. Your email address, the sign-in code we send you, the name you choose to be addressed by, and — if you sign in with Google — the name, email address and account identifier Google returns to us. We also record the IP address and browser you signed in from, so that we can tell your sessions apart and spot suspicious ones.

Information about other people. If you give us someone else's details — most commonly the fallback contact for a rent-in-our-name tenancy — please tell them you have done so. We hold only their name and phone number, we use it only to reach you, and we never contact them for any other reason. If they get in touch we will tell them what we hold and remove it on request.

Enquiries you sent before you had an account. If you later create an account with the same email address you used on a form, the earlier enquiry will appear in your account. That is deliberate, so your history is in one place.

Why we are allowed to use it

Nigerian data protection law requires us to tell you the specific legal basis for each use. Ours are:

• To perform a contract with you, or to take steps you have asked for before entering one. This covers responding to your enquiry, matching you with property, arranging and confirming viewings, carrying out a paid service, checking your identity where a service requires it, and confirming a payment.
• To comply with a legal obligation. Where a law, a regulator or a tax requirement obliges us to collect or keep something.
• For our legitimate interests — running, securing and improving the business — provided your rights do not override them. This covers keeping the website working and safe, keeping records of our dealings, and understanding how the site is used.
• With your consent, for optional things you have separately agreed to, such as marketing messages. You can withdraw that consent at any time, and withdrawing it is as easy as giving it.

Giving us your information is voluntary. But some of it is necessary to do the job — if you leave out a phone number we cannot reach you, and we cannot rent in your name without the identification the process requires.

We do not make decisions about you by automated means, and we do not profile you. A person reviews every enquiry.

Who else sees it

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not give your name, phone number or email address to anyone for their own marketing.

We do share it in these situations:

• Our own team. Enquiries and service requests — your name, phone number, what you are looking for, your area and budget, the fee where one applies, and any message you wrote — are forwarded into a private staff chat on Telegram so that whoever is free can respond quickly.
• Service providers who run parts of this business for us. Our website and database hosting, the service that sends our emails, and the calendar we use to schedule confirmed appointments. They handle the information on our instructions in order to provide those services to us.
• Property owners, agents and other parties to a transaction, where sharing your details is necessary to arrange a viewing or progress a deal you have asked us to pursue.
• Professional advisers, such as lawyers, where a transaction requires it.
• Where the law requires it, including in response to a lawful request from a court, a regulator or a law enforcement agency, or where we need to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim.

Analytics and advertising. This site uses Google Analytics and advertising tools from Meta and TikTok, and other analytics or advertising partners we may use from time to time, to understand how the site is used and how well our advertising works. These tools receive technical information such as your IP address, device and the pages you view, and they set their own cookies. They also use what they collect for their own purposes, including improving their advertising systems.

They do not receive your name, phone number, email address, identification details or anything else you type into a form. When we record that an enquiry was completed, only the type of service and its fee are passed on — never who you are.

Some listings on this site are posted through Instagram or Facebook and are shown here directly from those services, so opening a page containing one means Meta can see that your browser requested it. We also load our fonts from Google, which similarly means Google sees your IP address.

Where your information is kept

Our database, website hosting, email delivery, calendar, analytics and advertising providers are based outside Nigeria, so your information is stored and processed abroad — including the identification details described above. We choose established providers and rely on the contractual and technical protections they offer, but the laws of the countries where they operate may differ from Nigerian law, and your information may be subject to lawful access requests there.

How long we keep it

We keep your information only as long as we need it, and no longer:

• Enquiries that do not lead to business: two years from your last contact with us.
• Client and transaction records, including identification details and payment receipts: five years from the end of our engagement with you, so that we can evidence what was done, meet record-keeping and tax obligations, and defend a claim if one is brought.
• Account and sign-in information: for as long as your account is open, and thirty days after you close it. Sign-in codes and expired sessions are removed within thirty days.
• Analytics and advertising information: for the period set by the provider concerned, which is typically no more than fourteen months.

If a legal claim, investigation or regulatory requirement means we must keep something for longer, we will keep it until that has been resolved and then delete it. You can ask us to delete your information sooner — see below.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• confirm whether we hold information about you, tell you what it is used for, who receives it and where it came from;
• give you a copy of it in a commonly used electronic format;
• correct anything that is wrong or out of date, or delete it where correcting it is not practical;
• delete your information;
• stop using it for marketing, which we will always do; or
• stop or limit some other use of it, or object to a use based on our legitimate interests.

Email our support address and tell us what you want. We may need to confirm who you are first, so that we do not give your information to somebody else. We will respond within thirty days.

A few practical points, so nothing comes as a surprise. Where a request is clearly excessive or repeated, we may charge a reasonable fee for the work involved, or explain why we cannot act on it. Where you object to a use that rests on our legitimate interests, we may continue if we have compelling grounds — but never for direct marketing, which we will always stop. And there are things we may not be able to delete immediately, such as a record of a completed transaction, or information a law requires us to keep. Where that applies we will tell you what we are keeping and why.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.

Cookies and what your browser stores

Analytics and advertising cookies are only set if you agree to them. We ask the first time you visit, and nothing is loaded until you answer — if you decline, those tools are never fetched at all.

When you sign in we set a cookie so the site remembers you for thirty days. That one is needed for signing in to work and is not optional. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, though parts of the site may then stop working properly.

The site also saves two things on your own device, which never reach us: the listings you have saved, and your last search. Clearing your browser data removes both.

Keeping it safe

Access to the information we hold is restricted to our team, admin access requires a sign-in, and documents you upload are stored so that only our team can open them. No website or business can promise perfect security, and we do not — but if something goes wrong that affects your information, we will act on it and tell you and the Commission where we are required to.

Children

This site is meant for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under eighteen. If you believe a child has given us their details, contact us and we will remove them.

Other websites

Where we link to another website, or display a listing hosted somewhere else, that site has its own privacy practices and we are not responsible for them.

Changes to this notice

We may update this notice as the business changes. The current version is always the one on this page, and the date at the top tells you when it last changed. If a change materially affects how we use your information, we will take reasonable steps to bring it to your attention.

Contact

Questions, requests or complaints about this notice: our support address, or WhatsApp on the number shown on this site. If we cannot resolve it, you may complain to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission.