RentCompare: Privacy Policy

Version: 1.0 · Effective from: 1 September 2026 · Last updated: 1 September 2026

1. Who is responsible for your data

RentCompare is operated by Reliable People, trading as RentCompare, a company registered in Hong Kong under Business Registration Number 76807660, with its registered office at 16th Floor, The L. Plaza, 367-375 Queen's Road Central, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong.

We are the controller of the personal data described here. You can reach us at ant@rp.ltd.

We are outside the United Kingdom. Because we offer this service to renters in England, the UK GDPR applies to us anyway, and your rights under it are the same as they would be if we were down the road. Where we have not yet completed something the UK GDPR requires of an overseas controller, this policy says so rather than leaving you to find out.

Our UK representative. Article 27 of the UK GDPR requires a controller outside the UK to appoint a representative here. Ours is Anthony White, reachable at ant@rp.ltd. You can contact him about anything in this policy instead of contacting us, and he is required to deal with it as we would. Anything sent to him by post is forwarded to us unopened; our postal address is the one at the top of this section.

Appointing a representative does not move responsibility: Reliable People is the controller and remains answerable for what happens to your data.

The ICO data protection fee. We do not pay it and are not registered. The fee applies to controllers established in the United Kingdom, and we are not one. Being outside the fee does not put us outside the UK GDPR: it still applies to us because we offer this service to people in England, and your rights under it are set out in section 7.

2. What we collect, and why

Everything below is collected because a specific part of the service cannot work without it. Nothing here is collected because it might be useful later.

When you look up rents. Your postcode, the number of bedrooms, the property type, and the rents you type in. This produces the figures on your results page. It is not tied to your identity, we do not ask who you are, and it is not stored against an account because there is no account.

When you build a letter or an application. Your name, address, email address, phone number if you give one, your landlord's or agent's name and address, the rent now and the rent proposed, the dates on your notice and your tenancy, and your answers about the property and its condition. The tribunal's form asks for these; we collect them because we are filling that form in.

Documents you upload. Your tenancy agreement, your landlord's notice of increase, photographs, and anything else you attach. We read the text out of your agreement to fill in answers you would otherwise type twice.

Payment. We do not see or store your card details. Payment is handled by our payment provider, who is a separate controller for that. We will name them here before payment is switched on.

Ordinary logs. Our hosting and database providers keep operational logs, including IP addresses, for security and to keep the service running.

3. The legal bases we rely on

• Performing our contract with you: completing your application, producing your documents, and sending them where you have instructed. Without this we cannot provide the service you paid for.
• Consent: for the rent transparency register, which is optional and separate, and for reading your tenancy agreement to fill in your form. You can withdraw either at any time.
• Our legitimate interests: keeping the service secure, preventing abuse of uploads, and understanding in aggregate how the site is used. We do not use your personal data for advertising and we do not sell it.
• Legal obligation: where we have to keep records or respond to a lawful request.

4. Who we share it with

The First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber). When you complete a paid application, we send it and its attachments to the tribunal at marketrents@justice.gov.uk, on your instructions and with your consent recorded.

Your landlord. The tribunal's own form requires the applicant to send the landlord a copy of the application and everything attached to it. We do that at the same time, to the address you gave us.

Our suppliers, who process data on our instructions and nothing else: hosting and database (Supabase, Vercel), email delivery (Resend), and our payment provider. Each is bound by a data processing agreement.

The rent transparency register, only if you opt in. Clause 12 of the Terms of Service sets out exactly what is published, what never is, who your agreement may be shared with in confidence, and how to withdraw. If you do not opt in, your agreement is used for your own application and deleted with it.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it with anyone else unless the law requires it.

5. Where your data is held, and who can reach it

Your data stays in the UK, the EEA and the EU. Our hosting, database and email suppliers store it there, and it is not sent anywhere else.

We are incorporated in Hong Kong, so it is fair to ask what that means for your data. The answer is nothing: we do not access your data from outside the UK, the EEA or the EU. Our people reach it only while they are in those countries. That is a commitment about how we work, not a description of where our letterhead says we are, and it is the reason there is no restricted transfer here to tell you about.

This constrains who we hire. Where we use freelancers, contractors or anyone else to do work that touches your data, we choose people who can work inside that rule, and we would rather turn down someone good than quietly make an exception for them.

If it ever did change, it would become a restricted transfer under the UK GDPR, and we would put safeguards in place and say so on this page before doing it, not afterwards. The point of a commitment like this is that you find out from us rather than from an incident.

6. How long we keep it

Applications and documents: 90 days from the last time you open your application, then deleted, along with everything you uploaded. Opening your link extends that, capped at a year from when you started, so an abandoned application always ages out.

Phone upload codes: two hours.

Register uploads that are never confirmed: deleted once the session ends. If you upload a tenancy agreement to the register and do not complete the opt-in, we do not keep it.

Register contributions you did opt in to: kept until you withdraw. Clause 12 explains what withdrawal does and what it cannot undo.

Sent applications: we keep a record that we sent one, when, and a fingerprint of what was sent, because you and a tribunal may both need to establish that later.

7. Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you can ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, restrict what we do with it, or object to it. You can withdraw consent at any time, including for the register. You can ask for your data in a portable form.

Ask at ant@rp.ltd. We will respond within one month.

There is one thing we genuinely cannot do: there is no account and no password. Your application is reached by a link containing a secret that only you hold, and we cannot tell who you are from anything we store. If you lose the link we cannot recover it, and we cannot identify your data to act on a request about it unless you still have it.

Complaining. You can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We would rather you told us first, but you do not have to.

8. Security

Documents are stored in a private bucket that is never publicly readable. Application links and upload codes are stored only as hashes, so a copy of our database does not hand anyone access to an application. Uploads are rate limited and size limited. Every table is protected by row-level security, and reads go through functions that require the right secret.

9. Children

This service is for people who hold a tenancy, and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18.

10. Changes

If we change this policy we will update the version and the date at the top. If a change materially affects what we do with data you have already given us, we will tell you rather than relying on you re-reading this page.