Privacy Policy
What personal information Steward collects about owners, residents and visitors, what it is used for, who else handles it, how long it is kept, and the choices you have.
Who this covers
This policy explains how [Company legal name] ("Steward", "we", "us") handles personal information in Steward, the property-management software at steward.rent. It covers owners (landlords and property managers who use Steward), residents (tenants whom an owner invites or records in Steward, including roommates, occupants and guarantors) and visitors to our website.
[Counsel to confirm the roles.] For the records an owner keeps about their residents and properties, Steward acts on the owner's behalf, as their service provider. The owner decides what to record, and residents may also have rights against the owner under the law and their lease. For owners' own accounts, and for our website, Steward decides how information is used.
What we collect
From owners:
- Account details: email address, name (if given), password and the two-step sign-in key. These are held by our sign-in service; the password and key are never visible to us.
- Portfolio records: property names, types, addresses and year built; units; the residents and tenancies an owner records; rent amounts, terms, charges and payments the owner records as received.
- Settings and activity: assistant settings and usage; notification choices; when two-step sign-in was confirmed; warnings the owner saw and went ahead with; decisions on assistant suggestions; the routines an owner switches on and what each drafted; the notes an owner asks Reeve to keep, with where each came from.
- Payment set-up: to take rent, owners open a Stripe account through Steward. We send Stripe the owner's name and email and keep the Stripe account reference and its status. Stripe collects identity and bank details directly.
About residents, mostly entered by their owner:
- Name, email address, home and unit, rent, and their part in a tenancy (primary resident, co-resident, occupant or guarantor). We do not ask for phone numbers, dates of birth or Social Security numbers.
- What residents send through the portal: maintenance requests and answers to follow-up questions, messages with their owner, and documents they upload (such as proof of renters insurance).
- Documents their owner shares with them or keeps on their record, such as the lease, notices, move-in reports, invoices and other files.
- Rent payments: bank debit or card details are entered into Stripe's own form and go to Stripe, not to us. We keep a reference to the saved method, a label such as the bank name and last four digits, the payment's status and amount, and the notices Stripe sends us about the payment (which can include the name on the account and the last four digits).
- Lease questions: when a resident asks about their lease, we keep the answer and the passages it quotes, and a topic for the owner (for example "pets"). We do not keep the wording of the question.
From website visitors:
- If you ask to hear when Steward opens, your email address and when you asked.
- Technical information our providers record to run and protect the service, such as IP address, browser and request times (see "Cookies and similar technology" and "Security").
How we use it
- To provide Steward: keep records, run the resident portal, deliver messages, store and share documents, and collect rent through Stripe.
- To send service emails: invitations, sign-in and password emails, and notices that something needs attention (for example a new message or a maintenance update). These emails say what happened and link to Steward; they do not contain message text, rent amounts or documents. Each person can turn notification emails off.
- To run the assistant features an owner turns on (see "The Steward assistant").
- To keep Steward secure: sign-in checks, two-step sign-in, fraud and abuse prevention, malware scanning of uploads, and audit records.
- If you asked to hear when Steward opens: to announce the launch and send your invitation and getting-started emails. We use early-access addresses for nothing else.
- To comply with the law, enforce our terms, and handle disputes.
We do not sell personal information, share it for targeted advertising, or use it to build profiles for marketing. Steward has no advertising or analytics trackers. We do not send marketing email.
The Steward assistant
Each assistant feature is off until an owner turns it on. When it is on, the information that feature needs is sent to an AI model, and the output is shown to the owner or resident as a suggestion. The features are maintenance triage, reply drafts, message summaries and translation, the weekly digest, reading uploaded documents, lease questions and Reeve. The information sent can include residents' names, units, rent, maintenance requests, message threads and the documents being read.
By default the models run inside Steward's own Amazon Web Services account (Amazon Bedrock). An owner may separately allow the assistant to use a model provider outside that account (Anthropic); without that permission, nothing is sent there. Even with it, the only uploaded documents that may go there are insurance certificates. Leases and all other documents stay in Steward's account. [Confirm which provider production uses.]
An owner may also switch on routines, which use the same features without being asked each time: drafting a reply to a new maintenance request, an update on one nobody has touched in a few days, or a reminder when rent is late. Everything a routine drafts waits for the owner to approve it; nothing is sent or changed until they do.
We do not store the prompts sent to the models. We keep what the model returned, what the owner decided, and usage and cost records. [Confirm the model providers' data-use and retention terms; state here whether they may use the data to train models.]
The one exception is the notes an owner asks Reeve to keep, listed under What Reeve knows: a vendor they use, how they like residents written to, when not to contact them, something about a property. We store them and send them to the model with each request to Reeve. A note is saved only when the owner writes it or approves one Reeve proposes from their own words, and a note that names a resident is refused. The owner can see, change and delete each note, or all of them at once.
The assistant does not make decisions about applicants or residents. Nothing it produces is sent or saved until a person accepts it.
How long we keep it
- Account and portfolio records: while the account is open. When an owner closes their account, they can export their records, and we delete them within 90 days, except what the law requires us to keep.
- Notes an owner asks Reeve to keep: until the owner deletes them, which takes effect at once, or closes their account.
- Residents' records: an owner "removing" a resident ends their access but keeps the records, because leases, payments and repairs may matter later. Documents on a removed resident's record are kept for 7 years, then deleted.
- Payment and financial records: 7 years, because tax and payment rules require it.
- Deleted documents: 30 days, so a mistake can be undone. Uploads that fail the malware scan are deleted within 7 days.
- Service logs: 90 days.
- Security audit records of changes to our systems and access to stored documents: up to 7 years. These can include IP addresses.
- Backups: 7 days.
- Early-access emails: until 12 months after Steward opens to the public, or 12 months after you last signed up again, whichever is later. If Steward never opens, 24 months after you gave us your address. We delete it sooner if you unsubscribe or ask us to (within 30 days of asking), or once you have a Steward account, whose own terms then apply. [Counsel to review these periods.]
Security
We protect information with:
- encryption in transit and at rest;
- required two-step sign-in for owners;
- short-lived sign-in tokens;
- narrowly limited access for our own systems;
- malware scanning of uploaded files;
- records of who changed our systems and who accessed stored documents;
- scanning our software for known vulnerabilities.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
Your choices and rights
You can ask to see, correct, export or delete personal information we hold about you by writing to [privacy@steward.rent]. We will check it is you before acting, and answer within the time the law allows (usually 45 days). We will not treat you differently for asking.
Residents: most of your records are kept by your owner, who decides what to keep under your lease and the law. Ask your owner first. If you write to us, we will pass your request to them and help them answer it.
Some information cannot be deleted while it is still needed: for example payment records we must keep, or records needed to handle a dispute. When that applies, we will tell you.
Depending on where you live (for example California), you may have further rights under state law, including the right to appeal a decision about your request. [Counsel to confirm which state laws apply and whether to add state-specific sections.]
You can turn notification emails off in your settings. You can turn assistant features off at any time (owners). Every email we send to an early-access address has a one-click unsubscribe link; using it, or asking us, deletes your address rather than marking it.
Children
Steward is for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. An owner may record a child as an occupant; do not record more about a child than the tenancy needs.
Where it is kept
Steward is offered in the United States. Your information is stored and processed in the United States.
Changes to this policy
We will post any change here and update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use your information, we will tell you in Steward or by email before it takes effect.
Contact
[Company legal name], [Postal address]. Privacy questions and requests: [privacy@steward.rent].