Privacy Policy

Sproutly is property management software for California landlords, operated by Natively (we, us). This policy covers usesproutly.com and the Sproutly apps. It applies to landlords and their staff, tenants, applicants, co-signers, vendors, and visitors to the site.

Whose data it is

Landlords use Sproutly to manage their rentals. Information about a landlord's tenants, applicants and vendors belongs to that landlord, and we handle it on the landlord's behalf to run the service. If you are a tenant or applicant, your landlord decides what is collected and how it is used. You can ask your landlord, or ask us and we will pass the request on and help.

What we collect

1. Landlords and staff: name, email, role, sign-in activity, security settings, and records of actions taken in the account (including IP address and browser). If you link a bank account, the bank name, account name, last four digits, and imported transactions.
2. Tenants: name, email, phone, preferred language, emergency contact, vehicles and pets on the lease, messages, repair requests and photos, rent and payment history, documents, and text-message consent and preferences (including START and STOP replies).
3. Applicants and co-signers: contact details, income and employment, rental and address history, household members, pets and vehicles, uploaded documents such as pay stubs, bank statements and ID, the screening authorization (with IP address and browser), and the screening result.
4. Electronic signatures: the typed name, the signature image, and the time, IP address and browser of each consent and signature, kept as the record of signing.
5. Vendors: name, company, contact details, license number, insurance expiry, rates, and tax ID (stored encrypted, only the last four digits shown).
6. Site visitors: what you type into the early-access or support form, and the page and browser you sent it from.

We do not store Social Security numbers or full card or bank account numbers. For tenant screening, the applicant enters their Social Security number and date of birth. They pass through our server to the credit-reporting agency to run the screening, and Sproutly does not save them. The screening agency access tokens we hold are stored encrypted. Card details are entered with our payment processor, which keeps them.

Income verification

Applicants can choose to verify their income by linking a bank account through a bank-data provider. It is optional, and pay stubs are always a free alternative. The applicant pays the verification cost, which equals what the provider charges for the report, and it is refunded if the report cannot be produced. If you do it, Sproutly stores a summary only: your monthly and yearly income total, how many days the data covers, how many income sources it found, and your bank's name. Your landlord sees that summary next to the income you stated. We do not store your account numbers, balances or transactions, and the landlord never sees them. You can remove the verified income from your application at any time. Otherwise it is kept with the application and deleted on the same schedule as the application's other data, described below.

How we use it

To run the service: collect rent, send leases for signature, send reminders and notices, process applications and screening, handle repairs and messages, keep landlords' records, secure accounts, and answer support requests. We do not sell personal information, we do not share it for advertising, and we do not share it with other companies for their own direct marketing (Civil Code 1798.83).

Who we share it with

We share personal information only with service providers that run parts of Sproutly for us:

1. Hosting, database and file storage providers.
2. An email delivery provider, and a text-message carrier service used only to send texts to tenants who opted in. Tenants consent by replying START and can stop at any time by replying STOP. A landlord may also text a vendor or another number from the inbox. Those texts are the landlord's messages, and STOP works on every number.
3. A payment processor, for rent and fee payments and landlord payouts.
4. A bank-data provider, only if a landlord links a bank account or an applicant chooses to verify their income.
5. A credit-reporting agency, for tenant screening the applicant authorizes. It may contact the applicant to confirm their identity.
6. An address lookup service. When you save a property, its street address is sent to the service to identify the city or county, so Sproutly can show links to the local agency pages where you can check city rules.
7. Push-notification services from the device or browser maker, if you turn on notifications.
8. An AI model provider, only for optional features a landlord chooses to use: drafting a message reply, drafting a listing description or reading an uploaded lease. The text or document is sent to produce that one result. For an inbox draft, the recent messages in that thread, including the tenant's, are what is sent.

We may also disclose information when the law requires it, to protect someone's safety, or as part of a sale or merger of the business, under this policy.

Partner offers. Sproutly shows tenants and applicants optional offers such as renters insurance, internet and movers. If you click one, you go to the partner's site with a tag that says you came from Sproutly. We do not send your name, email or address. We record the click, and we may be paid if you sign up. The partner's own privacy policy applies on its site.

Cookies and tracking

Sproutly uses one sign-in cookie and a short-lived cookie during two-step sign-in, plus browser storage for small settings such as a dismissed install tip. There are no analytics, advertising or cross-site tracking tools. Because we do not track you across sites, we treat every visitor the same whether or not the browser sends a Do Not Track signal. Payment and bank-linking pages load the provider's own form, which may set its own cookies.

How long we keep it

1. Screening reports: deleted 30 days after the screening completes.
2. Applicant documents and the personal data on the application are scrubbed together when the documents are purged: right away if the applicant withdraws, 90 days after an application is denied or expires, or within 30 days of an applicant's deletion request.
3. Verified income summaries: kept with the application, deleted when the applicant removes them, and otherwise on the same schedule as applicant documents.
4. Sign-in codes: expire after 10 minutes.
5. Everything else in an account (leases, ledgers, messages, notices, signature records and activity records) is kept while the account is open, because landlords may need it as evidence. When a landlord closes the account, the account is read-only for 30 days. The owner can sign in to read and export records during that time, and other users cannot. After that the data is purged, but the purge waits while a deposit, dispute or notice is still open.

Your choices and rights

The account owner can download an export of your records from Settings (documents are listed with links; files are downloaded from the app) and close the account there. Only the owner can export. Tenants can update their phone, emergency contact, vehicles, pets and text preferences in the tenant portal. Applicants can withdraw an application, and ask for their documents to be deleted after a decision.

Anyone can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about them, or ask us to correct or delete it, by sending us a message. If the information belongs to a landlord's records, we will work with that landlord to answer. We may need to confirm your identity, and we may keep what the law requires us or the landlord to keep. We will not treat you differently for asking.

Security

Uploaded ID, income and bank documents, tax IDs, and bank connections are encrypted with a separate key for each item. Sign-in uses one-time codes, with an optional authenticator app for landlords. Every account is walled off from the others, and actions are logged. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your information, we will notify you as the law requires.

Children

Sproutly is for adults. We do not knowingly collect information from children except where a landlord lists a minor as an occupant on a lease.

Changes

When we change this policy we update the effective date above, and for a change that matters we tell landlords in the app or by email.

Contact

Privacy questions or requests: send us a message. See also the Terms of Service.