support@codewant.com

Privacy Policy

Effective: April 21, 2026

This Privacy Policy describes how codeWANT Properties (“we,” “us”) collects, uses, and shares information when you use properties.codewant.com (the “Site”) to apply for, sign, or pay rent on a residential lease. It is written in plain language and aims to be honest about what happens with your data.

1. Who we are

codeWANT Properties is a small, single-property landlord operation managing rental property in Montgomery County, Maryland. Questions about this policy can be directed to support@codewant.com.

2. Information we collect

We collect information in the following categories:

Account information
  • Username, email address, and password (stored as a hash)
  • First and last name
Rental application information
  • Date of birth, phone number, current and past residential addresses
  • Social Security number and driver’s license (both stored encrypted)
  • Employment and income details (employer, position, income, supervisor, duration)
  • Prior landlord contact information and rental history
  • Household occupants (names, dates of birth for window-guard compliance)
  • Pets (if any), vehicles, personal references, emergency contact
  • Documents you upload (pay stubs, IDs, screening results from a prior landlord, etc.)
  • Answers to screening addendum items (electronic signatures and initials)
Payment information
  • Application fee — processed through Stripe. We receive a Stripe payment identifier; we do not see or store your full card number.
  • Move-in payment (security deposit + first month’s rent) and recurring rent — processed through Stripe using ACH debit. At your option, you may link your bank account via Stripe Financial Connections (see Section 6 below). We receive only the last four digits of the account number and a reusable Stripe payment-method token; we do not see or store your full bank credentials.
  • Payment history (dates, amounts, status) for your lease.
Lease & signing data
  • The lease document itself and all signed addenda
  • Each initial and electronic signature you make, captured with date, time, IP address, browser user-agent, and session identifier for audit purposes
  • The wet-signed attestation page you sign in person at move-in (scanned and stored alongside your lease record)
Automatically collected
  • IP address, browser user-agent, and session cookies while you use the Site
  • Web server access logs (standard request logs for security and debugging)

3. How we use your information

  • To evaluate your rental application and, after a conditional offer, to run a screening report through our screening partner
  • To process payments for application fee, move-in charges, and recurring rent
  • To prepare, execute, and retain your lease agreement and required addenda
  • To communicate with you about your application or tenancy
  • To comply with legal obligations (see Section 5)

4. When we share information

We share only what is necessary, with the following parties:

  • Stripe, Inc. — our payment processor. Stripe handles card and ACH payments and, with your authorization, bank-account linking via Financial Connections. Stripe’s privacy policy is at stripe.com/privacy.
  • SafeRent Solutions — our tenant-screening service. We share identity and authorization information necessary to run credit, eviction, and criminal-record checks only after a conditional lease offer has been extended. SafeRent’s privacy policy is available on their website.
  • The common-ownership community (Seneca Knolls Condominiums) — a copy of the fully-executed lease is provided to the Association’s Director of Community Management as required by the Seneca Knolls bylaws.
  • Law enforcement, courts, or government agencies — when required by valid legal process (e.g., subpoena, court order) or by regulation (e.g., Montgomery County DHCA recordkeeping).
  • Our own hosting provider — to the extent data passes through our web hosting and email infrastructure.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information for marketing purposes. We do not use any third-party advertising or analytics trackers on authenticated pages.

5. Legal and regulatory retention

Maryland and Montgomery County law require certain rental records to be retained. In particular:

  • A signed Criminal History & Credit Screening Addendum must be retained for at least one (1) year under MoCo Code § 29-28(h)(2).
  • Executed leases and related documents are retained for the duration of the tenancy and for any period required by applicable statute of limitations afterward.
  • Payment records (including Stripe transaction IDs) are retained for financial and tax compliance purposes.

Application data for applications that were never submitted is retained for a shorter period and may be deleted on request (see Section 8).

6. Stripe Financial Connections (bank-account linking)

If you choose to link your bank account via Stripe Financial Connections when paying move-in charges or setting up rent autopay, Stripe acts as the service provider. With your explicit authorization, Stripe may:

  • Verify that the account exists and belongs to you
  • Retrieve your account balance at the time of authorization, so we can confirm the funds needed for the ACH debit are available
  • Create a reusable token (a “payment method”) that we use to debit the authorized amount at move-in and, if you opt in to auto-pay, for recurring monthly rent debits

We do not receive or store your bank login credentials, full account number, or a continuous feed of your balance or transactions. Stripe retrieves only what is needed for the authorized transactions, under the permissions you grant at link time.

You can revoke your authorization at any time by disabling auto-pay in your profile, disconnecting the saved bank account in Stripe, or contacting us to have the payment method removed. Instructions and Stripe’s own disclosures are shown to you directly in the bank-link flow.

7. Security

  • Passwords are stored as bcrypt hashes; SSN and driver’s license numbers are stored encrypted at rest.
  • All Site traffic is served over HTTPS.
  • Payment processing is delegated to Stripe (PCI-DSS certified); we do not handle full card or bank credentials ourselves.
  • We take reasonable administrative and technical measures to protect your data, but no method of electronic transmission or storage is perfectly secure.

8. Your rights

  • Access — you may request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
  • Correction — you may update your profile information directly through your dashboard, or contact us to correct other records.
  • Deletion — we will delete non-retained information on request. Information subject to legal retention (signed addenda, executed leases, payment records) cannot be deleted until the retention period expires.
  • Revocation of payment authorization — you may disable auto-pay at any time from your profile; you may revoke a saved payment method by contacting us.

Send requests to support@codewant.com.

9. Children

The Site is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them. Children listed as authorized occupants on a rental application are named only to satisfy MoCo’s window-guard disclosure requirements; no account is created for them.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be noted at the top of this page and, where practical, communicated to active tenants by email.

11. Contact

Questions or requests: support@codewant.com