Privacy policy

Who we are

Rooftree is run by Digital Haven LLC, in Houston, Texas. This page says what Rooftree stores about you, why, who can see it, and how long it is kept. Questions go to codysanders@icloud.com.

Who uses Rooftree

Two kinds of people. A property manager rents out a home they own and uses Rooftree to keep track of it. A tenant rents that home and uses Rooftree to see their lease, send photos and requests, and pay rent. Some of what Rooftree holds about a tenant is entered by their property manager, not by the tenant themselves.

What we store

Your account. Your name, your email address and your password. The password is stored scrambled, in a form that cannot be turned back into the password; nobody at Rooftree can read it. From Settings you can sign out every other device that is signed in as you.

A property manager's records. Their properties and addresses, their leases and the rent and fees on them, and their tenants: names, email addresses, phone numbers, and any notes the property manager writes for themselves. Also the documents, photos and messages they add.

A tenant's records. The photos a tenant sends, the maintenance requests and messages they write, and the record of what their lease owes and what has been paid.

Online payments. Rent paid online goes through Stripe, from the tenant's bank account to the property manager's own Stripe account. Bank account numbers are held by Stripe, never by Rooftree. Most tenants add a bank account by signing in to their bank on Stripe's form. A tenant who cannot may type the account's numbers into a Rooftree page instead: the numbers go from their browser straight to Stripe, and are never sent to Rooftree's servers. Rooftree keeps the bank's name and the last four digits of the account, so you can tell which one you chose, and a record of each payment: its amount, its date and what happened to it. When a tenant switches on automatic payment, or adds a bank account by typing its numbers, Rooftree keeps the exact text they agreed to, with the time, the internet address and the browser it was agreed from, because banks may ask for that. For an account added by its numbers, the record sent to the tenant also names the account's holder and the bank's routing number.

Technical records. Internet addresses and the time of attempts to sign in, to request a password reset or to create an account, kept briefly so that the same address cannot try without limit. Ordinary server logs, kept for a short time for fixing faults.

What we use it for

To run Rooftree: to show each person what belongs to them, to work out what a lease owes, to send the notices the app sends, and to take payments that have been asked for. Nothing else. Rooftree does not sell or rent your information, does not use it for advertising, and does not build profiles of you.

Rooftree emails you about your own rentals and your account: a request waiting for you, rent due or received, an invitation, a password reset. You can turn most of these off under Notifications in the app. A few, such as the notice before an automatic payment is taken, or the record of a bank account you added by typing its numbers, cannot be turned off while the thing they concern is on.

Who can see it

• A property manager sees everything on their own leases: their tenants' details, payments, photos, requests and messages. They do not see anything of another property manager's.
• A tenant sees their own lease and what belongs to it: the documents shared with them, their own photos and requests, and what they owe and have paid. They never see the property manager's private notes, or anything of other tenants beyond the people on the same lease.
• Digital Haven LLC, which runs Rooftree, can reach the database and the files to keep the service working and to help when something goes wrong. We look only when there is a reason to.
• Nobody else, unless the law requires it or you ask us to.

A property manager may publish a small public page about their rental business, with the name and contact details they choose. Nothing about any tenant is ever on it.

The companies that help us run it

Each of these handles only what its job needs, under its own privacy terms.

• Stripe takes the payments and verifies property managers' identities for their Stripe accounts. Stripe sees the payer's bank details and the payment; see Stripe's privacy policy.
• Resend delivers the emails Rooftree sends: your address and the message.
• DigitalOcean hosts the servers, the database and the backups, in the United States.

Cookies

Rooftree sets one cookie, to keep you signed in. It lasts a month and holds nothing but a signed reference to your sign-in. Your choice of light or dark appearance is kept in your browser, not sent to us. The pages where you set up a bank account or pay online load Stripe's forms, which set Stripe's own cookies for fraud prevention. There are no advertising or analytics cookies.

How long we keep it

Records of money are kept for as long as the lease they belong to is kept, and a lease is kept once it has been active: a charge or a payment entered by mistake is marked void with a reason, not erased, so the account always adds up. Photos, documents and messages stay with the lease they belong to.

You can delete your own login at any time, under Settings. That removes your name, email and password and signs you out everywhere. If you are a property manager and nobody else belongs to your portfolio, the portfolio and everything in it goes too. If you are a tenant, the record of your tenancy stays with your property manager, as the history of the lease, without a login attached to it.

Backups of the database are taken daily and kept for thirty days, after which they are deleted. Something removed from Rooftree may remain in a backup for up to thirty days.

How we protect it

Everything between your browser and Rooftree is encrypted. Passwords are scrambled before they are stored. Every page and every action checks that you are allowed to see or change what you asked for. Files you upload are checked and served only to people entitled to them. Bank account numbers never pass through our servers. No system is perfect; if you believe something has gone wrong with your data, write to us and we will look at once.

Your choices

• See and change your name, email and password under Settings.
• Choose which notices you are emailed under Notifications.
• Stop an automatic payment at any time from your Rent page; it takes effect at once.
• Delete your login under Settings.
• Ask us, at codysanders@icloud.com, for a copy of what we hold about you, or to correct it.

If you are a tenant and a detail your property manager entered about you is wrong, the quickest way to fix it is to ask them; they can change it in the app.

Children

Rooftree is for adults who rent out or rent a home. It is not meant for anyone under 18.

Changes to this page

When Rooftree starts storing something new, or sharing it with someone new, this page changes with it and the date at the top moves. A change that matters to you is also announced in the app.