Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 2026.

1. Introduction

Parcely ("we", "us", "our") is a New Zealand property research and compliance platform operated from New Zealand.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and protect personal information in accordance with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020. By creating an account or using Parcely, you agree to the practices described below.

2. Information We Collect

Account information

When you create an account, we collect your name, email address, and a hashed copy of your password. If you sign in with Google, we receive your name, email, and profile picture from Google.

Usage data

We collect information about how you use Parcely, including messages, property searches, document uploads, and feature usage counts.

Property projects and documents

When you create a project you supply a property address, and you may upload documents such as LIM reports, titles, consents, certificates, council correspondence and specialist reports. We store these, extract their text, and index that text so it can be searched and cross-checked.

Questionnaire and checklist entries

Where you record vendor questionnaire answers or site checklist entries, we store those answers, the notes and measurements you enter, and any photographs you attach.

3. Information about other people

This is the part of this policy most worth reading carefully.

A council property file routinely contains personal information about people who are not you: current and former owners, occupiers, applicants, neighbours, complainants, tradespeople and professionals. When you upload such a file, you are supplying us with their personal information, and both of us have obligations under the Privacy Act 2020 in respect of it.

You are responsible for being entitled to hold that information and to have it processed for the purpose you are using it for.
We hold it only to provide the service to you. We do not use it to build any profile of the people named in it, we do not sell it, and we do not disclose it to other users.

Please do not upload documents containing personal information you have no proper reason to hold, and do not upload identity documents, financial account details or health information. If a person asks us for access to, or correction of, personal information about them that you have uploaded, we may need to refer that request to you as the agency that supplied it.

4. How We Use Your Information

To provide and improve our property research and compliance services.
To process your queries and generate responses.
To extract and index the text of documents you upload, so it can be searched and cross-checked against published district plan standards.
To manage your account and subscription.
To enforce usage limits and prevent abuse.
To communicate with you about your account or service updates.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use your documents or your project data to train artificial intelligence models.

5. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services to operate Parcely:

Anthropic (Claude) — generating responses and classifying documents.
OpenAI — text embeddings for document search.
Tavily — web search when you request online research on a property.
Stripe — payment processing for subscriptions.
Resend — sending email, including the free property report.
Google — sign-in, and optional import of files you select from your own cloud storage.
OpenStreetMap / Nominatim, Photon and Esri — geocoding for property lookups.
LINZ and territorial and regional authorities — land, zone and hazard data.

Content sent to Anthropic and OpenAI is processed to answer your request and is not used by them to train their models under the terms we hold with them. Some of these providers process data outside New Zealand, including in the United States. Where that occurs we rely on contractual protections requiring comparable safeguards, as required by information privacy principle 12.

When you look up a property, the address is sent to geocoding and council data services in order to answer the query.

6. Using Parcely without an account

Some parts of Parcely work without signing in: the instant zone lookup, the published zone and comparison pages, the address autocomplete that assists them, and the endpoint that lets an AI assistant perform a public lookup.

The free zone lookup does not store the address you search. It is answered from published data and nothing about the query is written to our database. To answer it we send the address to the geocoding and council data services listed above, and to keep the endpoint from being used as a bulk extraction proxy we count recent requests against a key derived from your IP address. That counter holds a request count and its timestamps only — not the address, and not the result — and it expires automatically within the hour.

The address autocomplete sends what you have typed so far to Esri's geocoding service in order to return address suggestions, and is rate limited the same way. It returns address text only and stores nothing.

If you ask us to email you a free report, we use the email address you give us to send that report, via our email provider Resend. We do not add it to a marketing list without your consent.

Where an AI assistant calls our public endpoint, it reaches only the public lookups. It cannot reach any project, document or account data unless you have signed in, and even then it sees only what your own account may see.

7. Connected cloud storage

If you connect cloud file storage, we request access limited to only the files you specifically select through that provider's own file picker. We do not receive a general permission to browse, list or read the rest of your storage, and we do not retain access to files you have not chosen.

Selected files are imported into your project and are then treated the same as any other document you upload. Disconnecting the integration in Settings revokes our access; it does not delete documents already imported, which you can delete individually.

8. Data Storage and Security

Your data is stored in a PostgreSQL database that we operate ourselves on infrastructure under our control, rather than on a shared third-party database platform. Access is protected by row-level security, so records are readable only by the account that owns them. Traffic is encrypted in transit.

No system is perfectly secure. We will notify you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of any privacy breach that is notifiable under the Privacy Act 2020.

9. Data Retention

Projects and documents: retained until you delete them or close your account. Deleting a project deletes its documents, questionnaire, checklist entries and conversation.
Free tier: conversation history is retained for 7 days, then deleted.
Account deletion: on request, we delete all of your personal data within 30 days, except where we are required to retain it for legal or billing reasons.

10. Your Rights

Under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020, you have the right to:

Access the personal information we hold about you.
Request correction of inaccurate information.
Request deletion of your personal information.
Withdraw consent for data processing.
Complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at privacy@parcely.co.nz. We will respond within 20 working days.

11. Cookies

We use essential cookies for authentication and session management. We do not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies.

12. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make significant changes, we will notify you by email or by an in-app notice before the changes take effect.

13. Contact

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at privacy@parcely.co.nz.