Last Updated: September 13, 2009

At Value Home Auctions ("VHA"), we adhere to a philosophy of integrity, trust, and mutual respect among all parties involved with real estate transactions. We understand that the privacy and security of information that personally identifies you is important to you. Therefore, VHA has created this Privacy Policy to demonstrate our firm commitment to protect personally identifiable information that is collected by us on this website and through off-line communications with you, including telephone conversations and in-person communications. 

Please read the following policy to understand how your personal information will be used while you take advantage of the services we offer. This policy may change from time to time, in our sole and absolute discretion. In the event we change this Policy, we will post an amended Privacy Policy on our website, www.valuehomeauctions.com, so that you can always review what information we gather, how we might use that information, and whether we disclose it to anyone. Please check our website, www.valuehomeauctions.com, at any time for the most recent version of our Privacy Policy. 

What information is collected and how it is used

VHA collects personally identifiable information from you in order to respond to your requests for our products and services. Depending on the services you request, this information may include, but is not limited to, your name, address, zip code, email address, telephone number, a login name, password, whether you plan on buying and/or selling property, information about the properties in which you are interested and your home search criteria. 

You may be asked to provide personally identifiable information at various places on our website and through off-line communications with us, including, but not limited to, the following: 

• Registration - When you register for an auction, you provide us with information including (but not limited to) your first and last name, email address, telephone numbers, your financing preference, your price range, the metropolitan area in which the property you plan on buying or selling is located, and how you plan to occupy a property purchased.


• Pre-qualification - If you pre-qualify, you provide us with additional information including (but not limited to) your employment, income, and credit.
• Bid - If you choose to bid, you will need to provide further information, including the property you wish to purchase, your offer amount, and lender's name and telephone number (if it is not a VHA designated Lender).


• Customer support - If you choose to contact one of our customer service representatives, we may collect information in the course of helping you buy or sell property. The purchase or sale of real estate is a complex transaction and requires a considerable amount of information. 

We generally use the information we collect, whether through our website, through our customer service representatives, or otherwise, to conduct business activities such as account administration, service, operations, billings and collections, marketing, customer service, technical support, and fraud prevention. These purposes may specifically include the following uses: to provide the services you request; to provide you with information about services and products we believe may be of interest to you; to respond to your inquiries; to ensure compliance with applicable laws and to enforce our Terms of Service; to protect our rights, such as preventing fraud and abusive practices; and to improve our website and services we provide. 

VHA, its employees, agents, and affiliates may have authorized access to personally identifiable information. We may provide access to certain third parties who assist us in providing services such as website technology, billing, marketing, market research, fulfillment, mailing, data storage, analysis and processing, auditing and accounting, credit reporting, escrow and other real estate transaction services and legal services. We may also provide access to third parties who assist us in providing targeted advertising. VHA may conduct research on our users' demographics, interests and behavior based on the information provided by the user and from our server log files. This research is compiled and analyzed on both aggregated and individual bases. For example, we may review how many users are women, or the average price range of our users. Additionally, we may analyze the behavior of a particular user. If you came to our website through a link on another web site, VHA may be required, as part of our agreement with that site, to provide that site with aggregated data. 

When you visit VHA, our computer system, like most, will automatically log some basic information about you and your computer, including, but not limited to, your IP address, operating system and browser software. We use this information to improve website performance, for routine maintenance and to gather broad demographic information to help us decide how better to implement our website. 

Cookies 

We use "cookies" to store non-personally identifiable information to track users as they move through our website. If a user obtains a cookie from a lead generation site and then visits and confirms registration on our website, the cookie may trigger a beacon to the lead generation site in order to confirm lead conversion. Similarly, if a user comes to our website through a link on another website, VHA may be required, as part of our agreement with that site, to provide that website with email addresses for the purposes of email suppression or email address invalidation. You can disable cookies through your browser, but some portions of our website may not function properly as a result. 

How personally identifiable information is shared 

We recognize that the information we collect from you may, in itself, or when tied together with other information, identify you as a specific individual. Your account information and personal data is maintained by VHA in order to fulfill our legal and regulatory requirements and to provide you with the information, products and services you have requested or which we believe you may want in connection with your home ownership. As a general rule, VHA will not disclose your personally identifiable information to any third party not involved in your proposed transaction, except with your permission or under special circumstances where your personally identifiable information is protected, as discussed below. 

By requesting information or services from VHA or other companies specified by you, you give VHA permission to transfer your information, as necessary, to the appropriate parties, such as the title insurer, homeowners insurer, lender, appraiser, escrow or settlement provider, home warranty company or inspector you select, so that they can fulfill your request and provide you with the services you require. You information may also be transmitted to other parties in a transaction or their agent. 

We may also share your information with nonaffiliated companies with which we have marketing arrangements to help coordinate the services that they may provide to you in connection with your home ownership including mortgage services, homeowners insurance services, home warranties and title insurance. Unless you have consented to that sharing or to receiving services from any such company, that company will be required to protect the privacy of your information with the same level of protection that VHA provides and will not release personally identifiable information about you to any other parties. 

The various lending institutions, title companies, homeowner's insurers, home warranty companies and other service providers you choose for your real estate transaction may each have their own privacy policies governing how they handle your personally identifiable information. VHA accepts no responsibility or liability for third party privacy policies or the actions of any third party with respect to your personally identifiable information. 

VHA may disclose personally identifiable information in certain circumstances when we have reason to believe that disclosing such information is necessary to contact, identify or bring legal action against someone who may be intentionally or unintentionally causing injury to or interference with our rights or property, our users, our employees or anyone else who could be harmed by such activities. You acknowledge, consent and agree that we may access, preserve and disclose your information, including your personally identifiable information, if required to do so by law or in a good faith belief that such access, preservation, or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (a) comply with legal process; (b) enforce our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, or other contracts with you; (c) respond to claims that any content violates the rights of third parties; (d) respond to your requests for customer service; or (e) protect the rights, property or personal safety of VHA, its agents and affiliates, its users and the public. We may also disclose information to law enforcement agencies in emergency circumstances, where the disclosure of such information is consistent with the types of emergency disclosures permitted or required by law. 

We may disclose personally identifiable information to a multiple listing service which provides us with listing data if, the multiple listing service suspects that a person is involved in breach of security of the data or a violation of our Terms of Use or the multiple listing service's rules. 

Finally, we also reserve the right to disclose and transfer all of your information, including your personally identifiable information, to a successor company in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of all, or components, of our business. User choices regarding collection and use of information On occasion, we may use your email address to send you communications with information, valuable tips, or services and product information that we believe may be of interest to you. If you do not want to receive such communications from VHA, simply contact us or click on the "opt-out" link contained in the email. Please note that VHA will never share or sell your information without your permission, except as described in this Privacy Policy. 

Minors 

Please note that our website is a general audience website. If you are under the age of 18, you should not register or provide information on this website. We do not intentionally collect personal information from any person we actually know is a minor under the age of 18. 

Security measures used to protect personally identifiable information Email is an important communication channel for our online customers. Unfortunately, no email transmission over the Internet is guaranteed secure. While we strive to protect your information, VHA cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us from our website, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your transmission, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our system. 

If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy, or privacy issues in general, please feel free to email us at customerservice@valuehomeauctions.com or call us at 1- 714-748-7112.