Suburb Intelligence

Privacy policy

Last updated 15 June 2026 · Applies to globaldistressedpropertydeals.com and the Suburb Intelligence application

This policy explains what information Global Distressed Property Deals ("we") collects, how it is used, and the rights you have. We are a private, invitation-only property-analytics tool operated from South Africa by Grant Austin, trading as Global Distressed Property Deals. We comply with the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).

1. Information we collect from users of the application

  • Account details: name, e-mail address and a hashed password, created by the administrator when access is granted. There is no public sign-up.
  • Usage records needed to run the service: watched suburbs, saved suburb sets, shortlists, site-visit notes you create, and audit logs of administrative actions.
  • Technical data: IP address and browser type in server logs, kept for security and troubleshooting.

We do not use advertising cookies. A session token is stored in your browser to keep you signed in.

2. Property data — and what we deliberately do not hold

The platform processes information about properties, not people. Sources are public or licensed: Government Gazette legal notices, municipal open-data parcel, zoning and valuation-roll services, publicly advertised property listings, and aggregated search-interest statistics. Any personal names appearing in these sources (for example a judgment debtor named in a gazette notice, or an estate agent) are removed at the point of ingest and are never stored, displayed or derived. We do not build profiles of individuals.

3. Use of Google services and Google user data

We use the following Google services for internal research on our own accounts only:

  • Google Ads API — Keyword Planner historical metrics. We read aggregated, anonymous monthly search-volume estimates for property-related keywords by geographic area. Access is authorised by our own Google Ads account via OAuth. We do not create, edit or manage advertising campaigns through the API, and we do not access any other advertiser's or user's data.
  • Google Trends — relative search-interest indices for suburb names, read from Google's public Trends interface.
  • Google Search Console — only to verify ownership of this domain.

The OAuth scope requested is https://www.googleapis.com/auth/adwords, tied to our own account. Tokens are stored server-side as environment secrets, never in the browser, and are used solely to call the endpoints above. Our use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Google data is displayed inside the application with attribution, is not sold, transferred or used for advertising, and is not used to train machine-learning models.

4. How we use information

  • To provide and secure the application to invited users.
  • To send you service e-mails you have asked for, such as password resets or a weekly digest of your watched suburbs.
  • To comply with law and enforce our terms.

We do not sell personal information and do not share it with third parties for their marketing.

5. Service providers

The application is hosted by Emergent (cloud infrastructure and database hosting). E-mail is provided by GoDaddy / Titan. Web-scraping of public listings is performed through ScrapingBee. Each provider processes data only on our instructions.

6. Retention

Account data is kept while your access is active and deleted within 30 days of termination on request. Property and gazette records are retained for the periods set out in our data-rights register (typically 24 months for listing observations) so that historical trends can be read honestly; suppressed or disputed records are withheld from display.

7. Your rights

Under POPIA you may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, or object to its processing, by writing to hello@globaldistressedpropertydeals.com. We respond within 30 days. You may also lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa).

8. Security

Passwords are hashed, transport is encrypted (HTTPS), secrets are held as server environment variables, and administrative actions are logged.

9. Changes

We will post any changes on this page with a new "last updated" date.

10. Contact

Grant Austin, trading as Global Distressed Property Deals · hello@globaldistressedpropertydeals.com