Privacy Policy
Last updated: October 11, 2026
Carwoods ("we," "our," or "us") is committed to protecting your privacy. This policy describes how we handle information when you use our website and services.
Information We Collect
When you visit our site, we may collect information you provide directly, such as when you contact us or submit an application. If you create a portal account, we collect account details such as your name, email address, phone number, sign-in identifiers, and optional profile photo, along with the lease, maintenance, messaging, and payment records created as you and your landlord or property manager use the portal. For landlords with Upkeep, we also store upkeep records — equipment details and upkeep items — and the notes and photos a tenant adds when completing a task, and share them with the property's landlord. We also collect limited technical information, such as device type, for security and troubleshooting. If you use third-party services (e.g., HAR.com for property inquiries or applications), their privacy policies govern that data.
How We Use Information
We use information to respond to inquiries, process applications, provide property management services, and comply with legal obligations. We do not sell your personal information.
Lease Lifecycle Data
When a tenant gives notice to vacate through the portal, we record the planned move-out date, reason, any early-termination flag, co-tenant signatures, landlord responses, and any forwarding address the tenant chooses to provide. A forwarding address is optional and is shared with the landlord of the lease so they can return deposits or send final correspondence. This information is retained for the life of the lease record and for a reasonable period afterward to meet tax, accounting, and legal-retention obligations.
Prequalification Requests
If you use the prequalification questionnaire at /prequalify to check yourself against our published Tenant Selection Criteria, we collect the answers you provide — including contact details, income and employment information, rental and housing history, and credit and eviction history — along with two technical fields recorded with every submission: the submitter's IP address and the reCAPTCHA score assigned to that submission. Both technical fields help us investigate abuse of this public, unauthenticated form. A prequalification submission is deleted automatically and permanently 12 months after it is created, and an administrator may delete it sooner. Prequalification does not require a portal account, so if you want your submission deleted before then, contact us through our Contact Us page.
Before asking anything else, the questionnaire also requires you to acknowledge the Texas Real Estate Commission's Information About Brokerage Services notice, alongside your acknowledgment that you reviewed our Tenant Selection Criteria and your certification that your answers are accurate — we record the fact and moment of each acknowledgment with your submission.
If you choose text message as your preferred contact method, the questionnaire asks for your consent to receive text messages from Carwoods about your prequalification request at the phone number you provide. We record that you gave this consent, and the moment you gave it, with your submission. Message and data rates may apply, and you can ask us to stop at any time.
Payment Information
Online rent payments are processed by Stripe, a third-party payment processor. Your card or bank details are sent directly to Stripe and are never stored on Carwoods servers; Stripe's privacy policy governs how it handles your payment credentials. We retain transaction records — such as the amount, date, status, payment method type, and the lease they relate to — to provide receipts, accounting, and dispute support.
If you are a landlord, you can waive all or part of a billing period's unpaid late fees. A waiver is recorded in the lease ledger with its amount, billing period, who waived it, and when, and is retained with the other ledger records described in this policy. You may add a free-text note to a waiver; the note is stored with the waiver, is visible only to the landlord and Carwoods administrators, and is not shown or sent to the tenant. The tenant sees the amount waived and receives a notification that does not include the note. Landlords can also view, for a month they choose, the rent payment status (paid, pending, failed, or unpaid) and the name of each tenant on their own leases; this uses payment records we already hold and does not collect new information.
App Store Subscriptions
If you subscribe to Carwoods through the iOS app, the purchase is processed by Apple using your Apple Account. We do not receive your card or bank details. Apple sends us transaction information — such as the product purchased, purchase and renewal dates, subscription status, and Apple's transaction identifiers — which we link to your Carwoods account to activate, renew, and end your subscription and to provide support. Apple's privacy policy governs how Apple handles your payment information. Deleting your Carwoods account does not cancel a subscription billed by Apple; you can manage or cancel it in your Apple Account settings.
If you delete an account that has bought a subscription through the App Store, we keep a coded, one-way fingerprint of that purchase's link to your account and of your email address for up to 24 months. We use it only to move an active subscription to a new account you create with the same email. It cannot be read back as your email address, and we delete it once it has been used or the 24 months end.
Elsa
Elsa is Carwoods' AI assistant. Elsa helps landlords and property managers with drafting responses to tenant communications, including maintenance requests; to generate suggestions, it may process information such as request descriptions, message history, and property context, which may be transmitted to third-party AI service providers operating under confidentiality obligations. AI-generated content is not stored beyond what is necessary to deliver the service, and landlords and property managers should avoid including sensitive personal information in communications if they prefer that data not be processed by AI systems. Separately, when an administrator requests it, Elsa may generate a narrative summary evaluating a prequalification submission against our published Tenant Selection Criteria under the same confidentiality obligations; that summary is a reading aid for staff rather than an automated decision. For landlords, Elsa also answers questions about their own portfolio — properties, leases, tenants, maintenance requests, payments, documents, applications, and notices, plus — for landlords with Upkeep — upkeep schedules, completion notes (including notes tenants write), and equipment, all of which you can already see in the portal — together with your question and its answer, using a third-party AI model; your question, the conversation, and the data returned by our lookups are sent to that provider to produce the answer. When you have Upkeep, Elsa's maintenance-request triage may also use the property's equipment details and upkeep history to help prepare a tenant reply. Elsa can also create and update records for you — for example, updating a maintenance request, recording a rent payment, or posting a message to a tenant — but only after you confirm each change: Elsa first shows you the exact change, and your records aren't changed until you confirm it. A change you confirm may notify your tenants exactly as the same change made in the portal would, and, where the portal shows you a change history for that record, it is recorded there as made via Elsa; you remain responsible for every change you confirm.
Elsa Conversations
Elsa conversations and messages are retained for 90 days after your last activity in that conversation, after which they are purged automatically. You may delete a conversation at any time from the Elsa page, and every conversation is removed when your account is deleted.
Connected AI Apps
You may connect an AI client you already use, such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor, to your own portfolio data through our Model Context Protocol endpoint. A connection is created only after you sign in and approve the specific data scopes requested; the connected app receives only the data covered by those scopes and acts under your own AI provider account, not Carwoods'. A connected app can create and update records only if you also approve its change permissions, which it must request separately for each data area and which are granted only when you select them; a change it makes may notify your tenants exactly as the same change made in the portal would, and, where the portal shows you a change history for that record, it is recorded there as made via that app. A connected app can upload new documents to your Document Center only under a separate, distinct permission you approve for that; editing a document's details is a different permission that never touches the file itself. You remain responsible for every change made under the change permissions you approve. Every connection is visible on your profile page, where you can revoke it at any time; revoking ends access immediately. Carwoods administrators may also approve a separate permission that lets a connected app read call summaries; it is never offered to other accounts.
Connected App Change Feed
If you also approve the change-feed permission for a connected AI app, Carwoods records short events that describe changes in your portfolio, for example that a maintenance request was created or a payment was recorded, so the app can follow what happened without reading everything again. An event holds the type of change, who or what made it, the record it concerns, and a few small facts rather than the full record; because it can concern a tenant's request, payment, or lease, it may include tenant-linked activity, and it is shown only to the connected apps you have approved, which handle it, together with their AI provider, under their own terms and not Carwoods'. Events are kept for 7 days and then deleted automatically, and they are also deleted when you delete your account. Carwoods can switch the change feed off for all users at any time.
Unattended Actions by Connected Apps
Unattended actions are off by default. If you turn them on for a connected AI app that already has change permissions, Carwoods stores that setting and your hourly limit for that app, and counts how many unattended actions the app took each hour; these counts are deleted after 48 hours. Each action a connected app takes through your account is recorded in your activity record, marked as unattended when the app declared it so. The setting, the counts, and the activity record are deleted when you delete your account.
AI Usage Allowance and Billing
Every use of Elsa — including drafted responses and portfolio questions — draws on a monthly AI usage allowance based on your portfolio, resetting on the first of each calendar month (UTC) without rollover. Stripe customers may opt in to overage at the displayed multiple of estimated cost, with total charges capped at their approved monthly budget. Carwoods absorbs processing overruns. Withdrawing consent or lowering the budget affects future usage; charges already incurred remain payable. Admin pricing and allowance changes take effect next month. Apple and complimentary accounts pause when their allowance is exhausted.
AI Provider and Your Permission
The AI features described in this policy are powered by Gemini models provided by Google LLC. Depending on the feature, the information sent to Google can include the maintenance requests and messages you write and, for landlords and property managers, the questions you ask and the property, lease, tenant, payment, and document records needed to answer them. Before content you write in the portal is sent to this provider, the portal asks for your permission. You can allow or decline, and you can change your choice at any time in your profile. If you do not allow it, your requests and messages are handled without AI processing.
Mobile App Updates
The Carwoods mobile app can install updates to its app content over the air. So that we know which version of the app devices are running and can detect updates that fail to install or start, the app sends anonymous update telemetry: a random install identifier generated on your device, together with the update bundle, release channel, platform, and app version. The install identifier is not derived from any device or hardware identifier and is not linked to your account, name, email address, or any other personal information. This telemetry follows your analytics choice: if you have opted out, or your browser or device signals Do Not Track, the app generates no install identifier and sends no adoption telemetry. It still reports a failed or rolled-back update anonymously, without the install identifier, so that we can detect and withdraw a broken update. Update telemetry is retained for 90 days.
Notification Preferences and Mandatory Notices
You may control many portal notification settings in your profile, including email, in-app, and SMS preferences. Security and compliance notices, payment receipts, and notices of upcoming automatic payments may still be sent when required by law, policy, or account protection needs, or to give you a record of a payment.
Mobile Information
We do not share, sell, rent, or trade your mobile information with third parties for promotional or marketing purposes.
Phone calls
When you call Carwoods, an AI assistant answers on our behalf. Calls may be recorded. After the call, our telephone provider gives us a written summary and a text transcript of the conversation, which we store with your phone number and the time and length of the call. Audio recordings are kept by our telephone provider, not in our portal, for up to one year. Call records in our portal are visible only to Carwoods administrators and are deleted 24 months after the call, or sooner if an administrator deletes them.
Text Messages to Carwoods
When you send a text message to a Carwoods phone number, we keep the message and our replies in a conversation stored with your phone number so that our team can respond. Our AI assistant may draft or send replies to routine texts. The text inbox is visible only to Carwoods administrators. If a conversation is linked to a maintenance request, its messages appear in that request's history. Conversations are deleted after 24 months without activity; we keep a record of any opt-out so that we do not text you again. Text messages and phone calls are carried by our telephone provider, Telnyx. You can reply STOP at any time to opt out.
Landlord Calendar Feed
If you are a landlord and turn on the calendar feed, Carwoods creates a private calendar link for your account. The calendar behind that link contains four kinds of events: lease end dates, move-out dates, scheduled maintenance visits, and Upkeep due dates. Each event shows its type and the property's name or address, with a link back to the portal. The feed carries no tenant personal data: no tenant names, email addresses, phone numbers, request descriptions or messages, or money amounts. Anyone who has the link can read the events. When you add the link to a calendar app, the calendar provider you choose receives and stores the events under its own privacy policy. You can reset or turn off the link at any time, and the old link then stops working.
Third Parties
Our site may link to external services (e.g., Texas Real Estate Commission, HAR.com). We are not responsible for their privacy practices. Please review their policies before sharing information.
Data Retention
We keep personal information only as long as needed for the purposes described in this policy. Lease, payment, and notice records are retained for the life of the lease record and for a reasonable period afterward to meet tax, accounting, and legal-retention obligations. When information is no longer needed, we delete it or de-identify it.
Financial Record Retention
We retain a pseudonymous record of your financial transactions in two situations: when you delete your account, and when you remove a property from your portfolio. Deleting your account permanently removes your personal information; removing a property leaves your account in place, and the costs you had confirmed for that property are copied into the same pseudonymous record. In either case the record holds amounts, dates, billing periods, and status, with no name, email, or tax identification number, linked only to an internal account identifier. We keep these records for approximately seven years from the deletion or removal that created them, to meet our bookkeeping and tax record-keeping obligations, after which they are automatically purged. Carwoods does not issue tax forms such as 1099s; where a 1099 applies, it is issued by our payment processor, Stripe, which holds the relevant tax identity.
How We Protect Information
We use safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the data, including encryption in transit, authenticated access with role-based permissions, and hosting on Microsoft Azure infrastructure. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security; if a breach affecting your personal information occurs, we will notify you as required by applicable law.
Your Privacy Rights
Depending on where you live, including under the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act, you may have the right to know what personal information we hold about you, to correct it, to receive a copy of it, to ask us to delete it, and to opt out of certain processing. To exercise any of these rights, contact us through our Contact Us page; we will verify your request and respond within the time required by law. We will not discriminate against you for exercising your rights. If your information was entered by your landlord or property manager, we may direct your request to them, since they control tenant records in the portal.
Children's Privacy
Our site and portal are intended for adults. Rental applications and portal accounts may only be created by people 18 or older, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.
Changes to This Policy
We may update this policy from time to time. Updates take effect when posted on this page, and the "Last updated" date on this page reflects the latest revision. If we make material changes to how we handle personal information already collected, we will provide more prominent notice, such as a portal notification or email.
Contact
For privacy-related questions or to request access to your information, contact us through our Contact Us page.