The areas in which the company operates are very exciting.

Springvale, Keysborough and Dandenong are part of the City of Greater Dandenong, Melbourne's second City, and the gateway to the Mornington Peninsula, Gippsland and the South East Corridor. It is set to become one of Victoria's most important centres for living, working and shopping over the next ten years.

McDonald Real Estate is also at the forefront of investment management, and currently manages many hundreds of investment properties for its landlord clients. All this has only been achieved through a strong, well trained and experienced team which today utilises a fully computerised database of clients and customers in all price ranges.

McDonald Real Estate is a proud supporter of many local activities and clubs including the Lunar New Year Festival in Springvale, many local schools and voluntary organisations.

Managing Director Le Hoa Wysham is also the President of the Springvale Traders Association & Communities Inc and past President of the Rotary Club of Springvale City.

 

McDonald Real Estate is a real estate agency business based in Dandenong, Springvale and Keysborough, Victoria. Our principal activities are: residential, and commercial property sales, and full Property Management Services.

Our privacy policy covers McDonald Real Estate and its Web Site: www.mcdonaldre.com.au including our off-line business operations.

Anonymous Access for our Visitors
You can access our Web site home page and browse our site without disclosing your personal data.

Automatic Collection of Information
We do not automatically log personal information on our Web site, nor do we link information automatically logged by other means with personal data about specific individuals. We do not use cookies or like devices.

Data Collection and Purpose Specifications
We do not collect any personal or sensitive data from our visitors when they use our online services, except where the visitor initiates this, for example by inquiring or seeking sales and service. We do not collect information about our online visitors from other sources, such as private organisations, public records or bodies for web-visitors. We do not engage in online "spamming" or online mass-outbound marketing activities. We do not release personal information or "data lists" for the purpose of commercial sale.

Our internet service provider (ISP), the company that owns the Web site server that hosts our Web site, may collect only the domain names and names or referring web sites (not the email addresses of visitors). The ISP may aggregate information to measure the number of visits, average time spent on the Website and pages viewed. We may use this information to help us improve the operational performance and information content of our Website.

If you register online or provide personal information McDonald Real Estate by any means, we may use this information to provide you with specific targeted information about McDonald Real Estate and declared partner products and services in support of your needs. We may store email addresses, telephone numbers, personal passwords, or other access devices so as to personally tailor information to you.

If online surveys are conducted to better understand client needs and profile of our Web visitors and clients, we will let you know how we will use any information provided at the time we collect it. Personal information collected offline may be used for secondary purposes such as direct marketing. Wherever possible this will be collected directly, but in other instances may be collected from government or publicly available records, phone books or data lists or from third parties such as lists brokers, who are privacy compliant. Wherever possible we may engage in marketing activities where we do use personal information such as letter-box inserts See below for a table of personal data, if collected by any means and the purposes for which they are used by McDonald Real Estate

Data Collected	Purpose of Collection
Personal identifiers Eg. Name, contract details	Residential and commercial property sales, rental & body corporate services, and related services. Product sales eg. Directories Tailored pre-sale information search and selection services Targeted database collection, storage and usage for outbound marketing of core or related real estate services, including co-marketing with privacy-compliant service provider partners, which may include relocation service providers, trades-people, brokers, vendors and the like. Research and surveys for customer satisfaction & preference
Job details Eg role, title, responsibilities	As Above
Victorian Legislation – Sale of Land Act 1962 Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (residential tenants) Retail Tenancies Reform Act 1998 (commercial tenants) The Subdivision Act 1988 (body corporate) May require our access to you Credit checking details RTN (residential Tenancy Database of prior tenancy activities) Details above	As Above
Real estate-related Services or product sales marketing preferences eg valuations	As Above

 

Our Web Site links
Our Web site does not enable our visitors to post information to be accessed by others or to communicate with other visitors. Our Web site may include links to third party Web service providers, for the purposes of either displaying "client reference sites", or of providing related service and product information from partner service providers we believe to be of interest and use to individually targeted clients and prospects. Whilst it is a McDonald Real Estate condition of partnering with all partner service providers that they in turn satisfy the same minimum privacy compliance standards, McDonald Real Estate cannot be responsible for their content, or privacy policies or practices.

Privacy Compliance
We believe our privacy policy to be compliant with the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act 2000. There are no global or regional regulatory or self-regulatory schemes applicable to our web site or organisation, but we have in-progress a review with the objective of surpassing Australian privacy standards and meeting NZ and EU privacy standards.

Contractors
In order to provide the range of services in past demand from clients, we engage a number of contractors to fulfil specific tasks on our behalf for property-related service fulfilment purposes. These change from time to time, but range from relocation service providers, property valuers, gardeners, sign-board writers, copy-writers, drafts-people, photographers, trades people, maintenance-people and the like, who may have access to your personal information for the purposes of rendering property-related fulfilment service. We require all such contractors, to be privacy compliant in effect, and have agreements in place to this effect with all such contractors employed by McDonald Real Estate.

Privacy Support
If you have an enquiry, feedback comment or concern about of privacy policy, or wish to verify or access your personal information held by us, please contact:

Name	Mark Richardson
Address	4/320 Cheltenham Road, Keysborough
Phone #	03 9701 8611
Fax #	03 9701 8644
Email	mark@mcdonaldre.com.au

 

Procedures

Property Management

LANDLORDS
Under the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Act 2000 personal information gathered from a Landlord shall remain confidential and will only be disclosed upon authorisation of the Landlord.

Information relating to the Landlord/s preference/s in relation to Tenancies will only be disclosed upon authorisation of the Landlord.

Leasing/Tenancy Agreements will contain the name/company of the Landlord in the Landlord section of the Agreement.

Information relating to rates and other amenities on behalf of the Landlord will be disclosed by way of Owner Instructions form.

TENANTS
Members of McDonald Real Estate are Licensed Estate Agents and/or Agent's Representatives are authorised to obtain and retain information relating to the Tenant.

Information obtained by way of Tenancy Applications will be disclosed to a member of McDonald Real Estate Licensed Estate Agent and/or Agent's Representative in accordance with the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 for the information of the Landlord upon request.

All tenants upon applying for a preferred property are registered with Remington White National Tenancy Database by agreement by way of acknowledging and signing the Tenancy Application Form.

Further, McDonald Real Estate reserves the right to use and/or disclose information provided by the Tenant in relation to enquiries and/or lodgement with the National Tenancy Database.

McDonald Real Estate reserves the right to lodge details with the National Tenancy Database which may/will include details in relation to payment history, inspection details, and Tenancy Agreement details.

McDonald Real Estate reserves the right to pass on information such as names, addresses, telephone contacts and Tenancy Information should it be deemed necessary to:

	The Landlord
	The Landlord's Lawyers
	The Landlord's Mortgagee
	Organisation/Trades people required to carry out maintenance to the premises
	Rental Bond Authorities
	Body Corporate organisations
	Residential Tenancy Tribunals/Courts
	Collection Agencies and Credit Bureaus
	Other Real Estate Agents
	Organisations contacting us on behalf of the Tenant such as Banks/Utilities (such as Gas, Electricity, Water, Telephone).

 

Tenancy files will be retained for the purpose of previous Tenancy history and may be disclosed to other Real Estate Agencies for the purpose of providing references.

McDonald Real Estate reserves the right to keep and store information relating to a Tenancy for a period of 7 years in accordance with Corporations & Act 2001 Sect. 1001C.

McDonald Real Estate reserves the right to refuse a Tenancy Application should the Applicant refuse to disclose information requested as detailed in the Tenancy Application Form.

McDonald Real Estate agrees to provide and retain information collected by way of a Complaints Register for the purpose of recording such complaints by a Tenant/s.

McDonald Real Estate will make every attempt to resolve any disputes resulting between the Tenant and the Landlord and reserves the right to pass on personal information to VCAT (Victorian Civil & Administrative Tribunal) should the dispute not be resolved.

The Property Management Department reserves the right to pass on information to the Sales department for the purpose of obtaining names and telephone and Tenancy details.

Should the property be listed for sale, McDonald Real Estate Property Management and Sales staff reserves the right to enter the property at an arranged time as agreed by the tenant for the use of conducting Open For Inspections.

 

Sales

Our Sales Team collect certain information to allow them to perform primary tasks, such as-

 

1. 1. Selling of Property
2. 2. Appraisals of property
3. 3. Buying of property

 

Other secondary information may be obtained and stored for marketing purposes. Secondary information will be gathered from -

 

1. 1. Directly from consumers
2. 2. Open for Inspections
3. 3. Prism
4. 4. Reverse Directories
5. 5. Other public publications
6. 6. LocalWise
7. 7. Cordell

 

All information gathered is directed to the Database Management Department with a turnaround time of up to 3 days to ensure information is always updated and consistent.

No undue or improper pressure is used when obtaining information - all staff of McDonald Real Estate (including sales team) are trained regarding the Privacy Policy and all processes incorporated within the privacy policy.

Consumers who wish to "opt-out" of sharing their information with us need to request verbally or in writing that information given either verbally or in written form is not to be used for marketing purposes or not to be held by McDonald Real Estate after the primary task has expired.

Open for inspections are conducted for the relevance of buyer queries for properties open and/or similar properties. Information gathered via this method are given to database Management and stored/used when needed to contact consumers either for secondary marketing purposes or for specific primary marketing.

All information gathered via Sales, either Privately Sold or Auction is given to Database Management and stored within the system. Personal information such as name/ address/ telephone numbers are also kept by Sales Consultants. Information may be used for future general marketing or direct marketing purposes.

Information regarding owner-occupiers/absentee landlords and any past history with McDonald Real Estate can be requested by the Sales or Property Management Departments from Database Management on regular intervals.

All information obtained via various sources, as discussed above, are given immediately to Database Management in a reasonable timeframe or destroyed. Safe destruction of consumer information can be found in Section "Processes".

 

DATABASE MANAGEMENT

Our Database Management Area collect certain information to allow them to perform primary tasks, such as-

 

1. 1. Advising Sales Department
2. 2. Advising Property Management
3. 3. Direct Marketing

 

Information stored in Database Management is collected using various methods. Primary Methods include:

 

1. 1. From Sales Department
2. 2. From Property Management
3. 3. Directly from consumers

 

Other secondary information collected via:

 

1. 1. Prism
2. 2. Reverse Directories
3. 3. R.E.I.V.
4. 4. Other public publications. Eg. Newspapers
5. 5. LocalWise
6. 6. Cordells

 

Information is stored on Database system and updated as precisely as possible on a regular basis. Processes such as monthly checks and follow through on life-cycle of buyers is practiced to ensure completeness and accuracy of information stored.

Security processes regarding this information in terms of storage and deletion methods are discussed in Section "Processes"

McDonald Real Estate reserves the right to maintain existing information, however, all future publications such as monthly newsletters and other forms of direct marketing have an "optout" clause attached for customers who wish to be flagged against direct marketing.

Customers who wish to be removed from receiving direct marketing will be flagged "not to receive mail" and information within file with the exception of name and address, will be deleted, with notes showing date and request by consumer for action.

Consumers are advised of retention of information (if given directly), at time of giving information to McDonald Real Estate Staff (methods discussed previously), either verbally or in writing. Consumers then can request not to have information stored after fundamental process has been achieved, in writing.

Sensitive information is not stored, used or discussed at McDonald Real Estate, and breaches the essence of McDonald Real Estate integral beliefs.

Only Primary parties can make requests for information on themselves, however, any legal bodies requesting information may be granted details. All disclosures on consumer files are noted at time of disclosure, giving reasons and methods. Eg. Police request. And information is only given when all legal steps for requesting information is given to satisfy Privacy Officer.

Consumers have the right to request to view information collected on them at any time. McDonald Real Estate agrees to provide such information by way of a photocopy for which the consumer will be charged a fee of 20 cents and a reasonable turn around time of 14 days. However, on the occasion that information may be denied is discussed in section "Processes"

 

People & Culture

McDonald Real Estate has a firm policy pertaining to all staff members involved in Sales, Property Management and Trust Accounting.

All members are licensed Estate Agents and/or Agents Representatives.

All members of McDonald Real Estate have read, acknowledged and signed Privacy Policy Agreements.

Our Privacy Policy committee consists of:

 

1. 1. John Wysham - Principal of McDonald Real Estate
2. 2. Mark Richardson – Director

 

We have ensured that the Sales Department, Property Management and Administration are represented.

Our filing systems have been modified to ensure only those staff members have the necessary access to information provided by consumers.

Staff training programs are conducted regularly and staff members participating are constantly evaluated in their understanding and knowledge of our procedures.

All staff members will refer to a Committee Member in the event of sought information being required by a law enforcement body. Processes

Release of Information
Consumers may, at any time, request information we have about themselves. Requests must be made in person at our office and the following steps need to be undertaken:

Primary photographic ID must be presented at time of request, eg. Drivers licence, passport, proof of age card (with photo).

"Customer Request Form" must be completed by consumers and in turn, forms will be passed to a Committee Member.

All information will only be available to personally collect by customers from reception 14 days from date of request. Details cannot be faxed/emailed or mailed. A charge of 20 cents per photocopied page is payable by customers.

Refusal of release of Information
Consumers may be refused access to view of correct/update information if:

 

1. 1. It would pose a serious threat and imminent threat to life or heath of any individual
2. 2. It would provide an unreasonable impact on the privacy of others
3. 3. The request is frivolous or vexatious
4. 4. The information relates to legal proceedings with the individual and would not be accessible through discovery in those proceedings
5. 5. Access would reveal intentions in negotiations with the individual in a way that would prejudice those negotiations
6. 6. It would be unlawful or is required or authorised under law
7. 7. It would prejudice the investigation of an unlawful activity or other law enforcement

 

Reasons will be provided for both a denial of access and a refusal to correct

Clean Desk Policy
All information concerning names, addresses and/or any other consumer personal information must be placed securely away every night, or while away from desk. This includes papers on desks, details at reception and filing cabinets.

Security includes the use of locked filing cabinets and desk drawers with locks attached.

Destruction of Information
Once information has served the primary purpose for which it was obtained, details are given either to Database Management or destroyed immediately.

Destruction of information includes - shredding of paper details and/or deletion and overwrite of disks.

All information given to Database Management is entered onto database system with encrypted password that only the Manager and the Principal has access to.

Information is backed-up daily ensuring information is kept safe, and previous details are over-written.

Complaint Resolution Scheme
At time of receiving complaint a "complaint form" including name, address and telephone number will be issued. McDonald Real Estate Complaint Form is to be completed, addressing reasons of complaint and expected outcome by consumers.

All complaints received will be acknowledged via a written letter advising consumers.

A resolution time of 14 days after receiving complaint will be administered and verbal and/or written outcome(s) will be given to consumers.

Following this, if consumers are still not satisfied with outcome, they can contact the Director Le Hoa Wysham either by telephone or in written form.

Review
Members from the Complaint Resolution Committee will meet half yearly to review details and revise any changes.