Consumer Privacy Policy

Last modified: 10/29/2024

Introduction

We at Stanley Martin Homes, LLC ("Company") respect the privacy of your personal information, are committed to being transparent about how we collect your information and are determined to take appropriate measures to protect the information we receive.  This consumer privacy policy describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide to us and our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting, and disclosing that information.

This privacy policy applies to the information we collect:

• On our “Website”: stanleymartin.com.
• In electronic messages and other interactions between you and this Website.
• When you visit our sales offices or tour a model home or a home for sale.
• When you interact with our sales representatives (including information collected as part of preparing a new home sales contract and in connection with a closing on the purchase of a home).
• When you interact with our Company representatives by email, text, or other communications applications.

By accessing or using this Website, you agree to be subject to this privacy policy. Further, by voluntarily providing personal information to our Company representatives in any form (verbally, by email, by text, or by electronic submission), you also agree to be subject to this privacy policy. If you disagree with our privacy policy, you should choose not to use our Website and decline to provide personal information to our Company representatives.

What This Privacy Policy Does Not Cover

This privacy policy does not apply to information collected through any other means, such as any website operated by our affiliates or subsidiaries or by any third party. Several of our affiliates, including Stanley Martin Custom Homes, First Heritage Mortgage, and First Excel Title, operate their own websites and have different privacy policies specific to their operations.

This privacy policy also does not apply to information we may collect through our job application process.

Information We Collect About You

We may collect or receive a variety of information from you when you use our Website or interact with our Company representatives, such as:

• Information by which you may be personally identified ("personal information"): Name, mailing address, street address, email address, telephone numbers, and other identifiers by which you may be contacted online or offline.
• Information about your internet connection, the equipment you use to access our Website, and usage details.
• Other personal information that you may choose to provide to Company representatives.
• Your comments on our Website or our social media sites.
• Photos or videos of your home, family, or yourself.

Information We Never Want to Collect

We never wish to receive and do not intend to collect any information about you that would be considered highly sensitive personal information, such as social security numbers, drivers license information (except when we are required to verify your age in connection with communities that are age-restricted), bank account or bank routing information, credit card information, income tax information, pay statements, credit reports, health-related information, or anything of that nature. If we inadvertently receive such information, our policy is to destroy it (for example, shredding physical copies) as soon as possible after receipt.

Further, because we are committed to the letter and the spirit of federal and state policies intended to achieve equal housing opportunity for all, we do not request or maintain any personal information relating to a customers race, color, religion, gender, handicap, familial status or national origin. We do not in any way limit the marketing and sales of our homes based on this type of personal information.

How We Collect Information

Information You Provide to Us

We collect some information directly from you when you use our Website or interact with our Company representatives. This may include:

• Information that you provide by filling in forms on our Website, such as:
  • When you request more information regarding something we offer or when you enter a contest or promotion sponsored by us
  • When you report a problem with our Website
• Records and copies of your correspondence if you contact us.
• Your responses to surveys that we might ask you to complete for research purposes.
• Your search queries on the Website.
• Information that our Company representative may fill into a database or other application based on a verbal or written dialogue with you.

Information We Collect Through Automatic Data Collection Technologies  

As you navigate through and interact with our Website, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including:

• Details of your visits to our Website, such as traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data and the resources you access and use on the Website.
• Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type.

Information we collect automatically is only statistical data and does not include personal information, but we may maintain it or associate it with personal information we collect in other ways. It helps us to improve our Website and to deliver a better and more personalized service, including by enabling us to:

• Estimate our audience size and usage patterns.
• Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Website according to your interests.
• Speed up your searches.
• Recognize you when you return to our Website.

Cookies

The technologies used for this automatic data collection may include cookies (or browser cookies). A browser cookie is a small text file placed on your computer to remember interactions with our Website, such as login credentials, preferences, and actions across different sessions. Our system may issue cookies when you direct your browser to our Website.

You may refuse to accept some, all, or no browser cookies by activating the appropriate settings on your browser. We may also give you the opportunity to customize your own cookie settings on our Website.

Information We Collect Through Third Parties

We may collect or receive information about you from our business partners, such as mortgage lenders, title companies, closing agents, warranty insurance providers, and insurance companies. We will treat this type of information like we treat information we collected directly from you.

How We May Use or Disclose Your Information

We may use or disclose the information we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information, for various purposes depending upon how you use our services, how you interact with us, and the permissions you give us.  This may include:

• Working with you in the selection, design, sale, contracting, financing, construction, closing, and warranty phases of the home you propose to purchase or purchase from us.
• Providing customer service, fulfilling requests for information, verifying customer information, and processing payments for transactions (note that authorized third-party payment processors handle payment information).
• Connecting you with our affiliated businesses that offer mortgage financing, title insurance, homeowners’ insurance, and other related services.
• Connecting you with service providers and other third parties who provide services that we believe may be useful in purchasing and owning your new home.
• Presenting our Website and its contents to you, including personalizing the Website and social media sites to show you content we think you will be most interested in based on your account information and your browsing activity.
• Learning about your experience with us and keeping records of your needs, preferences, and interests.
• Sending you marketing messages and showing targeted advertising when and where we are permitted.
• Maintaining and improving our Website and monitoring usage of our Website and our social media sites for market research and security purposes.
• Showing your comments and, if you provide them, photos on our Website, our social media sites, and in marketing materials (with your permission).
• Securing our Website and services, detecting and investigating fraud, and protecting ourselves and others when necessary.
• Complying with any court order, law, or legal process, including responding to any government or regulatory request.
• Protecting the rights, property, or safety of our Company, our customers, or others, including managing our contractual relations and protecting our business interests.
• Using or disclosing aggregated or anonymized information (which is no longer reasonably associated with an identifiable natural person) from our Website users or social media site users for any lawful purpose.
• Fulfilling the purpose for which you provide the information or any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information.

Protection of Your Information

We have adopted physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to protect personal information in our custody and control against loss, theft, and unauthorized access, use, modification, and disclosure. For example, our team uses updated and appropriate information technology procedures regarding the security of the information we collect on our Website. We use encryption when collecting or transferring sensitive data. But no transmission over the internet or any storage method is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of our services, nor can we guarantee that the information you provide will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the internet or through vulnerabilities outside of our environment. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially reasonable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its security.

Text messaging systems are less secure because they often use the resident messaging systems on a Company representatives personal phone. Therefore, we strongly discourage any exchange of substantive information by text messaging or other instant messaging applications. SMS opt-in consent or phone numbers for SMS purposes will NOT be shared with third parties and affiliates for marketing purposes.

Targeted Ads

We may use third-party ad servers (or ad networks) to deliver ads to you on our behalf. These third-party ad servers may collect and use information from your visits to our website to present advertisements that may interest you. The third-party ad servers typically provide options for opting out of the advertising.

Google Analytics and other Analytics Applications

We also use Google Analytics, a web analysis service provided by Google that utilizes the data collected across multiple devices to track and examine the use of this Website to prepare reports on a users activities and share them with other Google services. Google Analytics uses first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) or other first-party identifiers and third-party cookies (such as Google Advertising cookies) or other third-party identifiers to make advertising more engaging to users. Google may use the data collected to contextualize and personalize the ads of its advertising network. Google offers options for opting out of Google Analytics tracking. We may use other similar analytics tools in the future, but we will ensure that each tool will offer options for opting out of the analytics tracking.

Google Maps

We provide access to Google Maps. Personal information about you may be gathered, used, and processed by Google under Googles privacy policy, but we do not collect Google Maps information.

Do Not Track

Our Website does not currently support Do Not Track (DNT). DNT is a privacy preference that you can set in your web browser to indicate that you do not want certain information about your webpage visits collected across websites when you have not interacted with that service on the page.

Unsubscribing from Emails

If you are currently receiving emails from Stanley Martin Homes and wish to be removed from our mailing list, you may remove yourself by clicking on the link that was included in the email.

Jurisdictions With Consumer Data Protection and Privacy Laws

Virginia has adopted the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (CDPA), a law that gives consumers certain rights related to their personal data. Because of the size of our company and the limited number of consumers we interact with, the CDPA does not apply to our business. However, Virginia consumers who are concerned about our use of their personal data may submit a request to us at the address indicated in this privacy policy.

California, Colorado, Connecticut, New York, and perhaps other states have also adopted consumer data protection statutes. We consider ourselves to be doing business only in the states where our neighborhoods are located, and we comply with the laws of the states where our neighborhoods are located. If you access our Website from a state in which we do not do business, you give us your express consent to transfer your personal information to Virginia and to process it in Virginia, subject only to the laws of Virginia and this privacy policy.

The European Economic Area and other countries have also adopted consumer data protection statutes. If you access our Website from an international location, you give us your express consent to transfer your personal information and process it in the United States of America, subject only to applicable United States laws and this privacy policy.

"Smart Home" Devices

"Smart home" devices are outside the scope of this privacy policy because we do not collect any information from "smart home" devices. Nevertheless, we want to make you aware that some of the "smart home" devices installed in your home can collect personal information through various means:

• Data Collection Sensors: Many smart devices, such as smart thermostats, cameras, and sensors, collect data about your environment and activities in your home. This could include temperature preferences, movement patterns, and usage habits.
• Voice and Audio Data: Voice-controlled smart speakers and assistants like Amazon Echo or Google Home can continuously listen for activation commands. They are designed only to record after the wake word is spoken.
• Video and Visual Data: Cameras in devices like security cameras or video doorbells capture visual data from inside or outside your home.
• Usage Patterns: Smart devices can gather information about how frequently you use them, when you use them, and the specific features you engage with. This data can be used to build a profile of your daily routines and habits.
• App and Cloud Connectivity: Many smart devices require a smartphone app and cloud connectivity to function fully. These apps often request permission to access various data on your device, such as contacts, location, and more. Additionally, the data collected by these devices is often stored on cloud servers, which the device manufacturer can access.
• Firmware and Software Updates: Manufacturers can collect data during firmware and software updates. This data can include device usage statistics, errors, and other technical information.

We encourage you to read the privacy policies associated with any "smart home" devices you activate.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

We may make changes to our privacy policy at any time. We will post the revised privacy policy on our Website, identifying the date of the last revision at the top of the policy. After we change the privacy policy, your continued use of this Website or continued interaction with Company representatives is considered acceptance of the revised policy.

Contact Information

To ask questions or comment about this privacy policy and our privacy practices, contact us at legal@stanleymartin.com.