Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy (the "Policy") describes your information is collected, used, and shared when you access the Sites and Services provided by Unified National Mortgage LLC (dba Afford Lending, Afford Colorado, Afford California, Afford Texas, Afford Washington) and its affiliates and subsidiaries.
The companies listed above are collectively referred to as "Afford", "we", "us", or "our" for the purposes of this Privacy Policy.
This Policy applies to all of our websites (the "Sites") and the mortgage services provided by Afford through the Sites or any other medium (collectively, the "Services").
If you have any questions about this Policy, please e-mail us at legal@affordcolorado.org.
1. Types of information we collect
a. Information you Provide
We collect information when you access our Services, including when you apply for a loan; create an account with us; communicate with us about our Services through any medium (including, but not limited to, phone, email, or text messaging [SMS]); or otherwise complete a form or survey on our website(s) or in our mobile application(s).
Categories of information you may provide to us include:
- Your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and social security number;
- Your account log-in details;
- Circumstances related to your purchase or sale of a home;
- Reviews or comments you leave on our website, mobile application, or on other public websites;
- Your driver's license or state ID information;
- Real estate offer letters;
- Information related to your financial ability to buy a home;
- Citizenship status (for tax calculation purposes);
- Marital status (for tax calculation purposes)
b. Information We Collect from Your Device(s)
We may collect the following information from the device that you use to access our Services:
- Device attributes such as the operating system, hardware and software versions, battery level, signal strength, bandwidth, available storage space, browser type, app and file names and types, and plugins;
- Information about operations and behaviors performed on the device, such as mouse movements (which can help distinguish humans from bots) or whether a window is in the foreground or background;
- Identifiers unique to you, your device, or your account(s), such as device IDs, advertising IDs, and other similar static ID numbers such as those from apps or accounts you use;
- Information you allow us to receive through device settings you turn on, such as access to your GPS location;
- Network and connection information such as the name of your mobile operator or ISP, language, time zone, mobile phone number, and IP address; and
- Data from cookies, tags, pixels, web beacons, and log files stored on your device, including cookie IDs, page views, how often you visit our website or mobile application, and links you click on.
We generally use this information for your convenience and to improve our Services. For instance, we may use it to: (i) remember your information so that you do not have to re-enter it; (ii) provide you with customized content and information, including advertising; (iii) monitor the effectiveness of our Services; (iv) monitor aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, and usage patterns; and (v) diagnose or fix technology problems.
c. Information We Collect When You Call Us
We may record phone or video calls with you for quality assurance purposes. Our customer service team members also enter certain information you provide into our customer service database(s) to ensure continuity and consistency throughout your experience.
d. Information We Collect from Partners, Service Providers, and Affiliated Businesses
We may collect information about you from our partners, service providers, and affiliated businesses in order to provide the Services, along with certain related products and services such as home financing, title insurance, escrow services, home-builder partnership programs, and real estate agent partnership programs, and, in cases where we are not able to approve your loan, access to other potential lenders, brokers, or agents who may be able to help with your real estate transaction.
Information we gather about you from our partners, service providers, and affiliated businesses may include:
- Multiple Listing Service (MLS) information about your home or the home(s) you are interested in buying;
- Pre-qualification letters from financial institutions;
- Construction or purchase contracts;
- Information related to your home purchase, sale, moving dates, and financing in connection with helping us facilitate "trade-in" deals;
- Information about whether you may need homeowners insurance; and
- Information about how you engaged with our advertisements or social media posts.
e. Information We Collect from Public Sources
Much of the information necessary to help you buy or refinance your home is available from public government sources. We sometimes collect information from these sources so that you do not have to spend time looking for and aggregating it for us. For example, we may collect the following information about you and your home from public sources:
- Tax assessments of your home;
- The school district and public transportation available near your home;
- Information contained on the deed to your home, such as name, address, liens, encumbrances, and title;
- Sale prices of homes similar to your home (called "comparables");
- The number of bedrooms and bathrooms in your home;
- Whether your home has access to features like a beach, boat dock, or parking garage;
- Whether your home is in an earthquake or flood zone or has any other condition that would affect its market value;
- Permits issued for remodels and additions;
- The finished and unfinished square footage of your home; and
- The year your home was built.
2. How we use collected information
a. To Provide Our Services
We use the information that we collect about you to deliver our Services, including to personalize features and content to you. We use the information you provide to give you options that may be relevant to your individual circumstances. As discussed in more detail below, you have choices about how and whether we process some of your information.
b. To Advertise Our Services
We may use information collected about you to provide you with relevant information about additional Services that we or our affiliated companies offer, such as homeowners and title insurance services. Specifically, we use information about how you interact with our website and mobile application, combined with information you provide us and information we collect from other sources, to serve you relevant advertising.
c. To Do Market Research
We are constantly striving to improve our customer experience. We conduct research into all aspects of the home financing process to try to identify ways to make it better. Sometimes we use partner companies to conduct surveys of willing participants who offer suggestions as to how we might improve our Services. We also aggregate and analyze consumer information that we collect on our website, mobile applications, and from conversations with our customer service representatives to identify trends which inform how we change and grow.
d. To Support Information Security and Debugging
We may use information about you and your use of the Services to detect security incidents, protect against malicious, fraudulent, or illegal activity, and improve the security of our Services. We may also use this information to debug our Services to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.
e. In Connection with a Dispute
We may use personal information to prosecute or defend against claims in court and other dispute resolution forums.
3. Why and how we share your information
a. With your consent
We may share your information when you specifically direct us to do so. Examples of situations where we share your information with your consent include:
- Other financing providers. Sometimes we are not able to finance a home. In these circumstances, with your consent, we may share your information with one of our partner lenders or brokers.
- Escrow and title. With your consent, we may share your information with home escrow and title insurance providers.
- Other related partners with whom you ask us to share your information. We will share your personal information with other parties at your direction.
- Your real estate agent(s) for your home purchase. Our general practice is to share regular loan application status updates with a borrower's real estate agent(s). The updates help ensure coordination between the home buying and financing processes. If you do not want us to share those updates with your real estate agent, you can opt out by talking to your Mortgage Officer.
b. With our affiliated companies
We may share your information between our affiliated companies to the extent allowed by law.
c. With third-party service providers
We may share your information with service providers, including payment processors, technology and infrastructure providers, digital communications services, market research analysts, auditors and accountants, physical site security providers, IT security and bug-fix partners, and other providers, who perform services for and on our behalf for the sole benefit of us and our customers.
d. With law enforcement, courts, or government agencies
We may share your information as necessary to respond to legal process or to regulatory authorities (such as pursuant to a subpoena, warrant, investigative demand from law enforcement, regulators, or others; national or international security letters; etc.); to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding suspected or actual illegal activities (including fraud) and security or technical issues; to respond to or participate in commercial disputes (e.g., lawsuits or investigations); or to protect against fraud, claims, or other liability or harm to you, us, or others.
4. How we protect your information
a. Safeguards
We use commercially-reasonable physical, electronic, administrative, and procedural safeguards to preserve the integrity, confidentiality, and security of all personal information collected through the Services. However, no security measure, system, or control is infallible. Therefore, like all businesses, we cannot guarantee that our systems are invulnerable to attack or misuse.
b. Your role
You have a major role in the security and privacy of your own information. For example, you should not provide us with personal information that we do not request. Additionally, you are responsible for controlling access to any personal computing device through which your information may be stored or accessed. You are also responsible for safeguarding any passwords or other log-in credentials that may be used to access your information, including in our environment. We recommend that you log out of any account when you are done using it.
c. Third parties
Please remember to review the privacy settings and security policies of third-party sites and services that you use, such as social networks. We are not responsible for the privacy or security measures of any third party.
d. Incident response
In the event that the security of any personal information under our control is compromised, we will take reasonable steps to investigate and mitigate the situation, including, when appropriate, notifying those individuals whose information may have been compromised and taking other steps in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.
5. Your rights and how to exercise them
a. Right to know about the personal information we collect and share
You have the right to request that we tell you about our collection, use, and sharing of your personal information over the past twelve months. Once we receive and validate your request, we may disclose to you:
- The categories of personal information we collected about you;
- The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you;
- Our business or commercial purposes for collecting that personal information;
- The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information;
- The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you (also called a data portability request);
- The categories of personal information about you that we disclosed to third parties for a business purpose and the categories of recipients of that information; and
b. Right to delete the personal information we collect and share
You have the right to request that we delete your personal information, subject to certain exceptions. Depending on the nature of the data, deletion may consist of erasing, aggregating, or anonymizing your information. After we receive and validate your request, we will delete and direct our service providers to delete your personal information, unless an exception applies. We may deny your deletion request, in whole or in part, if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service providers to:
- Complete the transaction for which we collected the personal information, provide a service that you requested, take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you, or otherwise perform our contract with you;
- Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities;
- Debug to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality;
- Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with your expectations based on your relationship with us; or
- Comply with a legal obligation or make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.
- Please be aware that, once deleted, your data, including your account and activities, cannot be restored.
c. How to make a request to know or delete
You may, without charge, request to know or delete your personal information by emailing legal@affordcolorado.org. Only you or an authorized agent may make a request to access your personal information. You have the right to make a free request twice during any twelve-month period. The request must:
- Provide sufficient information for us to reasonably verify that you are the person, or an authorized representative of the person, about whom we collected the personal information; and
- Describe your request with sufficient detail for us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.
For your safety and the safety of your information, we cannot fulfill a request to provide or delete personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you or an individual for whom you are a lawful agent. We may require additional verification before deleting or disclosing particularly sensitive information. We will only use the verification information you provide for the purpose of verifying your identity or authority to make the request.
Submitting a request does not require you to create an account with us.
We do not charge you a fee to process or respond to your verifiable consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.
6. Non-discrimination
We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights under Section VII. Unless permitted by law, we will not:
- Deny you goods or services;
- Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties;
- Provide you a different level of quality of goods or services; or
- Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.
7. Updates
This policy is updated regularly. We will promptly make any changes available at https://www.affordcolorado.org/legal/privacy. Changes will be effective as soon as the updated policy is posted unless otherwise stated.
This policy was last modified on Dec 13, 2022.