Privacy policy
Last updated: November 2026. This is a translation for your convenience. The legally binding version is the German Datenschutzerklärung.
1. Controller
The controller responsible for processing personal data on this website is:
schäferhochzwei GmbH (brand “SEENWERT Real Estate”), represented by the managing director Wigand Schäfer
Maximilianstraße 8, 82319 Starnberg, Germany
Phone: +49 8151 5509820 · Email: info@seenwert.de
2. Data protection officer
We are not required to appoint a data protection officer. For questions about data protection, please contact info@seenwert.de.
3. Overview and legal bases
We only process personal data where this is necessary for a functioning website, for handling your enquiries and for our work as an estate agent, or where you have given your consent. We rely on:
- Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR – your consent,
- Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR – a contract or pre-contractual measures at your request,
- Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR – legal obligations (e.g. retention obligations, German Money Laundering Act),
- Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR – legitimate interests,
- § 25(1) TDDDG – consent to storing and accessing information on your device; § 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG – where this is strictly necessary for a service you have expressly requested.
4. Hosting and server log files
Our website runs on a server of Hostinger International Ltd., 61 Lordou Vironos Street, 6023 Larnaca, Cyprus, in a data centre in Lithuania (EU). The provider supplies the server infrastructure and acts as our processor under Art. 28 GDPR.
When you visit the website, the server automatically processes: IP address, date and time, page requested, amount of data transferred, status code, previously visited page (referrer), browser and operating system. The purpose is to deliver the website and keep it stable and secure (e.g. defending against attacks and spam). The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR. We delete log data after 14 days unless it is needed longer to investigate a specific security incident. The connection is encrypted via TLS (https).
5. Contact by email and phone
If you contact us by email or phone, we process your details to handle your request (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR where a contract is concerned, otherwise Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Emails are processed via Microsoft 365 of Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited, One Microsoft Place, South County Business Park, Leopardstown, Dublin 18, Ireland.
6. Contact form, exposé request and search request
Data: title, first and last name, email address, optionally phone number and message; for an exposé request the property concerned; for a search request your search criteria (property type, budget, locations).
Purpose: answering your enquiry, sending the exposé and property documents, initiating and performing an estate agency contract; for a search request, informing you about suitable properties for as long as the search request exists.
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR. Mandatory fields are marked.
Recipients: your details are transferred directly to our real estate CRM Propstack (section 11). Where necessary for the transaction, we pass data on to sellers or buyers, the notary and, at your request, to financing banks.
Retention: if no contract is concluded, we delete enquiries 12 months after the last contact, and search requests when you end them or after 24 months without contact. If a contract is concluded, the statutory retention periods apply (section 19).
To protect against spam, our forms contain an invisible field and a time check. No additional data is collected and no third-party services are involved.
7. Online property valuation
Data: details of the property (type, address, living and plot area, rooms, year of construction, condition, features), reason for and timing of a sale, message and your contact details.
Purpose: a free market value assessment by our advisors and contacting you about it. The assessment is made by a person; there is no automated decision.
Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.
Recipients: Propstack (section 11): contact, property record with you as owner and a note on the request.
Retention: if no mandate results, we delete the data 12 months after the last contact.
So that your input is not lost when the page is reloaded, your browser stores the property details (without name and contact details) in session storage until the tab is closed. Legal basis: § 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG.
8. Referral programme
a) Your data as a referrer
We process your name, email, optionally phone and message to handle your referral, conclude the referral agreement and pay the bonus (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR, for accounting additionally (c) in conjunction with tax and commercial retention obligations). Recipients: Propstack (section 11), and for the payment our bank and tax advisor.
b) Data of the property owner (information under Art. 14 GDPR)
With a referral we receive data of a third person: name, phone number, location and type of property and, where applicable, information about the sale situation. The source is the person who gave us the referral; they must confirm that the owner knows about it and agrees to be contacted. The purpose is a one-time contact to find out whether there is interest in our services. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in initiating estate agency contracts). We first make contact in writing and state where the data came from. If the owner declines, we delete the data immediately and keep only a blocking note so that we do not contact them again. If the contact remains without result, we delete the data after 6 months. You can object at any time (section 20).
9. Chat assistant, callback request and WhatsApp
The chat on our website is a rule-based assistant that runs entirely in your browser. No artificial intelligence and no external chat service is used. Your input only leaves the browser if you choose one of the following options.
Callback: if you request a callback, we transfer your name, phone number and the chat summary to Propstack (section 11) in order to call you back (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). Retention as in section 6.
WhatsApp: if you click “continue on WhatsApp”, WhatsApp opens with a prepared text. Only when you send the message there do we and WhatsApp receive it. The provider is WhatsApp Ireland Limited, Merrion Road, Dublin 4, D04 X2K5, Ireland; data may be transferred to Meta Platforms Inc. in the USA (section 18). The WhatsApp privacy policy applies. The legal basis for our communication is Art. 6(1)(b) or (f) GDPR (communication via the channel you chose). You can always reach us by phone, email or form as well. We transfer relevant content to Propstack and delete WhatsApp chats after 6 months at the latest.
10. Newsletter “SEENWERT-Marktbrief”
Data: email address, optionally first name and your interest (buying, selling or both).
Content: market reports on Lake Starnberg, selected property offers and guide articles.
Double opt-in: after signing up you receive an email with a confirmation link. You are only subscribed after clicking it. We store the time and wording of your consent and the time of confirmation to be able to prove consent. Without confirmation we delete your details after 30 days.
Legal basis: your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, § 7(2) no. 2 UWG); proof is kept under Art. 6(1)(c) in conjunction with Art. 7(1) GDPR.
Sending: via Propstack (section 11) and our email account (section 5).
Withdrawal: at any time via the unsubscribe link in every issue or by email to info@seenwert.de. The lawfulness of processing up to that point remains unaffected. After unsubscribing we keep the proof of consent and a blocking note for up to three years (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).
11. Real estate CRM Propstack
We manage enquiries, contacts, properties and our communication with Propstack, a service of Propstack GmbH, Invalidenstraße 65, 10557 Berlin, Germany. Propstack processes the data exclusively on our behalf; there is a data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR. The properties, images and contact persons on this website also come from Propstack.
12. Watch list and browser storage
We store your watch list only in your browser’s local storage. It contains only the numbers of the saved properties and is not transferred to us. We also store your choice in the consent banner there (categories, time, version) so that we do not ask you again on every visit. The legal basis is § 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG. You can delete these entries at any time in your browser settings.
13. Images, videos, fonts and review quotes
Our own server retrieves property photos and mood images from Propstack (or Amazon Web Services) and Unsplash and delivers them to your browser. Videos, our own photos and the fonts “Alegreya” and “Montserrat” are also hosted on our server; videos play without sound and without an embedded video service. Your browser does not connect to these providers or to Google; your IP address is not transmitted to them.
On some pages we quote reviews that customers have published about us on Google, with the name under which the review was published there. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in showing prospective clients genuine experiences with us (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). If you are the author and do not wish to be quoted, a short message to info@seenwert.de is sufficient; we will remove the quote promptly.
14. Consent and cookie settings
Services that are not strictly necessary (sections 16 and 17 and the seal in section 15) are only loaded once you have agreed in our consent banner. Before that, no scripts from these providers are loaded and no cookies are set. You can change or withdraw your choice at any time via the “Cookie-Einstellungen” (cookie settings) link at the bottom of every page; cookies already set by these services are then deleted. We ask for your choice again after 12 months at the latest.
15. Customer reviews with ProvenExpert
Our server retrieves our overall rating and the number of reviews on ProvenExpert (Expert Systems AG, Quedlinburger Straße 1, 10589 Berlin, Germany) via the ProvenExpert interface and displays them in the footer. Your browser does not connect to ProvenExpert; no data about you is transmitted to ProvenExpert. Only if you click the link to our review profile does the ProvenExpert privacy policy apply.
With your consent (category “Externe Inhalte” / external content) we also show a review seal. Your browser then loads a script from provenexpert.net; your IP address, browser information and the page visited are transmitted, and ProvenExpert may store information on your device. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, § 25(1) TDDDG.
Authenticity of reviews: the reviews shown on this website come from our Google Business Profile and from ProvenExpert.com. We do not check ourselves whether reviewers have actually used our services. How the platforms check reviews is explained by Google and ProvenExpert in their own guidelines.
16. Google Analytics 4 (only with consent, category “Statistik” / statistics)
With your consent we use Google Analytics 4 of Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland (“Google”). Google Analytics sets cookies (_ga, _ga_<ID>, lifetime up to 13 months) and records how you use the website: pages visited, time spent, origin, device, approximate location and events such as submitting a form – without its content, without names or contact details. Google Analytics 4 does not store IP addresses. Google Signals is disabled. Event data is deleted after 2 months. Google acts as our processor; data may be transferred to Google LLC in the USA (section 18). We use Google Consent Mode in basic mode: without your consent no Google script is loaded. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, § 25(1) TDDDG. More information: Google privacy policy.
17. Advertising and origin of enquiries
We currently do not use any advertising or conversion services; the “Marketing” category therefore does not appear in the consent banner. If this changes, we will update this section beforehand.
Origin of your enquiry
If you have consented to statistics or marketing, we store in your browser’s local storage for up to 90 days how you first came to our website (e.g. search engine, ad, campaign parameters). If you send an enquiry, we add this information in Propstack to evaluate the success of our advertising. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, § 25(1) TDDDG.
18. Transfers to third countries
We only transfer data to countries outside the EU/EEA in the case of WhatsApp (if you write to us there), Google (only with your consent) and possibly Microsoft 365 (section 5): Microsoft stores our data in the EU, but access by Microsoft Corporation in the USA cannot be ruled out. Google LLC, Meta Platforms Inc. and Microsoft Corporation are certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework; these transfers are covered by an adequacy decision of the EU Commission (Art. 45 GDPR), supplemented by standard contractual clauses (Art. 46(2)(c) GDPR). US authorities may under certain circumstances access data without you having the same legal remedies as in the EU.
19. Retention
We store data for as long as necessary for the respective purpose (periods in the sections above) and then delete it, unless statutory retention obligations apply. For our work as an estate agent these include in particular:
- 5 years for records under the German Estate Agents and Developers Ordinance (§ 14 MaBV),
- 5 to 10 years for documents identifying contracting parties under the German Money Laundering Act (§ 8(4) GwG),
- 6 years for commercial and business letters (§ 257 HGB, § 147 AO),
- 8 years for accounting vouchers, 10 years for books and annual financial statements (§ 257 HGB, § 147 AO).
20. Your rights
You have the right of access (Art. 15 GDPR), rectification (Art. 16), erasure (Art. 17), restriction of processing (Art. 18) and data portability (Art. 20). You can withdraw consent at any time with effect for the future (Art. 7(3) GDPR).
Right to object (Art. 21 GDPR): where we process your data on the basis of legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR), you can object at any time on grounds relating to your particular situation. We will then no longer process the data unless we demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds or the processing serves the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims. You can object to processing for direct marketing at any time without giving reasons. An informal message to info@seenwert.de is sufficient.
Right to lodge a complaint: you can lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR). The authority responsible for us is the Bavarian Data Protection Authority (Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht, BayLDA), Promenade 18, 91522 Ansbach, Germany, www.lda.bayern.de.
21. Obligation to provide data, automated decisions
You can use the website without providing personal data. For enquiries, valuations, referrals and the newsletter we need the details marked as mandatory. There is no automated decision-making including profiling under Art. 22 GDPR.
22. Links to other websites
Our website contains links, e.g. to Google Maps and Apple Maps (directions, our Google Business Profile with reviews), ProvenExpert (our review profile), BORIS-Bayern (land values), WhatsApp and the website of the developer of this site. These providers only receive data when you click the link; their privacy policies then apply.
23. Changes
We update this privacy policy when the website or the legal situation changes. The version published here applies. Details of the provider can be found in the legal notice.