Privacy Policy

Effective date: September 1, 2026  ·  Last updated: September 17, 2026.

Balalovski Real Estate ("we," "us," or "our") operates the website at www.balalovski.com, including the AI-powered chat assistant available on our site. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, and your rights with respect to that information.

By using our website or chat assistant, you agree to the practices described in this policy.

1. Information We Collect

We collect information in the following ways:

• Information you provide directly. When you use our chat assistant and request to be connected with an agent, you may be asked for your name, phone number, and email address. Providing this information is voluntary.
• Chat conversation content. The text of your conversations with our AI chat assistant is processed in order to generate responses and to summarize your inquiry for our agents.
• Email address detected in chat. If you type an email address during a chat conversation, our system may detect and use it to add you to our mailing list, provided you have given consent via the checkbox in the contact form.
• Standard web data. Like most websites, we collect basic technical information such as your IP address, browser type, and pages visited through standard server logs and analytics tools.
• Chat interaction data. When you use our AI chat widget, we log behavioral events including when the chat is opened and closed, how many messages were exchanged, whether you submitted contact information, whether you consented to SMS or email communications, and which page of our site you were on. These events are stored in our database linked to an anonymous session ID. Your IP address is stored only as a one-way cryptographic hash and cannot be reversed to identify you.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• To respond to your inquiries. Your name, phone number, and conversation summary are sent via SMS to our real estate agents so they can follow up with you promptly.
• To provide AI-powered chat assistance. Your chat messages are sent to Anthropic's Claude API to generate helpful, context-aware responses about our listings, agents, and services.
• To send you relevant information by email. If you provide your email address and check the consent box, we will add you to our Mailchimp mailing list to receive updates on new listings, market news, and agency announcements. You may unsubscribe at any time.
• To improve our services. Aggregated, non-identifiable data may be used to understand how visitors interact with our site and chat tool.

3. SMS Communications

By submitting your phone number through our chat assistant contact form, you consent to receive SMS messages from Balalovski Real Estate. These messages are sent via Twilio and are limited to:

• Agent follow-up notifications triggered by your request to be contacted
• Conversation summaries sent to our internal agents (not to you) for lead management purposes

Message and data rates may apply. You may opt out of SMS communications at any time by replying STOP to any message or by contacting us directly. For help, reply HELP or contact us at the address below.

We do not use your phone number for marketing SMS campaigns. Your phone number is shared only with our agents and our SMS provider, Twilio, for the purposes described above. SMS messages are only sent to visitors who have affirmatively checked the SMS consent box in our chat widget — the box is never pre-selected.

4. Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services to operate our website and chat assistant. Each has its own privacy policy governing how your data is handled on their platforms:

• Google Analytics 4 (GA4) — if enabled, we use Google Analytics to collect anonymized data about how visitors interact with the chat widget, including events such as opening the chat, sending messages, and submitting contact information. This data is used to improve the widget and understand usage patterns. Google Analytics uses cookies and may process data outside the EU. Google Privacy Policy. You can opt out of Google Analytics tracking using the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
• Anthropic (Claude API) — processes your chat messages to generate AI responses. Anthropic Privacy Policy
• Voyage AI — converts text into vector embeddings for our search system. Your chat queries are sent to Voyage AI for this purpose. Voyage AI Privacy Policy
• Pinecone — stores vector embeddings of our property listings, agent profiles, and website content. Your search queries are used to retrieve relevant results but are not stored in Pinecone. Pinecone Privacy Policy
• Twilio — delivers SMS messages to our agents when you request contact. Your name, phone number, and a summary of your inquiry are included in these messages. Twilio Privacy Policy
• Mailchimp (Intuit) — manages our email mailing list. If you consent, your name, email address, and phone number are stored in Mailchimp. Mailchimp Privacy Policy

5. Data Retention

We do not store the full text of your chat conversations on our servers. However, we do retain anonymized behavioral event logs — such as whether the chat was opened, how many messages were exchanged, and whether contact information was submitted — in our database. These logs are linked to an anonymous session ID and a hashed IP address, not to your name or identity. We retain these logs for up to 12 months for analytics purposes, after which they are deleted.

We do not store your chat conversations on our servers. Conversation content is processed in real time and a brief summary may be delivered by SMS to an agent, after which it is not retained by us.

If you subscribe to our mailing list, your information is retained in Mailchimp until you unsubscribe or request deletion. Contact information submitted through the chat form and delivered to agents via SMS is retained by those agents in the normal course of their business.

6. Your Rights

Depending on your location, you may have the following rights regarding your personal information:

• The right to access information we hold about you
• The right to request correction or deletion of your information
• The right to opt out of email marketing at any time (unsubscribe link in every email)
• The right to opt out of SMS communications by replying STOP
• California residents may have additional rights under the CCPA

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details below.

7. Children's Privacy

Our website and chat assistant are not directed to children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so we can delete it.

8. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.

9. Contact Us