Use AI in your estate agency without exposing client details

Nobody copies a whole file into ChatGPT. For an auctioneer or letting agent, AI mostly means one awkward paragraph tidied up: the sales advice notice, or the email to a vendor after the third bid in a week.

It can just as easily be the viewing notes that need turning into something the landlord will read. Those paragraphs carry more than the price. On the sales side there’s the purchaser’s name, a mobile and an email, the booking deposit and the account it came from, and the folio number from Tailte Éireann, whose Part II names the owner. On lettings it’s the PPS number for the RTB registration, plus references from an employer and the previous landlord.

Most of that is personal data before anyone mentions AI, and a PPS number carries extra rules of its own in Irish law, which our PPSN guide sets out. The price, the number of bedrooms and the loan approval aren’t the problem. Nobody can be picked out from those, and they’re exactly what the chat needs to write a decent email.

Select the passage and press the key: each detail Nonimo recognises becomes a marker on the office computer, Mac or Windows, and the originals stay there. When ChatGPT replies, Nonimo puts the real details back on your screen.

It’s the same with Claude or Copilot, since only your PC knows what each marker stands for. In the invented note alongside, the purchaser, the date of birth, the email and the account the booking deposit came from are covered, and the cover email to both solicitors can still be written, because the house, the price and the loan approval stay readable. What happens to anything that does reach OpenAI is in what ChatGPT keeps.

The Eircode and the folio number are covered, each with a label of its own. The PPS number is covered too, next to its label, and so is a passport number written after its label on the AML file.

The DPC’s guidance for landlords and letting agents on requesting data from prospective tenants, last updated in July 2019, never mentions AI. It covers the data itself, and so every copy of it, including one sitting in a chat history.

The first question on its checklist is whether the person is one of many applicants or the one being offered the tenancy.

The line quoted here, from page 3, is the one that bites at viewing stage. Once the tenant has taken up the offer, the same page says references gathered to check them should not be kept. If one of those references was pasted into a chat to write the landlord’s summary, a copy may still sit in a provider’s history, and your office can’t be sure it’s gone.

Consent won’t carry it either: the guidance tells landlords to be wary of relying on consent, given the imbalance of power (page 2). In a case it cites, the DPC told a letting agency it could see no basis for collecting PPS numbers, bank details or utility bills at application stage. Which assistants hold up under the GDPR is in which AI is GDPR compliant.

As property service providers, estate agents are designated persons under section 25(1)(f) of the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010, and since 2016 the PSRA has been the competent authority.

Its quick guide asks for customer due diligence before the letter of engagement is signed, and on a purchaser paying a booking deposit of €15,000 or more. Its CDD checklist asks whether photo ID and official proof of address have been provided.

That file is a second pile of personal data in every auctioneer’s office, and the one least suited to a chat window. Nonimo treats it like any other text. A value whose form leaves no doubt is replaced without a question. Anything recognised from its context, such as the label before it, is covered in view with its reason, and a single click undoes it.

In the example above, the purchaser’s name and date of birth from that file are covered, and you see the result before anything is sent. The records themselves stay where the PSRA wants them: on your file, for at least five years, then deleted. Why a marker doesn’t stop the data being personal for your office is in pseudonymised data in Irish law.

One computer in the office is enough to start, Mac or Windows, and the download is at the top of this page.

Nonimo’s Free plan covers 100,000 words a month, with no account and no card. Personal, for one person, and Team, priced per person, remove the cap and can be billed monthly or yearly; the details are on our plans and pricing page. Start wherever the applications land, which is usually the lettings desk and reception.

Plenty of products sell AI to estate agents, and Nonimo isn’t one of them: it sits in front of them. Each desk installs the app on its own. To cover the whole office, your IT provider deploys a browser extension by policy, and it covers text with no key press; organisations explains how.

Your office still keeps its own GDPR and AML records. What Nonimo does is make sure the details it recognises are replaced before a note goes to an AI provider. None of your text ever reaches us, and you don’t need an account with us. What the app reports each day is set out on our security page.