Terms of Service

The agreement

These terms apply whenever you use Ruvella Homes, whether you are browsing listings, booking a viewing, or advertising a property. By using the service you accept them. If you do not, please do not use it.

Where you are using Ruvella on behalf of a company, an agency or a landlord, you confirm you are authorised to accept these terms for them, and “you” means both you and that organisation.

Your account

Some things - saving a property, messaging an agent, booking a viewing - need an account. You agree to give accurate details, keep your password to yourself, and tell us promptly if you think someone else has got into your account.

• One account per person. Accounts are personal and may not be shared, sold or transferred.
• You must be old enough to enter a binding contract where you live. If you are not, ask a parent or guardian to act for you.
• Professional access is verified, not just claimed.Choosing an account type at sign-up records what you told us. Estate agents are verified by Ruvella before they appear in the directory or are handed other people’s listings; administrator access is assigned by Ruvella. Either can be withdrawn.
• You are responsible for activity under your account, except where it follows from our own failure to keep the service secure.

Listings

If you advertise a property, the listing is yours and so is responsibility for it. You confirm you have the right to market the property, that the description, price and photographs are accurate and current, and that you own the rights to the images you upload or have permission from whoever does.

Listings are reviewed before publication. We may decline to publish, ask for changes, or take down a listing we believe to be inaccurate, misleading, discriminatory, unlawful, or not genuinely available. That judgement is ours, and we will tell you the reason.

Take a listing down, or ask us to, as soon as the property is gone. Advertising something that cannot be had wastes the time of everyone who enquires, and it is the quickest way to lose access to the platform.

Viewings

A viewing booked through Ruvella is an appointment between you and the agent handling the property. We provide the calendar, the confirmations and the reminders; the appointment itself is theirs to keep.

• The slots shown are that agent’s genuine availability. A confirmed booking is a real appointment, not a request that might be declined later.
• Either side can cancel from their dashboard. There is no charge, but please do it as early as you can.
• Contact details are exchanged once a viewing is confirmed, so either side can reach the other if plans change.
• We are not present at viewings and do not supervise them. Use ordinary judgement about your own safety, and tell us if something goes wrong.

Messaging and content

Messages, reviews, testimonials and property enquiries are yours, and you keep ownership of what you write. By posting it you give us permission to store it, show it to the people it is addressed to, and - for reviews and testimonials - publish it on the site next to your name and profile photograph.

Reviews and testimonials are read by a person before publication. We publish what is fair, including what is critical. We do not publish anything that identifies people who have not agreed to it, that is abusive, or that we have reason to think is not a genuine account. We do not edit the substance of what you wrote, and we do not remove a review because its subject asked us to.

Acceptable use

Do not use Ruvella to:

• advertise a property you have no right to market, or that does not exist;
• discriminate against anyone on grounds of race, religion, sex, disability, family status or any other protected characteristic, whether in a listing or in a message;
• harass, threaten or abuse another user, or send unsolicited commercial messages;
• scrape, harvest or bulk-copy listings, photographs or contact details, by hand or by machine;
• probe or interfere with the security of the service, or try to reach an account, listing or conversation that is not yours;
• upload anything containing malware, or use the service to break the law.

We may suspend or close an account that does any of this, and where the breach is serious or repeated we will do so without notice.

Fees

Browsing, saving, messaging and booking viewings are free to people looking for a property. We are paid by landlords, vendors and agencies under separate agreement with them.

We never ask a prospective tenant or buyer to pay in order to view or apply for a property. If anyone asks you for such a payment in connection with a listing here, do not pay it, and tell us at hello@ruvella.example.

Availability

We work to keep Ruvella available and accurate, but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or free of errors. We may change, suspend or withdraw features, and maintenance occasionally takes the service offline.

Listing information comes from the agents and landlords who publish it. We review listings and take accuracy seriously, but we cannot independently verify every figure, and details change. Confirm anything you intend to rely on with the agent before you commit to it.

Our responsibility

We are responsible for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of us breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for loss that is not foreseeable, for business losses, or for the acts of another user - including a landlord, agent or tenant you meet through the service.

Nothing here limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited, and nothing here affects rights you have as a consumer that cannot be excluded by agreement.

Ending this agreement

You can close your account whenever you like, from account settings or by asking us. We delete your personal data as described in the privacy policy, keeping only what we are required to keep.

We may close an account if you break these terms, if the law requires it, or if we withdraw the service. Where the reason is not a serious breach by you, we will give reasonable notice.

Published reviews and testimonials may stay on the site after an account closes, shown without your name attached.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Uganda, and the courts of Uganda have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them. If you are a consumer living elsewhere, this does not take away the protection of the mandatory consumer law where you live, and you may bring proceedings there.

Before going to court, please write to us. Almost everything is faster to fix by email than by claim form.

Changes

We update these terms as the service changes; the date at the top is when they last did. Where a change materially affects your rights we will email account holders before it takes effect, and continuing to use Ruvella afterwards means you accept it.

Questions go to hello@ruvella.example. See also our privacy policy.