Terms of Service | TheKabza.com

Effective date: [Insert date]
Last updated: [Insert date]

Template notice: this page is a drafting template prepared for TheKabza.com. The arbitration, class-waiver, liability and venue provisions in particular must be reviewed and completed by a licensed attorney before this site goes live, as their enforceability varies by state.

These Terms of Service govern your use of TheKabza.com and any subdomain, listing search, valuation request form, contact form or other service we make available through this website (together, the “Site”). The Site is operated by [Insert registered legal entity name], a [Insert entity type] organized under the laws of Texas, trading as TheKabza.com (“we”, “us”, “our”).

Please read these terms. They limit our liability, they set out how disputes are resolved, and they make clear that browsing this site does not make us your agent.

1. Acceptance of these terms

By accessing, browsing or using the Site — including by submitting an enquiry, requesting a home valuation, creating a saved search or contacting us through any form or published number — you agree to be bound by these terms and by our Privacy Policy and Disclaimer, which are incorporated here by reference. If you do not agree to any part of them, do not use the Site.

If you are using the Site on behalf of a company, trust, partnership or other entity, you represent that you have authority to bind that entity, and “you” includes that entity.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of entering a binding contract to use the Site. The Site is intended for users located in the United States and describes services available only in the markets where we hold a license. We make no representation that the Site or its content is appropriate or available for use outside the United States, and if you access it from elsewhere you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for compliance with your local law.

3. Permitted use

You may use the Site for your own personal, non-commercial purposes: researching residential property, reading our market and service content, requesting a valuation, and contacting a licensed agent about a genuine real estate need.

You agree not to:

use the Site for any unlawful purpose or in violation of any applicable federal, state or local law, including fair housing, advertising, telemarketing and consumer protection law;
misrepresent your identity, impersonate another person, or submit a form on someone else’s behalf without their authorization;
interfere with or disrupt the Site, its servers or its networks, including by introducing malware, attempting to gain unauthorised access, probing for vulnerabilities, or overloading the Site with automated requests;
circumvent any access control, rate limit, registration requirement or technical measure protecting the Site or its listing data;
reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to derive the source code of any part of the Site;
use the Site to send unsolicited commercial messages, to solicit our clients, or to recruit our agents;
frame, mirror or present the Site or its content as your own; or
remove, obscure or alter any copyright, trademark, MLS attribution or other proprietary notice.

4. Listing data: no scraping, harvesting or redistribution

Property listing content displayed on the Site is supplied under licensed Internet Data Exchange (IDX) agreements with the multiple listing services covering our markets, including Unlock MLS, NTREIS, HAR, ARMLS, MIAMI REALTORS and RealTracs. That content belongs to the originating MLS and its participants, and our right to display it — and your right to view it — is subject to each MLS’s rules.

Listing data is provided exclusively for consumers’ personal, non-commercial use and may not be used for any purpose other than identifying properties a consumer may be interested in purchasing or leasing. You specifically agree not to:

use any robot, spider, crawler, scraper, screen-scraping tool, data-mining script, headless browser or other automated means to access, copy, index, monitor or extract listing data, photographs, agent details or any other content from the Site;
compile, republish, resell, license, syndicate or create a derivative database from any listing content obtained through the Site;
use listing content for lead generation, valuation products, advertising targeting, model training or any other commercial purpose;
harvest email addresses, phone numbers or agent information from the Site; or
bypass or ignore instructions in our robots.txt file or any technical restriction we apply.

We monitor for automated access and may block IP addresses, rate-limit requests, suspend accounts or pursue legal remedies — including claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Copyright Act and applicable state law — against anyone who scrapes the Site. MLS rules may also require us to report such activity to the MLS.

5. Intellectual property

All content on the Site that is not third-party listing data — including our written market guides, service descriptions, methodology documents, valuation templates and the Comp File format, the Title Review Memo format, the Written Closing Calendar format, original photography commissioned by us, page design, layout, graphics and code — is owned by TheKabza.com or its licensors and is protected by United States copyright, trademark and trade dress law.

“TheKabza.com” and our logo are our trademarks [registration status: [Insert — registered / common law / application pending]]. You may not use them without our prior written consent, except for factual reference to our business.

You may view, download and print pages of the Site for your own personal, non-commercial use, provided you keep all proprietary notices intact. Any other reproduction, distribution, public display, modification or commercial use requires our written permission. Third-party marks appearing on the Site — including MLS and association marks and the Equal Housing Opportunity logo — belong to their respective owners and are used under the terms those owners set.

6. User submissions

When you send us information through the Site — a form entry, a message, a property description, photographs of your home, a review or a testimonial — you represent that you own it or have the right to provide it, that it is accurate to the best of your knowledge, and that it does not infringe anyone’s rights or violate any law.

You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, store, reproduce and adapt your submission for the purpose of responding to you and performing the services you requested. For a testimonial or review you expressly offer for publication, that license extends to publishing it on the Site and in our marketing, identified by first name and last initial. You may withdraw permission for a published testimonial at any time by emailing hello@thekabzas.com, and we will remove it within [Insert period, e.g. 10 business days].

We may, but are not obliged to, review, edit for length or clarity, decline to publish, or remove any submission. Do not send us confidential information, trade secrets, or sensitive financial documents through an unsecured web form or unencrypted email; use the secure channel your agent provides once an engagement begins.

7. No agency relationship until a written agreement is signed

This is the most important clause on this page.

Browsing the Site, submitting an enquiry form, requesting a home valuation, receiving listing alerts, speaking with one of our agents by phone or text, or attending a showing does not create an agency relationship between you and TheKabza.com, and does not make us your buyer’s agent, listing agent, leasing agent, property manager or advisor. No fiduciary duty of any kind arises from your use of the Site.

A brokerage relationship begins only when you and a licensed agent of TheKabza.com sign a written representation agreement — a buyer representation agreement, a listing agreement, a leasing agreement or a property management agreement — that names the agent, states the fee, states the term and states the services included. Until that document is signed, any information we provide is general information offered without duty, and we may be representing another party in the same transaction.

In Texas, the Information About Brokerage Services notice and the TREC Consumer Protection Notice are linked in the footer of every page and explain the types of representation available. We do not practice dual agency by default; where state law permits an intermediary or transaction-broker arrangement, it requires your separate, informed, written consent with the trade-offs explained first.

8. Third-party services and links

The Site links to and embeds services operated by others: MLS and IDX search tools, mapping providers, mortgage calculators, electronic signature platforms, scheduling tools, analytics providers and government or association resources. Those services have their own terms and privacy policies, which govern your use of them. We do not control them, do not guarantee their accuracy or availability, and are not responsible for their content, security or conduct.

A link from the Site is not an endorsement. Any dealing you have with a third party found through the Site — including a lender, inspector, title company or contractor — is solely between you and that party.

9. Disclaimer of warranties

The Site and all content on it are provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranty of any kind. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

We do not warrant that the Site will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free, that defects will be corrected, that the Site is free of harmful components, or that any content — particularly third-party listing data, market figures, school information, tax estimates or square footage — is accurate, complete or current. See our Disclaimer for the detail. Some states do not allow the exclusion of certain implied warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

10. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither TheKabza.com nor its owners, agents, employees, licensors or service providers will be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost opportunity, lost data, loss of goodwill, or the cost of substitute services, arising out of or relating to your use of the Site — whether the claim is brought in contract, tort, negligence, strict liability, statute or otherwise, and even if we were advised that such damages were possible.

Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Site will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you paid us for services giving rise to the claim in the twelve months before the claim arose, or (b) [Insert amount, e.g. US$100].

Nothing in these terms limits any liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including liability for fraud, for wilful misconduct, or for any duty owed under a signed representation agreement or under the real estate licensing law of a state where we are licensed. Some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

11. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless TheKabza.com and its owners, agents, employees and licensors from and against any claim, demand, loss, liability, damage, fine, cost or expense — including reasonable attorneys’ fees — arising out of or related to your misuse of the Site, your breach of these terms, your violation of any law or the rights of a third party, your unauthorised use or redistribution of listing data, or any content you submit. We reserve the right to assume the exclusive defense of any matter subject to indemnification by you, at your expense, and you agree to cooperate with that defense.

12. Governing law and venue

These terms and any dispute arising from them or from your use of the Site are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules and without regard to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

Subject to the dispute resolution section below, you and we agree that the exclusive venue for any action shall be the state or federal courts located in Travis County, Texas, and you consent to the personal jurisdiction of those courts. Where a dispute concerns a specific property outside Texas, the mandatory law of the state where that property is located may apply to matters of real property and to the conduct of a licensee in that state, and nothing here waives a right you hold under that state’s law.

13. Dispute resolution

Step one — talk to us. Before starting any formal proceeding, you agree to notify us in writing at [Insert legal notice email and postal address] describing the dispute and the resolution you want, and to give us 30 days to resolve it. Most disagreements end here.

Step two — mediation. If the dispute is unresolved after 30 days, the parties agree to attempt mediation in Travis County, Texas, before a mutually acceptable mediator, with the mediator’s fee split equally.

Step three — arbitration. [Draft option to be confirmed by counsel.] If mediation does not resolve the dispute, it shall be settled by binding arbitration administered by [Insert administrator, e.g. the American Arbitration Association] under its [Insert applicable rules], before a single arbitrator, seated in Travis County, Texas, with judgment on the award entered in any court of competent jurisdiction. Each party bears its own attorneys’ fees unless a statute or the arbitrator provides otherwise.

Carve-outs. Either party may bring an individual claim in small claims court if it qualifies, and either party may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property or to stop unauthorised scraping of listing data.

Class action waiver. To the extent permitted by law, disputes will be resolved on an individual basis only, and neither party may bring a claim as a plaintiff or class member in a class, consolidated or representative action.

Opt-out. You may opt out of this arbitration and class-waiver section by sending written notice to [Insert opt-out address] within 30 days of first accepting these terms. Opting out does not affect any other part of these terms.

The enforceability of arbitration and class-waiver provisions varies by state and by claim type. This clause must be reviewed by counsel and may need to be narrowed or removed.

14. Changes to these terms

We may revise these terms as our services, our technology or the law changes. The effective date at the top of this page shows the current version. Material changes will be signposted on the Site for at least [Insert period, e.g. 30 days] before taking effect. Your continued use of the Site after changes take effect means you accept them; if you do not, stop using the Site. Changes to these terms do not alter any signed representation agreement, which can be amended only in writing by both parties.

15. Termination and suspension

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Site, or to any account or saved search, at any time and without notice if we reasonably believe you have breached these terms, misused listing data, or created a risk to the Site or to other users. You may stop using the Site at any time.

Sections that by their nature should survive termination — intellectual property, user submissions, disclaimer of warranties, limitation of liability, indemnification, governing law, dispute resolution and this section — survive.

16. General provisions

These terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Disclaimer, are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Site, and supersede any prior understanding about it. If any provision is held unenforceable, it will be modified to the minimum extent necessary and the remaining provisions stay in force. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these terms; we may assign them to a successor in connection with a merger or sale of the business. Nothing in these terms creates a partnership, joint venture or employment relationship. We are not liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control. Notices to you may be sent to the email address on your file; notices to us must go to the legal notice address below.

17. Contact

Legal notices: [Insert legal notice contact name and email]
General enquiries: hello@thekabzas.com · (512) 555-0142
Property management: management@thekabzas.com · (512) 555-0177
Post: TheKabza.com, [Placeholder address] 1100 Congress Avenue, Suite 400, Austin, TX 78701
Brokerage license: [TREC License #______] · Designated broker: [Insert designated broker name]