Your home's record belongs to you
We never share your data without your explicit permission.
Why our model protects you
Stela's business model is selling you intelligence, not selling your data. We make money when you make better decisions about your home. That only works if you trust us completely — and you can only trust us completely if we never betray that trust for a data licensing deal. We won't.
What we never do
"Will my insurer find out and raise my rates?"
StelaHome never shares your home's record with insurance companies. We have no commercial relationships with insurers that involve individual homeowner data.
"Will future buyers find out about problems?"
Nothing in your home's record is ever shared with buyers without your explicit permission. You choose what appears in StelaReport if and when you decide to sell.
"Will this affect my assessed value or mortgage?"
Your home's record is never shared with tax assessors, lenders, or appraisers. It cannot affect your assessed value or mortgage terms.
"What if the company gets hacked?"
We practice data minimization — we don't collect what we don't need. If you close your account, your data is deleted completely. Less data stored means less to lose.
What we collect and why
| Data | Why | Shared? |
|---|---|---|
| Home address | To look up public records for your property | Never — stored encrypted, queried as hash |
| Maintenance log | To track your home's health and predict issues | Never without your permission |
| Repair receipts | To build your cost basis for future sale | Never — financial amounts always private |
| Appliance inventory | To track warranties and recall alerts | Only if you choose to share via StelaReport |
| Bank connection (Plaid) | To auto-detect utility and home expenses | Never — we see categories only, not account numbers |
| Photos | For documentation in your home record | Never without your permission |
How anonymized data helps everyone
With your permission, we contribute anonymized, aggregate statistics to help all homeowners — things like "water heaters in your region last an average of 11.3 years" or "plumbing repairs in your area cost 15% more than the national average."
What IS contributed (with your consent):
- • Anonymized repair costs (no name, no address, no account)
- • Appliance lifespan statistics (brand + age, not location)
- • Regional maintenance patterns (ZIP3, never exact address)
What is NEVER contributed:
- • Your name, address, or any identifying information
- • Financial account data or specific dollar amounts
- • Photos, documents, or personal notes
- • AI predictions or alerts specific to your home
K-anonymity safeguards ensure your data is never identifiable — we only include statistics when at least 10 similar homes exist in the same cohort.
Your controls
Export your data
Download your complete home record as a PDF or structured data file at any time.
Delete your account
Close your account and all data is permanently deleted. No retention, no exceptions.
Control sharing
Every piece of shared data requires your explicit opt-in. Default is always private.
Disconnect bank
Remove your Plaid connection at any time. Transaction data is deleted immediately.
Property page removal request
StelaHome generates public property intelligence pages using publicly available records. If you are a property owner and would like your property's page removed from our public index, submit a request below. We'll remove it within 24 hours — no questions asked.
What removal means:Your property's public page will be removed from our website and deindexed from search engines. Public records themselves (permits, deeds, tax assessments) remain available from their original government sources. If a buyer specifically requests a report on your property, we may compile publicly available records for that individual request — similar to how anyone can look up county records.
How we enforce this technically
Our privacy commitments aren't just policy — they're built into the infrastructure. Financial data lives in isolated tables with separate encryption keys that other services physically cannot access. The anonymization pipeline that powers aggregate insights is enforced at the database permission layer, not just application logic. A bug in our code cannot accidentally expose your individual data because the infrastructure won't allow the query.