Terms of use

What this is

These terms govern your use of the app at app.terryriddoch.ca, operated by Terry Riddoch, Broker, 720 Westmount Road East, Kitchener, Ontario N2E 1J2. By creating an account you agree to them.

A free tool for recording what a multi-family residential building earns and costs, and seeing an analysis built from those figures: net operating income, a capitalisation rate at a price you enter, a projection, and a comparison of a rent against the Ontario rent increase guideline.

What this is not

Not an appraisal and not a valuation. It does not tell you what your building is worth. It tells you what the figures you entered produce at the capitalisation rate you chose. A different rate produces a different answer, and choosing the rate is your judgement or your appraiser's.

Not legal advice. Where the app compares a rent against the rent increase guideline, it is doing arithmetic from the dates and figures you gave it and the published guideline rates. It cannot tell you whether a rent is lawful. There are explanations for a rent above the guideline that the app cannot see, and if a result concerns you the answer is a paralegal or a lawyer, not this tool.

Not tax or accounting advice. Every figure is before tax. There is no income tax, capital cost allowance or capital gains modelling anywhere in it.

Not a substitute for due diligence. A buyer should verify everything independently.

Not a listing agreement. Using the app does not engage Terry Riddoch as your broker, and he is under no obligation to act for you.

Your account

You must be at least eighteen. One account per person, and you are responsible for what happens under it.

Keep your credentials to yourself. Your password and your authenticator registration are how the app knows you are you. Do not share them, and tell Terry Riddoch promptly if you think someone else has them.

There are no backup codes. If you lose the device holding your authenticator and have not registered a second one, recovering your account means establishing who you are directly and having the registration removed by hand. Registering a second device when you set this up avoids that, and you are asked to.

Keep the email address current. It is the only way you can be reached about your account or warned before a document is deleted.

What you upload, and what you are promising

Everything you put in stays yours. Your figures, your notes and your documents. No ownership of them is claimed and they are not used for anything beyond running the app for you.

By uploading a document you confirm three things. That you have the right to upload it. That doing so does not breach any obligation you owe to anybody else, including your tenants. And that you have considered whether a tenant whose information appears in it would reasonably expect it to be handled this way.

This matters because a lease is not only your document. It contains a tenant's personal information. The app discards the identifying parts from its records and renames files by unit so a name does not travel in a filename, but the original document is stored as you uploaded it. The privacy policy sets out exactly what happens to it.

Do not upload what the app does not need. It needs leases, bills, tax bills, rent increase notices and similar. It does not need anything else a tenant gave you.

Accuracy is yours. The app shows you every figure it reads and asks you to confirm it. A figure you confirmed is a figure you are standing behind, and what comes out is only as good as what went in.

No warranty

The app is provided as it is, free of charge, and no promise is made that it will be available, uninterrupted, or free of error.

On the figures. Care has been taken over the arithmetic and it has been checked against established practice, but mistakes are possible. Where a figure matters, check it. Where a decision depends on it, have it checked by somebody who will stand behind it professionally.

On reading documents. Automatic reading is helpful and not infallible, particularly with handwriting and poor scans. The app tells you when it has read something it cannot be confident about and asks you to check. Accepting a figure the app read is your confirmation of it, not the app's.

On the guideline comparison. The published guideline rates are used and the working is shown. Whether the guideline applies to a particular unit depends on facts the app takes from you, including when the unit was first occupied. Get that wrong and the comparison is wrong.

Acceptable use

Do not:

• Create an account in somebody else's name, or enter a building you have no connection to in order to obtain information about it
• Upload anything you have no right to upload
• Upload material unrelated to a building's finances
• Attempt to reach another account's information, test the app's security, or work around any limit in it
• Use automated means to extract information from the app in bulk
• Resell the app or hold it out as your own

The app is free for your own use and for your own buildings. If you are a broker, appraiser or property manager and want to use it for clients' buildings, ask rather than assume.

Terry Riddoch's position

He designed and operates the app, and he is a broker. Both things are true at once and it is better said plainly than left to be worked out.

Why it exists. Owners thinking about selling usually have their paperwork scattered and their figures half-remembered. The app assembles both and says what is still missing. If an owner decides to sell, he would hope to be the broker. That is the reason it is free.

What it does not create. Using the app does not make you his client and does not make him your broker. No representation agreement exists until one is signed, and the usual professional obligations begin then and not before.

What you are free to do. Use the app, take the figures, and list with somebody else or sell privately. Nothing in these terms says otherwise and nothing in the app is withheld to prevent it.

His registration. He is registered with the Real Estate Council of Ontario and a broker with Re/Max Real Estate Centre Inc. Anything that becomes a brokerage matter falls under that brokerage and under RECO's rules, which are separate from these terms.

Ending it

You can leave whenever you like. Delete your account from within the app. Your buildings, figures, notes and documents go with it, including the files in storage.

Access can be withdrawn where these terms are broken, where the app is used to obtain information about a building you have no connection to, or where continuing would put somebody else's information at risk. Where it is practical to warn you first, you will be warned.

The app may be discontinued. It is free and is run by one person. If it is going to stop, you will be given reasonable notice and a way to take your information with you.

After an account ends, the records of what you agreed to and when are kept, because they are the record of what you were shown. Everything else goes.

The rest

The app itself belongs to Terry Riddoch. Its design, its wording and the way it calculates. Your information remains yours. Nothing here grants you any right in the app beyond using it.

Limitation of liability. To the extent the law allows, Terry Riddoch is not liable for any loss arising from your use of the app, including a decision made on a figure it produced, a document it read incorrectly, or the app being unavailable. This is a free tool and the figures in it are suggestions for you to check, not advice to rely on.

Ontario law applies, and the courts of Ontario have jurisdiction.

Changes to these terms are published in the app. Where a change is material you will be shown it and asked to agree before continuing, and a record is kept of which version you agreed to and when.

If any part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest stands.

Questions to terry@terryriddoch.ca or 519-591-1725.