Privacy Policy

The First Move is based in the United Kingdom. For UK GDPR purposes, we act as the data controller for information you provide when using the service. Questions about how your data is handled can be sent to support@thefirstmove.co.uk.

Almost everything below is information you type in yourself, about yourself, so The First Move can plan around your own numbers. We don't pull it from a bank, a credit reference agency, or anywhere else, and we don't verify it. It's exactly what you told us, used only to run your own calculations. We collect the following categories of personal data:

• Account information: Your name and email address, provided when you create an account. This is handled by Clerk, our authentication provider.
• Financial profile: Income, monthly take-home pay, deposit sources and amounts, regular outgoings, and mortgage defaults (rate and term). You enter this yourself. It is used only to power your own cost calculations and suitability scores, for planning purposes, not as financial advice or a verified record of your finances.
• Property data: Details of properties you add to your list: location (coordinates), price, and any notes you attach.
• Places: Locations you save as important to you, such as your workplace or family home, along with any ideal commute times you set. Used to calculate location scores for properties.
• Partner data: When you choose to link with a buying partner, a broad set of personal and financial data becomes visible to that account, including raw income and take-home pay, and itemised deposit and commitment entries. See “Partner linking and shared data” below for the full list.
• Payment information: If you subscribe to premium, payment is handled entirely by Stripe. We do not store your card details.
• Usage data: Limited technical information such as browser type and error logs, collected to maintain and improve the service. We do not use advertising trackers.

Linking accounts with a buying partner is optional. It only happens if you send or accept an invite. Once two accounts are linked, sharing goes both ways: both people see the same things about each other, not a summarised or anonymised version. A linked partner can see:

• Your raw annual income and monthly take-home pay, as figures, not just totals or ranges.
• Your itemised deposit contributions: each entry's type (savings, LISA, gift, inheritance, etc.), amount, and any notes you attached to it.
• Your itemised monthly commitments: each one's name (e.g. “Car loan”, “Student loan”) and amount, including any amount you've overridden for a specific property.
• Your saved important places, like home, work or family, including the name you gave each one, its postcode, and its coordinates.
• Every property either of you adds, in full detail: price, location, any notes, and any bill or mortgage assumptions you've customised for that property.
• Comments either of you leaves on a shared property.
• Your ideal leftover-income target and the bill-split percentage applied between you.

We don't share your payment or subscription details, only whether you have premium, as a yes/no. Your login credentials are never shared either.

When you change a shared or personal figure, for example updating your income or a commitment amount, your partner is notified in-app, and that notification records the specific old and new values (e.g. "income: £45,000/yr → £50,000/yr"). Notifications are deleted automatically: 24 hours after being read, or 7 days after arriving if left unread. Until then, a notification is a record of what a figure was at that point in time, even if you change it again afterwards.

Either person can unlink at any time from their account settings. Unlinking stops sharing of profile and property data going forward, your ex-partner won't see live updates to your figures or new properties you add, and it clears both of your notification histories, since every notification only ever exists because of the link in the first place. It won't remove comments your ex-partner left on a property that remains yours (or vice versa), since those belong to the property record itself, not the link.

Any joint or combined figures you see once linked (shared leftover income, combined scores, and so on) are still just planning estimates calculated from what you both typed in, not verified figures or financial advice.

Because of how much is shared, only link with someone you are genuinely comfortable sharing this level of financial detail with.

Under UK GDPR, we need a lawful basis to process personal data. The basis for the data described above is contract: processing your data is necessary to provide the service you signed up for. Without your financial profile, for instance, we cannot calculate costs or scores.

That service is planning, not advice: your financial profile is processed to run our own calculators against the numbers you gave us, not to assess, verify, or advise on your actual financial position. See our Terms of Service for more on what The First Move is (and isn't).

Your data is not used for marketing, sold to third parties, or used to train any models.

We use a small number of third-party services to run this tool. Each has its own privacy policy.

• Clerk: Handles account creation, login, and session management. Stores your name and email. Privacy policy.
• Stripe: Handles premium subscription payments. Stores your payment details and billing history. We never see your card number. Privacy policy.
• Neon: Our database provider. Your financial profile and property data are stored on their infrastructure, hosted in the EU. Privacy policy.
• Mapbox: Used to power the map view and location search. When you search for a place, the query is sent to Mapbox. Privacy policy.

No other third parties have access to your personal data.

You can generate a link for a single property that opens without needing to sign in, for example to share a property with someone who doesn't use The First Move. Anyone with that link can view the full financial breakdown for that property as it stood when the link was generated, including price, costs, and the affordability figures for everyone linked to it at that time.

• Links expire automatically 7 days after they're created and stop working after that.
• A link shows a snapshot taken at creation time, not live data. Later changes to the property or your profile aren't reflected in a link you've already sent out.
• Anyone with the link URL can view it. It isn't tied to a specific recipient or account, so treat it like any other link containing your financial information.

The First Move Property Importer is a browser extension that adds a button to listing pages on Rightmove, Zoopla, and OnTheMarket. When you click it, the extension reads the publicly visible details of the listing you are viewing, such as the title, address, price, bedrooms, bathrooms, council tax band, and coordinates, and opens The First Move in a new tab with those details prefilled into the add property form.

• The extension only activates on Rightmove, Zoopla, and OnTheMarket listing pages. It does not run on any other site.
• It does not collect, store, or transmit any data on its own. Listing details are passed directly to The First Move via the page it opens, in your browser, and nowhere else.
• It does not track your browsing history, clicks, or activity, and it has no access to your account, passwords, or payment details.
• You still need to sign in to The First Move to actually save a property, in the same way as adding one manually.

Once a listing's details reach The First Move, they are treated the same as any other property data described under "What data we collect" above.

We keep your data for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we aim to delete your personal data from our active systems within 30 days of account closure, although certain records may be retained for longer where required by law or by third-party payment providers.

We do not archive or retain financial profile data after account closure.

This site uses essential cookies required for authentication, account sessions, and payment processing. These are necessary for the site to work, so they are set without asking.

We would also like to use Google Analytics to understand which parts of the site get used. Google Analytics sets cookies, so it only runs if you accept it on the cookie banner. If you reject it, or have not answered, the Google Analytics script is never loaded and no analytics cookies are set. You can change your answer at any time using the “Cookies” link in the footer, and rejecting after previously accepting deletes the cookies it had set.

We also use Vercel Analytics and Vercel Speed Insights to count page views and measure loading performance. These set no cookies and do not identify you across websites, so they are not covered by the banner. We do not use advertising cookies.

We take reasonable measures to protect your personal data against unauthorised access, loss, or misuse. No internet service can guarantee absolute security, but we aim to follow industry best practices and use reputable service providers.

The First Move is intended for users aged 18 or over. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Correct inaccurate data
• Request deletion of your data
• Restrict how we process your data in certain circumstances
• Request a copy of your data in a portable format. Where technically feasible, we will provide this in a commonly used machine-readable format.
• Object to processing based on legitimate interests

To exercise any of these rights, email us at support@thefirstmove.co.uk. We will respond within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

If we make material changes to this policy, we will update the date at the top of this page. We will not change how we use existing data without notifying users directly.