Terms of service

1. Who we are, and what this covers

The Apartments Concierge ("TAC", "we", "us") is a licensed Texas real estate brokerage. These Terms cover your use of our websites and platform as a renter looking for a home — searching, saving properties, sending guest cards, submitting applications, and working with our leasing team.

They do not cover brokers, agents, or property management companies. Those have their own agreements.

By using the platform you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use it.

2. Required TREC disclosures

Texas law requires us to give you two documents. These are disclosures, not agreements — you receive them, you are not agreeing to anything by reading them:

• Information About Brokerage Services (TREC Form IABS 1-2). Explains the kinds of representation a Texas real estate licensee can provide, and which one applies to you.
• Consumer Protection Notice (TREC Form CN 1-5). Explains what TREC regulates and how to file a complaint.

Both are available on every page of our site, are sent to you when you create an account, and are published at www.trec.texas.gov. We record the date we provided them to you.

3. We represent you

When you work with TAC, we represent you — the renter — and not the property. That is the whole point of what we do, and the IABS explains what it means in practice.

This is set out in a separate Tenant Representation Agreement, which you sign electronically before we begin representing you. These Terms are not that agreement and do not create a representation relationship on their own. The agreement is a separate document, signed by you, and countersigned by our designated broker. You will receive a copy.

One agreement per renter. If two people are searching together, each signs their own. One person cannot sign on another's behalf.

4. What we do for you

Under the representation agreement, we:

• Give you access to our directory of apartment communities, with availability, pricing and the details each community publishes.
• Let you search and filter against criteria that matter to you, including — where relevant — the payment standard for a Housing Choice Voucher.
• Send guest cards to communities on your behalf. A guest card registers you with that community as our client and starts the conversation.
• Submit applications directly to communities through the guest card where the community accepts them that way.
• Have our leasing team follow up with the community, chase responses, coordinate tours, and keep your file moving.
• For Housing Choice Voucher holders, prepare and coordinate the Request for Tenancy Approval (RFTA) documents with the housing authority where you ask us to.

5. How we are paid — and what you owe

You owe us nothing. Ever.

We are paid by the apartment community, not by you. When you lease a home we introduced you to, we invoice that community for the work we did on your behalf. Your signed representation agreement authorises us to do that — to bill the property for services rendered on your behalf in finding, applying for and securing your home.

This does not change if the community fails to pay us. If a community refuses our invoice, disputes it, or goes out of business, that is a matter between us and them. We will not bill you, invoice you, send you to collections, place a lien, or pursue you in any way for any amount. You are not a backstop for our fee.

We also do not charge you an application fee, an admin fee, a search fee, a subscription, or a success fee. Any application or administrative fee you pay goes to the community, is set by the community, and is disclosed to you by the community before you pay it.

6. Guest cards

A guest card is the record of your introduction to a community. It carries your name, contact details, the home you are interested in, your intended move-in date, the number of people who will live there, whether you hold a Housing Choice Voucher, and the agent or team member who sent it.

Once sent, a guest card cannot be edited by anyone — not by you, not by the community, not by us.
Its stage moves as your application progresses; nothing else about it changes. It exists so that
there is one record of who introduced you and when, which is what protects your place in the process.

A guest card does not collect, and we will not ask you for: your date of birth, a breakdown of which occupants are adults and which are children, a photograph of you, or your Social Security number. The community may ask for some of these on its own application; that is between you and the community.

7. What we do not do

We are not the landlord and we do not control the communities in our directory. Specifically:

• We do not decide your application. The community screens applicants against its own criteria and makes its own decision. We do not run your credit, your background check, or your rental history.
• We do not guarantee that a home is available, or that a price is current. Communities publish their own availability and pricing and change it without telling us. We show what they publish, with the date we last updated it. Where a community has not stated a lease term for a price, we assume a twelve-month term and say so on screen next to that price.
• We do not guarantee you will be approved, or that any community will accept a voucher.
• We do not set rent, fees, deposits, or screening criteria.

8. Housing Choice Vouchers and affordable housing

If you hold a Housing Choice Voucher, we will tell you which communities in your area accept vouchers and which homes price within your housing authority's payment standard, as best we know it. Payment standards are set by the housing authority, not by us, and they change.

Where a community has not confirmed that it accepts vouchers, or where we cannot verify a figure, we will tell you that rather than guess. We would rather say we do not know than give you a number you repeat to a leasing office that turns out to be wrong.

9. Accessibility and assistance animals

If you need a reasonable accommodation or modification, including for an assistance animal, tell us and we will route it to the community through its accommodation process. An assistance animal is not a pet, is not recorded as one, and does not appear on your guest card or in any pet information. We do not ask you for documentation of a disability.

10. Contact from our partners

We work with partner companies who may contact you about services related to moving — utility set-up, resident wealth-building programmes, and mortgage services if you later want to buy.

Partner contact is entirely optional. We will only pass your details to a partner if you have separately and specifically agreed to it, naming that partner. Agreeing is never a condition of using our service, of getting a guest card sent, or of being placed in a home. You can decline every partner and we will represent you exactly the same way.

You can withdraw that agreement at any time, by any reasonable means — the opt-out page, a reply of STOP to a text, a reply to an email, or by telling anyone on our team. We stop immediately and notify the partner within one business day. We will confirm to you that we have recorded it.

Where we have an ownership interest in a partner, we will tell you so in a separate written disclosure before we refer you, you are never required to use them, and you may use anyone you like.

11. Electronic signatures and records

By using the platform you agree that we may provide disclosures, agreements and notices electronically, and that your electronic signature has the same effect as a handwritten one. You may request a paper copy of anything we send you, free of charge, and you may withdraw your consent to electronic delivery by emailing us — neither affects any agreement already signed.

To receive electronic records you need a device that can open PDF files and an email address you check.

12. Fair housing

We follow federal, state and local fair housing law. We do not steer, and we do not screen you in or out on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, disability, familial status, national origin, or any other protected characteristic. We do not ask you for that information and we do not record it. Every listing we publish carries the Equal Housing Opportunity statement.

If you believe you have been discriminated against by a community, tell us and we will tell you how to file a complaint. You can also contact the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development directly.

13. Your account

Keep your login details to yourself and tell us if you think someone else has them. You are responsible for what happens on your account. Give us accurate information — if your move-in date, budget or household size changes, update it, because we and the communities are working from what you told us.

14. Ending it

You can stop using the platform and close your account whenever you like. Your representation agreement sets out how and when it ends; closing your account does not by itself end it, and any fee already earned from a community for a home you leased stays payable by that community.

We may suspend or close an account that is being used to harass a community, to submit false information, or in breach of these Terms.

15. Liability

We provide the platform and our services with reasonable care, but we do not warrant that the directory is complete, that information published by a community is accurate, or that the platform will be uninterrupted.

To the extent Texas law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential losses, or for lost profits. Nothing here limits our liability for fraud, for a breach of our duties as a licensed broker to you, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

16. Governing law

Texas law governs these Terms, and the venue for any dispute is Harris County, Texas.

17. Changes

We may update these Terms. If a change materially affects your rights we will tell you before it takes effect. The version date is at the top of this page, and we keep previous versions available.

18. Reaching us

The Apartments Concierge
2550 North Loop West, Suite 116, Houston, TX 77092
info@theapartmentsconcierge.com · (713) 561-3038

Complaints about a Texas real estate licensee can be filed with TREC. See the Consumer Protection Notice (CN 1-5) for how.

Apartments Concierge Enterprises, LLC d/b/a The Apartments Concierge and FindMySection8 · TREC Broker Licence No. 9014569 · Equal Housing Opportunity