Houfy Community Standards

Houfy is a marketplace where people list their homes and other people stay in them. That only works if everyone can trust what they read and who they are dealing with. These Community Standards set out what we expect, and what we do when someone falls short.

They do not list everything. Behaviour that puts someone at risk, or that damages the trust this marketplace runs on, can be acted on whether or not it is named below — including things that happen away from Houfy where they bear on someone's safety here.

They form part of our Terms of Service. Words defined there have the same meaning here.

If you see something that breaks these standards, use the report option on the listing, post or profile, or tell us at info@houfy.com. Reports are how we find most problems.

Be who you say you are

Use your real name and accurate information about yourself. One account per person, in your own name or your organisation's. You must be 18 or older to hold an account.

Do not impersonate anyone, claim a connection to a business you have nothing to do with, or use someone else's photo — or an AI-generated face — as your own. Do not use another person's account.

Hosts complete identity verification before a first listing goes live. Passing it is not optional and it is not transferable.

List honestly

Your listing must describe the property you are actually offering.

• Real photos of the actual property, taken recently enough to be accurate

• The real location — do not misrepresent where a property is

• Every charge shown up front: cleaning, pets, resort fees, deposits, taxes

• Accurate availability, so a guest is not booking a date you cannot honour

• Any permit or registration number your local rules require

Do not list a property you have no right to rent out. Do not list the same property twice to occupy more search results.

Our Listing & Platform Guidelines and Photo Guidelines go into more detail.

Follow the rules where your property is

Registration, licences, permits, occupancy limits, safety requirements, taxes, HOA rules and the terms of your own lease or mortgage are yours to meet. We do not check them for you, and listing on Houfy is not permission to rent a property you are not allowed to rent. Our Tax Guidelines are a starting point, not advice — where the rules are unclear, ask your local authority.

Treat people fairly

You may not refuse a booking, cancel one, charge differently, or treat a guest or host differently because of race, colour, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital or familial status, age, disability, or any other characteristic protected where you are.

This applies to what you write in a listing as much as to what you do. Our Fair Housing Guidelines explain how this works in practice, and it is worth reading before you set house rules.

These standards apply in both directions. A guest may not treat a host, or a host's household or neighbours, differently on these grounds either.

Keep it civil

No harassment, bullying, threats, or unwanted sexual attention. No hate speech — content attacking people because of who they are is not welcome here, in listings, messages, reviews, or profiles.

Do not publish someone's personal information without their agreement. Do not post about someone in a way designed to shame or expose them.

Disagreements between a host and a guest happen. Take them up directly, or bring them to us. Do not take them into public reviews of unrelated properties, or onto other people's listings.

Keep bookings on Houfy

Ask for and take payment through Houfy or the host's connected payment provider. Do not ask a guest to pay by bank transfer, gift card, or any method that moves the transaction off-platform.

Where a guest finds a property through Houfy, keep that booking on Houfy. Do not move a Houfy enquiry into a private arrangement in order to skip identity verification, protection, or the record of the booking — that record is what lets us help either of you when something goes wrong. Asking a guest to pay by bank transfer, gift card or any other method that moves the transaction off-platform is the most common shape a rental scam takes, and we treat it seriously.

This is about bookings that start here. Your own website, your own direct guests and your own returning guests are yours — Houfy builds tools for exactly that.

Look after the place you stay in

Treat the property as you would want yours treated. Leave it as you found it, follow the house rules and the check-in and check-out times, and respect the neighbours — most of the complaints we receive about a stay come from the people who live next door.

Only the people on the booking may stay. Do not bring more guests than the booking is for, hold a party or an event the listing does not allow, or let anyone else use the property. The person who books must be one of the people staying.

No smoking, and no pets, where the listing says so. If something is damaged, tell the host — quickly, and before you leave. Damage happens; hiding it is what turns it into a dispute.

Hosts: report damage honestly too. Inflating or inventing a claim, including under houfyProtect, is a serious breach of these standards.

Keep people safe

Tell guests about anything that could hurt them — steep stairs, a pool with no fence, a road with no footpath, a wood burner. Disclose any camera or recording device on the property, and never place one anywhere private.

No listing may be used for anything illegal. No parties or events beyond what the listing allows. Do not show weapons in your listing photos, and store any firearms on the property securely and out of sight — tell guests before they book if there are any on the premises.

Content that harms

Content that promotes suicide, self-harm, or disordered eating is not permitted. If you believe someone is at risk of harming themselves, contact your local emergency services first, and tell us.

Nothing on Houfy may sexually exploit or endanger a child. We report this to the authorities.

Keep reviews honest

Write reviews from your own experience of an actual stay.

Do not write reviews of your own property, arrange reviews between hosts, offer anything in exchange for a review, or threaten a bad review to get something. Do not write a review to punish someone for a dispute that has nothing to do with the stay.

We remove reviews that break these rules, and we act on accounts that trade in them.

Respect other people's work

Do not post photos, descriptions, or other content that is not yours to use. Listing photos taken from another site are one of the clearest signals of a fraudulent listing, and we treat them that way.

If your copyright has been infringed, our Copyright & Trademark Policy explains how to tell us.

Respect the platform

Do not scrape Houfy, run bots or automated collectors against it, extract listings or reviews in bulk, or use content from Houfy to train a model, without our written permission. Do not collect other members' information. Do not probe our security, bypass access controls, or interfere with the service. Do not sell or resell access to Houfy.

If you find a security vulnerability, tell us at info@houfy.com rather than publishing it. Report it privately and give us a reasonable time to fix it before you tell anyone else, do not access or download anyone else's data, and do not disrupt the service or anyone's stay. We will not take action against a researcher who works within those limits.

What happens if you break these standards

What we do depends on what happened and whether it has happened before. We may:

• ask you to change or remove something

• remove a listing, review, message, or photo

• limit where your listing appears

• cancel a booking

• suspend or close your account

For serious things — fraud, a safety risk, exploitation of a child, anything that puts someone in danger — we act immediately and without warning, and we may involve law enforcement.

For anything else we will normally tell you what the problem is and give you a chance to put it right.

If we cancel a booking, we tell both the host and the guest, and why. Money the guest paid the host is between them, under the cancellation terms of that booking — we do not hold it and cannot return it. Any charge we received ourselves for that booking is refunded to the guest.

If you think we got it wrong, reply to the message we sent you, or write to info@houfy.com, within 30 days. A person will look at it again. Tell us what you think we misread — that is usually what decides it.

Changes

We update these standards as the platform changes. When we do, we change the date at the top. If a change meaningfully reduces your rights, we will tell you as set out in our Terms of Service.