Trust charters
Nostoi is being built as a decision engine for property buyers, not a catalogue of confident-sounding claims. These charters explain how Nostoi treats property facts, paid placement, price estimates, listing enquiries and personal information. They are written in plain English. The legal policies and platform terms still apply where they are relevant.
Evidence before claims
Nostoi is built to be useful when the facts are clear, and quiet when they are not. When Nostoi comments on a home, the comment should be traceable to listing information, a fact derived from Nostoi records, verified comparator evidence, or criteria you gave us. If a fact is missing, withheld from public display, or not verified, the page should say that or leave the claim out. A thin listing therefore gets a thinner advisory page. The product is designed not to invent suburb facts, commute times, school quality, crime levels, condition, value, or agent credentials. Photos and marketing words from a listing are treated as listing material, not as proof of things Nostoi cannot confirm. What you may see instead is wording such as Information still missing, Worth confirming with the agent, or no claim where the evidence is not strong enough. This protects you from a page that sounds more certain than the evidence supports.
Paid visibility and advice
Nostoi separates advertising from advice. If Nostoi displays a sponsored or featured badge, that label is commercial disclosure. The product is designed so paid status is not used to change Nostoi's advisory modules, trade-off language, questions, price-position logic, or advisory ordering. Payment for visibility should not hide missing information, soften a question, improve a price-position label, or make a home sound like a better fit. A paid badge does not turn a listing into advice. The home still has to stand on the evidence Nostoi has. This protects buyers from confusing marketing attention with independent guidance.
Why Nostoi avoids a single worth-number
We do not give you a single number for what a home is worth — and that is there to protect you. A one-number estimate can feel useful, but it can make uncertainty look precise. A home may have missing rates or levy information, unusual condition, scheme issues, unregistered alterations, seller urgency, or local evidence Nostoi has not verified. Nostoi is not a bank valuation, municipal valuation, registered valuation report, or estate-agent comparative market assessment. Where there is enough platform evidence, Nostoi may show a price-position signal, such as whether the asking price sits around the lower, middle, or upper part of comparable Nostoi inventory for that area. That signal is context, not a valuation, and it is not advice on what to offer. Nostoi's job is to help you ask better questions: What evidence supports the asking price? What costs are missing? What comparables should I review? What would change my view before I sign? Clear questions can protect you better than a confident-looking worth-number when the evidence is incomplete.
Your listing, your lead
When you enquire on a home, the person who should answer is the agent responsible for that listing. Nostoi is designed to route listing enquiries to the listing agent or agency of record, rather than turning your interest into a bidding pool for unrelated agents. The product is not built to sell the same enquiry to competing agents or to change advisory language because an agent paid for attention. If commercial labels are shown, they are labels. For buyers, this means a clearer chain of accountability. The agent who markets the home should be the person who answers questions about price, availability, documents, condition, costs and access. For agents and sellers, it means Nostoi can be a syndication destination without taking ownership of the client relationship.
Personal information and consent
Nostoi is a South African platform and treats POPIA as a product requirement, not a footer exercise. We collect and use personal information for practical reasons: to operate the site, handle enquiries, support accounts and saved advisory briefs when those features are available, protect the platform, meet legal duties, and improve the service in ways that respect this charter. When you send an enquiry, the details needed to respond are shared with the listing agent or agency connected to that property, and a copy goes to the listing-feed provider that supplied the listing so it can reconcile and audit the enquiries made on its own listings. Service providers may process information for hosting, security, communications, analytics or support under appropriate controls. Buyer-memory features, such as a Saved Advisory Brief, require clear consent and settings before Nostoi uses them to personalise the experience. Nostoi is not built to sell buyer personal information as a data product or to use private buyer criteria to rewrite a listing's public advisory language. You can ask for access to, correction of, or deletion of personal information, subject to legal and operational limits. Use the contact channel provided on Nostoi. This charter is a plain-English promise. The privacy policy remains the legal document for full details.