Effective date: August 27, 2026 | Applies to: California residents who visit MillsTeamRE.com or contact Mills Team Real Estate.
Who We Are
Mills Team Real Estate is a South Carolina residential real estate team operating as Jim Mills Inc. and licensed by the South Carolina Real Estate Commission. We serve buyers and sellers in the Charleston tri-county area — Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester counties. This website, MillsTeamRE.com, is our own site. In this notice, “we,” “us,” and “our” mean Mills Team Real Estate; “you” means the person using the site or contacting us.
We are not a national brokerage, a lead broker, or a data company. We do not operate offices in California and we do not market real estate services to California residents. Californians reach this site mainly as out-of-state buyers, relocating families, investors, and people who own property here.
Why This Page Exists
The California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (together, the “CCPA”), applies to for-profit businesses that meet at least one size threshold: more than $26,625,000 in annual gross revenue, buying/selling/sharing the personal information of 100,000 or more California consumers or households in a year, or earning half or more of revenue from selling or sharing personal information. A local real estate team our size does not meet any of them.
We publish this notice anyway, and we honor the requests described below regardless of whether the law technically obligates us. If you live in California and you want to know what we have, or want it deleted, corrected, or kept out of advertising, ask and we will handle it. This notice supplements our Privacy Policy, which covers everyone.
What We Actually Collect
The CCPA lists eleven categories of personal information. Most of them have nothing to do with selling houses. Here is an honest accounting of what a real estate team collects through this website and in the ordinary course of representing clients, covering the last 12 months.
| Category | Do we collect it? | What that means here |
|---|---|---|
| A. Identifiers | Yes | Your name, email address, phone number, and — if you ask us to send something or show you a property — a mailing or property address. Our web server and analytics tools also record your IP address, browser, and device identifiers. We do not collect Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, or passport numbers through this website. If you go under contract, identity and financial documents go to your lender, the closing attorney, and the title company, not to us. |
| B. Customer records (Cal. Civ. Code §1798.80) | Limited | Name, address, phone, email, and — for active clients only — signed listing or buyer agency agreements, offers, and transaction correspondence. We do not collect bank account, credit card, or debit card numbers on this website, and we do not take payment online. We do not collect medical or health insurance information. |
| C. Protected classifications | No | We do not ask for and do not want your race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status, disability, age, or any other protected characteristic. Federal and South Carolina fair housing law prohibits us from steering or making housing decisions on that basis. If you volunteer such information — for example, telling us you need a single-story home for accessibility reasons — we use it only to find you a suitable property. |
| D. Commercial information | Yes | Properties you viewed or saved, searches you ran on our IDX listing search, home valuation requests, showing requests, and the history of any transaction we handled for you. |
| E. Biometric information | No | No fingerprints, faceprints, voiceprints, iris scans, or health/fitness data. Ever. |
| F. Internet and network activity | Yes | Pages you viewed on MillsTeamRE.com, how you got here, how long you stayed, and which listings you clicked. Collected through cookies and analytics tools described below. We do not have access to your browsing history on other websites. |
| G. Geolocation data | Approximate only | Analytics tools estimate your city or region from your IP address, and our listing search records the areas you search. We do not collect precise GPS location [CONFIRM: true unless the IDX or a mobile app feature uses device location — check your IDX plugin settings]. |
| H. Audio, visual, or similar information | Limited | Photographs and video of listed properties, which are of the home rather than of you. If you appear in a photo or video at an open house or event, tell us and we will remove it. [CONFIRM: Do you record incoming or outgoing phone calls, use a call-tracking service, or run video doorbells/cameras at listings? If yes, say so here plainly and note who provides the service.] |
| I. Professional or employment information | Only if you apply | Collected only if you send us a résumé or apply to join the team. Not collected from buyers or sellers. |
| J. Education records | No | We are not a school. We do not collect transcripts, grades, or student records. |
| K. Inferences | Yes | From your saved searches and the listings you view, we form a working picture of your price range, preferred areas, and must-haves, so we can send you relevant properties instead of everything on the market. |
Sensitive personal information
The CCPA singles out a “sensitive personal information” category — government ID numbers, financial account credentials, precise geolocation, race or religion, contents of your mail and messages, health, sex life, and genetic or biometric data. We do not collect sensitive personal information through this website, and we do not use or disclose it to infer characteristics about you. Because we do not collect it, the right to limit its use does not come into play.
What is not personal information
Real estate runs on public records. Property ownership, deeds, tax assessments, plats, and permit history are public records maintained by county government, and sold or recently sold listing data is licensed to us through the MLS. That information is not “personal information” under the CCPA and is not covered by this notice, even when your name appears in it. The same goes for information we have deidentified or aggregated.
Where It Comes From
- Directly from you — contact forms, home valuation requests, showing requests, listing alert signups, phone calls, texts, and email.
- Automatically from your device — cookies and analytics as you use the site.
- From listing portals and referral sources — if you inquired about one of our listings on [CONFIRM: Zillow, Realtor.com, Homes.com, or whichever portals send you leads], that portal passes us your contact information and the property you asked about. If another agent referred you, we get your name and contact information from them.
- From the MLS and public records — property and transaction data connected to an address, which we use to price homes and run comparative market analyses.
- From transaction partners — during an active transaction, the closing attorney, title company, lender, inspectors, and the other side’s agent share information needed to close.
How We Use It
- To answer your question, return your call, or set up a showing.
- To send you listings that match what you told us you are looking for, and to send market updates you signed up for.
- To prepare a valuation or comparative market analysis for a property you asked about.
- To represent you in a transaction and to coordinate with the lender, closing attorney, title company, inspectors, and cooperating agents.
- To keep the records South Carolina real estate license law and our brokerage’s policies require us to keep.
- To see which pages and listings people find useful so we can improve the site.
- To respond to a subpoena, court order, or lawful request from a regulator or law enforcement.
We will not use your information for a materially different purpose without telling you first.
Who We Disclose It To
We disclose personal information only to companies and people who need it to do work for us or to close your transaction, and only under contracts that require them to keep it confidential and use it for nothing else.
- Our CRM and email platform [CONFIRM: name it — Follow Up Boss, kvCORE, Mailchimp, etc.] — stores your contact record and sends the listing alerts and updates you requested.
- Our IDX listing search provider and the MLS [CONFIRM: name the IDX vendor and MLS] — powers property search and saved searches.
- Website and analytics vendors — our host, form processor, and Google Analytics.
- Transaction participants — closing attorney, title company, lender, home inspectors, appraisers, home warranty and insurance providers, and the cooperating agent, but only for an active transaction and only what closing requires.
- Our brokerage and regulators — transaction files as required by South Carolina license law.
- Legal and professional advisors — when necessary to establish or defend a legal claim.
We do not disclose your information to data brokers, list sellers, or aggregators.
We Do Not Sell Your Personal Information
We have not sold personal information in the last 12 months, we do not sell it now, and we have no plans to. We have never sold the personal information of anyone we knew to be under 16.
[CONFIRM — this next paragraph depends on your ad stack. The CCPA defines “sharing” broadly: passing identifiers to an ad platform for cross-context behavioral advertising counts as sharing even though no money changes hands. If MillsTeamRE.com runs the Meta Pixel, Google Ads remarketing tags, or similar, keep option A and add a “Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information” link in the site footer. If the site only runs first-party analytics with no advertising tags, keep option B and delete the footer link requirement.]
Option A — We use advertising tools from [CONFIRM: Google, Meta] that place cookies and send those companies an identifier so we can show our listings to people who have visited this site. Under California law that counts as “sharing,” even though we receive no payment. To stop it, use the Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information link in our footer, turn on a Global Privacy Control signal in your browser, or email us.
Option B — We do not share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising. This site does not run advertising or retargeting pixels.
How Long We Keep It
- Inquiries that never became a client relationship — [CONFIRM: 24 months is a reasonable default] from your last contact with us, then deleted.
- Listing alerts and email subscriptions — until you unsubscribe, plus a suppression record so we do not email you again by accident.
- Closed transaction files — for the period South Carolina real estate license law and our brokerage’s record-retention policy require, then destroyed.
- Website analytics — [CONFIRM: your Google Analytics data retention setting, commonly 14 months].
Your Rights
If you are a California resident, you may ask us to:
- Tell you what we have — the categories we collected, where we got them, why we collected them, who we disclosed them to, and the specific pieces of information themselves.
- Give you a copy — in a portable, machine-readable format.
- Correct it — if something we have about you is wrong.
- Delete it — subject to the exceptions below.
- Opt out of sharing for advertising — see the section above.
We will never charge you a different price, refuse to work with you, or give you worse service because you exercised any of these rights.
When we cannot delete everything
If we represented you in a purchase or sale, we cannot delete the transaction file. South Carolina real estate license law requires licensees to retain transaction records, and those records may also be needed to comply with tax law or to defend against a claim. We can and will delete everything outside that file — your CRM record, saved searches, email subscriptions, and inquiry history. We will tell you specifically what we kept and why.
We may also keep information needed to complete a transaction already underway, to detect fraud or security incidents, to fix errors on the site, or to comply with another legal obligation.
How to Make a Request
Call 843-605-4200 or email info@millsteamre.com with “California Privacy Request” in the subject line. Tell us what you want and give us enough information to find your record — usually the name, email address, and phone number you used with us.
You do not need an account to make a request, and we do not create one. We use the information in your request only to verify your identity. For a request to see the specific pieces of information we hold, we will ask you to confirm details only you would know before we release anything. You can make an access or portability request twice in a 12-month period; there is no limit on deletion or correction requests.
A parent or guardian may make a request on behalf of a minor child. An authorized agent may make a request on your behalf with your written permission and proof of their authority; we may still contact you directly to confirm.
We confirm receipt within 10 business days and answer within 45 days. If we need longer, we will tell you why and take up to 45 more. If we cannot verify your identity, we will tell you that rather than quietly ignoring the request.
Children
This site is meant for adults buying, selling, or researching real estate. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child gave us information, email us and we will delete it.
Shine the Light
California’s “Shine the Light” law (Civil Code §1798.83) lets California residents ask whether a business disclosed their personal information to third parties for those third parties’ own direct marketing. We do not, and never have. You are welcome to email info@millsteamre.com to have that confirmed in writing.
Changes to This Notice
If our practices change — a new CRM, a new advertising tool, a new lead source — we will update this page and change the effective date at the top. Material changes will be noted at the top of the page for at least 30 days.
Contact Us
Mills Team Real Estate (Jim Mills Inc.)
112 West Doty Ave, Suite C
Summerville, SC 29483
Phone: 843-605-4200
Email: info@millsteamre.com
Web: https://millsteamre.com
A real person here reads these. If something on this page does not match your experience with us, tell us, and we will fix the page or the practice.
Last updated: August 27, 2026