Terms of Service

1. About these terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between you and Howards Limited, a company registered in New Zealand (company number 9407785), trading as Howards ("Howards", "we", "us"). They govern our United States service at howards.ai/us and U.S. customer orders accepted under these Terms, whether arranged online or individually by email (the "Service"). For those orders, these Terms take precedence over inconsistent general or New Zealand terms.

You accept these Terms by selecting an agreement checkbox, confirming your agreement by email, signing an order that incorporates them, or taking another action that clearly states you are agreeing to them after they have been made available to you. Merely visiting the website, receiving a quotation, or receiving an invoice does not by itself constitute acceptance. A request for information or a quotation is not a commitment to buy.

If you act for a brokerage, team, or other business, you confirm you have authority to bind it, and "you" means that business. Otherwise, "you" means the individual business customer. The agreed order scope, price, payment arrangements, delivery commitments, and any disclosed asset-license restrictions form part of the agreement. We confirm acceptance of an order online or in writing.

Our Privacy Policy (United States) explains how we handle personal information. Accepting these Terms does not waive privacy rights or replace separate consent required for marketing or another purpose.

2. Who can use Howards

You must be at least 18 years old, use the Service for business rather than personal, family, or household purposes, and provide accurate contact and billing information. If you use an account, protect your login details and tell us promptly about suspected unauthorized access. You are responsible for activity you authorize or enable through a failure to take reasonable security precautions, but not to the extent caused by Howards' breach or security failures.

3. The service

Howards turns real estate listing photographs supplied by you ("Photos") into finished listing or social-media videos ("Videos") using artificial intelligence tools and our editing process. Our team reviews each Video before delivery. We will provide the Service with reasonable care and skill and in accordance with the material specifications agreed for your order.

The accepted order determines deliverables such as format, duration, aspect ratio, branding, and intended use. Additional versions, revisions outside the agreed scope, source files, working project files, publishing, and advertising-campaign management are not included unless agreed. We do not publish a Video to your channels or buy advertising on your behalf unless separately authorized in writing.

We may change our tools or processes without materially reducing an accepted order's deliverables, agreed usage rights, or other commitments without your agreement. The Service is not a real estate brokerage, property inspection, survey, or legal-compliance certification.

4. Orders and payment

Price and scope. The price and scope displayed at checkout or agreed with you in writing before production apply to your order. U.S. prices are stated in U.S. dollars. Additional work or charges require your agreement. Future price changes do not affect an accepted order.

Standard online orders. Payment is required before production begins. We begin once payment is confirmed and we have usable Photos and the necessary instructions.

Individually arranged orders. We may expressly agree by email or in an order confirmation to begin work and deliver before payment. Unless a different deadline is agreed in writing, payment is due within seven calendar days after you receive our invoice or Stripe payment request. You may publish and use the delivered Video during that payment window as described in section 8. This pay-after-delivery arrangement applies only where we agree to it, not automatically to every order.

Payment method and taxes. We use Stripe to process card payments and do not receive or store your full card number. Orders are individually charged; these Terms do not authorize a recurring subscription or automatic renewal. We will identify and collect applicable taxes where legally required. You remain responsible for applicable use or similar taxes not collected by us, but not taxes on our net income. Nothing transfers or removes our own registration, collection, or remittance obligations.

If we decline or cannot fulfill an order, we will notify you and refund amounts paid for the unfulfilled order or agreed unfulfilled part. Tell us promptly about a genuine invoice or service dispute so we can address it. Undisputed amounts remain due; nothing restricts a lawful payment dispute or non-waivable remedy. These Terms do not impose an automatic late fee or interest charge.

5. Your photos

You retain all rights you have in your Photos and other supplied material. You confirm that you own the material or have all permissions needed to provide it, have Howards and its providers process it using AI, create derivative video material, and use the resulting Video for the agreed advertising. Permission to use a photograph in a listing does not necessarily include these additional uses. Obtain permission from the photographer and any other relevant rights holder; do not assume a brokerage, MLS, seller, or website can grant rights it does not own.

You give Howards a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, copy, edit, adapt, and process your material solely to fulfill your order, conduct service-related quality review, deliver and correct the Video, secure the Service, and satisfy related legal obligations. We may authorize providers to perform those activities for us under appropriate restrictions. This license lasts only as long as reasonably necessary for those purposes and the retention described in the Privacy Policy.

This license does not authorize using your Photos or Videos to train AI models, selling them as a dataset, or using them in Howards' own marketing. We do not authorize our AI providers to train on that content. U.S. production is limited to paid API arrangements with no-training terms or controls, including disabling OpenRouter routing to providers that may train on customer data.

Do not supply Photos of identifiable people, confidential documents, unnecessary sensitive information, unlawful material, or material you lack the right to share. Obtain any notices, consents, property permissions, or releases needed for material you lawfully submit. Your responsibility does not excuse Howards from its own legal obligations. Where applicable privacy law requires a separate data-processing agreement, the parties will put one in place before the relevant processing.

6. Your responsibilities

Review the complete Video before publishing or sharing it. Check the property's actual condition, layout, rooms, fixtures, views, boundaries, dimensions or other stated facts, branding, captions, and required disclosures. Do not publish material you know or reasonably should know is materially inaccurate or misleading. Tell us promptly about an error caused by our process so we can address it under section 11.

Your use must comply with applicable MLS, brokerage, portal, and platform rules and real estate advertising, licensing, fair housing, intellectual property, and privacy laws. Do not use the Service to create false, discriminatory, defamatory, unlawful, or infringing content, misrepresent a property, introduce malicious code, or attempt unauthorized access.

You are responsible for maintaining any required rights to market the property and for your own publishing decisions, ad targeting, captions, and changes after delivery. A Video license does not give you access to a platform or override its advertising, music, disclosure, or content rules. Howards remains responsible for its own work and express commitments.

7. AI-generated media and disclosure rules

Each Video is created with AI assistance from still Photos. Our process is intended to create camera movement without intentionally staging a property or changing its physical features. However, AI may infer unseen areas or introduce inaccurate details, distortions, or changes to fixtures, boundaries, or views. Human review reduces but does not eliminate those risks. A Video is not evidence of the property's actual condition.

You must make the disclosures and provide original-image access required for advertising you publish. Howards remains responsible for obligations applicable to its own activities, including when acting on a broker's or salesperson's behalf. We will reasonably cooperate with required disclosure placement; tell us about particular formatting requirements before production. Any additional charge must be agreed before that work and does not excuse a legal obligation independently applicable to Howards.

For California property-sale advertising, Business and Professions Code section 10140.8 can require a conspicuous alteration disclosure on or adjacent to a covered image, stating how to access clearly identified originals through a public website, link, or QR code. Controlled website postings must include the originals or the permitted public link. Whether a particular AI-generated sequence is covered depends on its content and use; these Terms do not declare all AI motion exempt. An "AI-generated" label alone may be insufficient. Disclosing an alteration does not make a misleading property representation acceptable. Other laws and MLS or platform rules may impose additional requirements.

Keep the original Photos and ensure required links remain accessible while the advertising is used. We do not promise compliance with a particular state, MLS, or platform unless we expressly agree to identified requirements in writing. This section does not excuse a material defect in the agreed Video or override section 11.

8. Your Video

Ownership. As between you and Howards, and subject to your rights in supplied material and third-party rights, Howards retains all intellectual-property rights it owns in the finished Video, its original editing and compilation, software, templates, production tools, and know-how. You purchase usage rights, not an assignment of ownership. Your Photos remain yours or their existing rights holders'. AI-generated elements may have limited or no copyright protection; we do not guarantee that every frame is copyrightable, exclusive, or unique. We license only rights we own or are authorized to license.

Paid customer license. Once you have paid in full, we grant you a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free license to use, copy, display, publish, distribute, and make the permitted edits to the delivered Video to market the property and promote your real estate business. This includes MLS listings, property portals, websites, email, organic social-media posts, and paid advertising, subject to any specific third-party asset restrictions disclosed and accepted before you commit to the order. You may authorize your brokerage, the seller, and your marketing providers to use it for those same purposes, subject to the same restrictions.

Publication before payment. For an agreed pay-after-delivery order, you have provisional permission for those same uses from delivery throughout the agreed payment window, normally seven calendar days after receipt of the invoice or Stripe payment request. Full payment converts that permission into the paid customer license above. If payment becomes overdue, we may suspend further use of that Video by written notice until the overdue amount is paid. You must then stop further use and remove uses under your control as reasonably practicable. Suspension is prospective and does not retrospectively make use during an authorized period unauthorized. Payment restores the license unless it has separately been lawfully terminated for another material breach.

Permitted edits and restrictions. You may trim, caption, resize, or otherwise adapt the Video for the licensed purposes, provided you do not create misleading content, remove required disclosures, or breach an accepted asset restriction. No Howards credit is required unless expressly agreed before the order. You may not resell or license the Video as a standalone stock product, extract licensed assets for separate use, or claim you created the original Howards-produced Video or own our underlying technology. You may publish it under your own brokerage branding within the agreed license.

Music and other assets. We embed music only where the rights have been cleared for the agreed commercial uses. That includes the intended social-media, website, listing, and paid-advertising uses unless an express restriction was disclosed and accepted before the order. A song being free to access or available in a social app does not itself establish those rights. Other song requests, including customer-supplied songs, require license verification before inclusion. We may decline an uncleared track and agree a suitable alternative; unrestricted song choice is not part of the Service.

Howards is responsible for securing the necessary rights for music and assets it selects. Any territory, platform, advertising, duration, attribution, or other restriction must be disclosed and accepted before the order. Music is licensed only as synchronized in the Video, not for extraction or separate use. We do not guarantee freedom from automated platform copyright claims, but will reasonably assist with claims concerning assets we supplied. If we lacked the rights promised for an asset, we will replace it at no extra cost or provide the appropriate remedy under section 11. You are responsible for additional music or other material you insert after delivery and for permissions in material you supply.

The license covers the delivered Video, not the underlying project files or separately reusable assets unless expressly agreed. If an order is fully refunded or its charge is waived because the Video cannot be made to meet the agreement, the license to that Video ends and you must stop using it and remove copies published under your control. This does not affect your rights in your original Photos or a non-waivable remedy.

9. How Howards may use your Video

Howards will not use U.S. customers' Photos or Videos, including excerpts or stills, in its own marketing. This includes our website, portfolio, social media, paid advertisements, demonstrations to prospects, and sales materials. Ordering a Video does not grant promotional-use permission, and no marketing opt-in is required or offered under these Terms.

This restriction does not prevent necessary internal quality review, secure processing by providers, delivery to recipients you authorize, or other limited activities permitted by section 5 and the Privacy Policy. Retaining rights in a Video does not override this restriction. A later policy change will not automatically permit promotional use of material covered by these Terms.

10. Delivery

We aim to deliver within 24 hours after we have accepted the order, received usable Photos and necessary instructions, and received payment where prepayment is required. For an agreed pay-after-delivery order, the target starts when we have accepted the order and have the required material and instructions; it does not wait for invoice payment. The 24-hour period is a target, not a guarantee, unless we expressly agree a guaranteed deadline in writing.

Delays may occur because of missing or unusable material, clarification needs, or provider interruptions. We will tell you if we expect a material delay and provide an updated estimate. Obtain our express agreement before ordering if a particular publication date is essential.

We deliver using the agreed file or download method. Any fixed link-expiry date will be stated in the delivery notice. Download and keep your own copy promptly. If a delivery link fails before you have a reasonable opportunity to download, contact us so we can provide a working delivery method. We do not promise indefinite storage or re-download availability. The Privacy Policy separately addresses retention and deletion.

11. Fixes and refunds

If a Video has a defect caused by our process, including a visual glitch, a material AI-created inaccuracy, a missing agreed scene for which usable Photos were supplied, or a technical fault, email contact@howards.ai within seven calendar days after delivery. Identify the order and describe the issue. We will fix or remake the defective work at no extra cost within a reasonable time. If we cannot provide a Video that materially meets the agreed requirements, we will refund the amount paid for that order and cancel any unpaid charge for that defective order.

The seven-day period applies to this voluntary correction offer. It does not shorten a non-waivable legal claim or remove legally required rights. Contact us promptly about a defect that could not reasonably have been identified within that period; we will assess it in good faith and honor applicable legal remedies.

You may cancel before production starts without charge and receive a full refund of amounts paid. Once production has started, we do not offer change-of-mind refunds or cancellation of agreed charges except as required by law or otherwise agreed. New instructions, preferences outside the accepted scope, or problems caused solely by inaccurate or unusable Photos you supplied may require a separate quote. This does not excuse our failure to meet the scope we accepted.

If we cannot deliver, materially fail to perform, or cannot agree a reasonable revised delivery date after a material delay attributable to us or our providers, you may cancel the undelivered order for a refund and cancellation of its unpaid charges. Refunds include associated taxes refundable for the affected order under applicable law and are returned to the original payment method where practicable. Nothing restricts a lawful payment dispute or non-waivable remedy.

12. Disclaimers

EXCEPT FOR OUR EXPRESS COMMITMENTS IN THESE TERMS OR AN ACCEPTED ORDER, AND TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE AND VIDEOS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." WE DISCLAIM OTHER WARRANTIES, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. THIS DOES NOT NEGATE OUR EXPRESS PERFORMANCE, LICENSING, CORRECTION, OR REFUND OBLIGATIONS, OR RIGHTS THAT CANNOT LAWFULLY BE EXCLUDED.

We do not promise that a Video will sell a property, increase its price, shorten time on the market, or win a listing. Platform availability, acceptance, reach, and automated copyright systems are outside our control; this does not excuse an asset-licensing or other obligation we have expressly accepted.

13. Limitation of liability and indemnity

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, HOWARDS IS NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR LOSS OF PROFITS, COMMISSIONS, LISTINGS, OR DATA ARISING FROM THE SERVICE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THEIR POSSIBILITY. HOWARDS' TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR CLAIMS ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE IS LIMITED TO THE AMOUNTS PAID OR PAYABLE BY YOU UNDER ACCEPTED ORDERS FOR THE SERVICE IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT FIRST GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM.

These exclusions and limits apply regardless of the legal basis of a claim, but not to fraud, willful misconduct, gross negligence, liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, or our express obligation to refund or waive charges under these Terms. Nothing limits a privacy right, statutory remedy, or regulator's authority that cannot be waived by contract.

You will defend and indemnify Howards and its directors, employees, and contractors against third-party claims and resulting damages, reasonable settlements, and reasonable legal costs to the extent caused by your supplying material without necessary rights or permissions, your material breach of these Terms, or your unlawful use of the Service or a Video. This does not cover a claim to the extent caused by Howards' breach, negligence, willful misconduct, unauthorized changes, or an asset supplied by Howards rather than you.

We must promptly notify you of a covered claim; delayed notice reduces your obligation only to the extent it prejudices the defense. You may control the defense with competent counsel reasonably acceptable to us. We will reasonably cooperate at your expense and may participate with our own counsel at our expense. Without our written consent, not to be unreasonably withheld, you may not settle in a way that admits our fault, imposes a non-monetary obligation on us, or fails to release us from the covered claim.

14. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by New Zealand law, without applying conflict-of-law rules that would substitute another law. This does not exclude mandatory U.S. federal or state law or protections that cannot lawfully be waived.

Before ordinary court proceedings, the parties will try in good faith to resolve a dispute for 30 days after written notice describing it and the requested resolution. Send notices to contact@howards.ai; we will use your order or account email. This process does not prevent urgent relief, a regulatory complaint, a privacy request, or a filing needed to preserve a deadline or non-waivable right, and does not itself pause a legal limitation period.

The parties submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of New Zealand courts. This is not an exclusive New Zealand venue requirement and does not prevent a claim in another court with lawful jurisdiction. These Terms do not require arbitration or waive a right to participate in a class action.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may revise these Terms for future orders, post the new version with an updated date, and give affected customers or account holders advance email notice of material changes where we have their contact details. The Terms accepted for an order continue to govern it unless both parties agree otherwise. We will obtain renewed agreement where required. Posting new Terms does not by itself change an existing order or create consent to new data or promotional uses.

16. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the Service and request account closure by email. We may suspend or terminate access for a material breach, nonpayment, unlawful use, or a reasonable security or legal risk. Where reasonably practicable, we will explain the reason and give an opportunity to remedy it; immediate action may be necessary to address security, legal duties, or urgent harm. Section 8 governs suspension of use for a pay-after-delivery Video.

Account closure does not cancel amounts properly due, a refund due, or a paid Video license. We may terminate a license for material misuse after written notice and a reasonable opportunity to remedy the breach, unless immediate action is legally required or necessary to prevent serious harm. Unfulfilled orders are addressed under sections 4 and 11, and information is handled under the Privacy Policy.

Sections 5 and 9 continue only for their stated purposes and duration. Sections 8 and 11 through 18 continue to the extent needed to give effect to accrued rights and continuing obligations.

17. General

These Terms, the accepted order details, and any separate agreement expressly agreed by both parties form the agreement for the Service. A signed agreement prevails over an inconsistent general term; agreed order details govern their scope, price, payment arrangements, and specifically accepted asset restrictions. A data-processing agreement controls covered processing where applicable. The Privacy Policy remains the notice of our information practices, not a waiver of privacy rights.

If a provision is unenforceable, it will be limited to the extent lawfully possible or severed, and the remainder continues. A delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver. You may not transfer the agreement without our written consent, not to be unreasonably withheld for a legitimate business reorganization; permitted use by your brokerage, seller, or marketing providers under section 8 is unaffected. We may transfer the agreement as part of a merger, sale, or reorganization only with its relevant obligations. This does not authorize incompatible use of personal information or remove the no-promotional-use commitment.

Neither party is liable for delay to the extent caused by an event beyond its reasonable control if it takes reasonable steps to reduce the impact and resume performance. This does not excuse accrued payment obligations, amounts refundable or charges waived under these Terms, or duties that cannot lawfully be excused. It does not permit us to retain payment indefinitely without providing the agreed service. The parties are independent businesses; this agreement does not itself create a partnership or agency.

18. Contact

Howards Limited
Christchurch, New Zealand
Email: contact@howards.ai

These Terms are offered for acceptance when first published for the Service or supplied with an order. They apply to an order when accepted under section 1. The last-updated date identifies this version; it does not backdate acceptance.