Editorial standards

The single most important rule on the site is that we describe how things work in general; we do not tell a specific reader what to do in their specific situation. The reasoning is structural, we don’t know any specific reader’s situation, and the people who do are the licensed professionals named on each page. Pretending otherwise would be both inaccurate and unhelpful.

Every consequential page on the site follows the same four-step structure: name the phenomenon, describe how it works generally, name the licensed professional whose work it is to handle the specifics, and surface a question worth asking that professional. The reader gets useful framing; the professional gets the specific-situation conversation that’s appropriately theirs.

This is not a hedging move. It’s an editorial commitment to be honest about where the line between general explanation and specific advice actually sits.

Words like “typically,” “generally,” “commonly,” “often,” and “in many cases” appear throughout the site because the underlying phenomena are usually true in the typical case but not universal. We use these words deliberately rather than reflexively, because the distinction between “generally true” and “always true” is often the part that matters in real situations.

We avoid “you should,” “you need to,” “we recommend,” “the right move is,” and similar prescriptive framing entirely. The substitute pattern, “a buyer in this situation often considers...,” “the contract typically allows...,” “a real estate attorney can advise on...”, describes the same information without overstepping the editorial line.

Empirical claims on the site are cited to authoritative sources where the authority exists: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the IRS, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac selling guides, HUD, the VA, the Federal Reserve and FRED data series, the National Association of Realtors’ annual research, the American Land Title Association, and state-level revenue and taxation departments for jurisdiction-specific items. The full list of recurring sources is at /sources.

Where the underlying reality is uncertain or contested, rate forecasts, local market dynamics, the future of regulatory regimes, the site says so rather than picking a side and presenting it as known. Sometimes the honest answer is “a CPA needs to look at this” or “the rate forecast is genuinely unpredictable.” Those answers go into the writing instead of being papered over.

Every article on the site has a visible “Last updated” date in both the header and the footer. When something material changes, a regulation update, a calculator methodology revision, a correction to a factual claim , the date moves and the change becomes part of the article’s history.

Corrections are always honored when an error is real. If a fact on the site is wrong, or a citation has rotted, or a number is out of date, please flag it at /contact. We aim to acknowledge corrections within a few business days and to publish the fix with the updated date visible.

Material corrections that change the substance of an article’s claim are noted explicitly in the article rather than silently changed. Minor corrections (typos, broken links, small numerical refinements) are made silently with the updated date moving.

Every page carries the disclosures appropriate to its content. Editorial pages on consequential topics include a section banner identifying the disclosure type (legal, tax, financial, process), a professional callout naming the relevant licensed professional, and a footer disclosure that runs sitewide. Calculator pages add an output disclaimer specifying that the figures are illustrative and naming the document or professional that produces actual numbers.

The disclosure copy itself is reviewed by counsel. Where copy is currently in placeholder form, that’s flagged on the page with a “pending review” marker; final language ships when review is complete.

Coverage decisions, recommendation decisions, caveats, and professional referrals are made on editorial grounds, independent of advertiser or affiliate relationships. The full description of how the site is funded and how the firewalls work is at /how-we-make-money.

The tools surface (every calculator, the closing-cost estimator, the affordability and rent-vs-buy and seller-net-proceeds calculators) is never monetized. No ads, no affiliate links, no “recommended lender” in outputs. The reasoning is that the math has to be trustworthy for the rest of the site to be trustworthy, and the math can’t be trustworthy if there’s a commercial preference embedded in it.