Trust & safety
How we research, write, and correct what we publish.
We call this an independent homeowners' newsroom, so here is the editorial policy behind that claim: who's responsible for the rights guides and data studies, how AI fits into producing them, and how to get something fixed.
Who writes this
Editorial content is produced under two pseudonymous desks, not named individuals — the same posture we ask of homeowners posting reviews and stories: review the institution, not the person.
HOA Stories Rights Desk
Researches and authors the state-by-state rights guides: what each state's HOA and condo statute family generally requires on fines, foreclosure, records, elections, architectural review, and selective enforcement. Every guide cites the statute by name as authority and is written in plain English, never as legal advice.
HOA Stories Data Desk
Builds the data studies from public sources — U.S. Census microdata on housing costs, and FEMA's National Risk Index, disaster-declaration record, and flood-insurance program data. Every study states its source and vintage, and is re-run when the issuing agency publishes new data.
How a rights guide gets made
The Rights Desk starts from the state's actual HOA/condo statute family, identifies the provisions that matter to an owner (notice and cure periods, records deadlines, quorum and proxy rules, foreclosure limits), and writes an original, plain-English guide that cites each statute by name. Guides are never legal advice and are never a verbatim reproduction of the statute text. A guide only becomes a public, indexable page once it carries every part of our five-part standard: an owner-framed introduction, statute citations, a step-by-step section, an FAQ, and links back into the rest of the site — a guide missing any part stays unlisted until it's complete.
How a data study gets made
The Data Desk aggregates a named federal or public dataset — Census microdata, FEMA's risk and disaster records, the flood-insurance program — into a state-level or national study, states the source and the data vintage on the page, and re-runs the study when the issuing agency publishes new figures. A data study describes the whole country from a federal source; it never repackages another private company's proprietary numbers.
Where AI fits in
AI helps draft and structure both the rights guides and the data studies from source material a desk selects, and a desk reviews the result before anything publishes. This is separate from the site's homeowner-facing AI tools (the violation-letter analyzer, the governing-document reader, and the rest), which are an informational, draft-only product built for a different purpose and clearly labeled as such — never legal advice, and never presented as our own editorial judgment.
Sourced, not asserted
A rights guide names the statute it draws on; a data study names the federal dataset and vintage it aggregates. If we can't cite a public source, we don't publish the claim as fact.
AI assists, it doesn't originate policy
AI tools help draft and structure guides and studies from source material the desk selects and reviews before publication. The AI homeowner tools (violation-letter analyzer, governing-doc reader, letter generator, and the rest) are a separate, clearly-labeled product: informational and draft-only, never legal advice, and never presented as editorial content.
Entity-level, not personal
Reviews and stories are about an association or its board, never a named individual. Our own bylines are pseudonymous desks, not fabricated personal names — a desk is not a person, and we don't dress it up as one.
Corrected in the open
When a correction changes a rights guide or a data study, the page's visible "last reviewed" or "updated" date moves. We don't quietly edit a page and leave the old date standing.
Found something wrong?
Tell us what's wrong and where you found it — a rights guide, a data study, or a fact on an association page (see our directory methodology for how those facts are sourced). We review every correction request and update the page's visible date when something changes.