Trust & safety
Who pays for this site, and what they get.
A site that publishes anonymous accounts about powerful associations owes you one answer up front: who funds it, and what does that money buy? Here is every way this site earns — and the ways it never will.
- 01
A Pro subscription for the AI tools
HOA Stories Pro is $9/mo and does exactly one thing: it lifts the monthly limit on the AI tools. Everyone gets 3 free AI analyses a month; Pro makes them effectively unlimited, within a fair-use ceiling we publish. Reviews, stories, forums, the directory, and every know-your-rights guide stay free to read for everyone — content is never behind the subscription.
- 02
Opt-in vendor referrals
If you ask us to send your request to a vendor — and only if you ask — we pass the request you typed to an independent third-party vendor, and that vendor may pay us a referral fee. We don't review your situation and we don't recommend any particular vendor. The fee never changes what you pay the vendor, and it never changes what we publish. We never mine your reviews, stories, uploads, or browsing to generate a lead; the only thing a vendor ever sees is the request you deliberately submitted.
- 03
Clearly labeled ads, later
Not running today. If traffic ever justifies ads, every placement will be visibly labeled as an ad, kept off submission, account, and checkout pages, and targeted only by context — the page, the state, the topic. Never by you: what you write, upload, or read here will not be an ad-targeting signal.
What we will never do
- Sell your data.Not to advertisers, vendors, or data brokers — not raw, not “anonymized,” not aggregated. The privacy page carries the full commitment.
- Take money to remove or soften a review. There is no pay-to-remove product at any price. An association, board, or management company cannot buy a takedown, an edit, or a better rating; content only comes down through moderation and the public notice & takedown process, which work the same whether or not money is offered.
- Let a paying vendor touch content. A referral fee buys the introduction you asked for — nothing else. No say over ratings, reviews, rankings, moderation, or what gets published.
- Gate the record. The paid tier lifts AI-tool limits, full stop. Reviews, stories, rights guides, and the directory stay free to read, without an account.
Why we publish this
This site asks homeowners to put serious accounts on the record about the most powerful institution in their daily life. You can’t weigh what we publish without knowing who pays us and for what — so the answer lives one click from the footer of every page. If the way we make money ever changes, this page changes first.
A question we didn’t answer?
Ask us directly, or read how we handle the data behind all of this. Plain questions get plain answers.