Editorial Policy
This page explains how the guides here are written, where the figures come from, what happens when something is wrong, and how AI tools are used.
The sourcing rule
Every figure traces to a primary source, and the article names it. Primary means the body that sets or publishes the rule, not a summary of it:
| Subject | Primary source used |
|---|---|
| US income tax, deadlines, penalties | Internal Revenue Service |
| VA eligibility, entitlement, funding fee | Department of Veterans Affairs |
| VA underwriting standards | eCFR, 38 CFR Part 36 |
| FHA rules and insurance premiums | Department of Housing and Urban Development |
| Conforming loan limits | Federal Housing Finance Agency |
| Mortgage process and disclosures | Consumer Financial Protection Bureau |
| UK tax, health surcharge, NHS charges | gov.uk, NHS |
Each article lists its sources at the foot of the page with the publication title and a direct link, so you can check a figure without taking our word for it.
Secondary sources — news reports, lender marketing, comparison sites, forum posts — are never the authority for a number.
When a figure cannot be verified
The article says so, in the body, in plain terms.
Many numbers circulating about US mortgages and tax filing are not published by anybody official. There is no federal average time-to-close. The Department of Veterans Affairs publishes no processing time for a Certificate of Eligibility. In those cases the guides say no official figure exists and name the body that would publish it.
They do not fill the gap. No estimating, no "typically around", no quoting a lender's blog as a rule. A reader planning around an invented figure is worse off than one who knows it does not exist.
Three kinds of number, kept apart
Most bad information here comes from collapsing three things into one. The guides label them separately:
Programme rules. What the statute, regulation or agency requires. The VA funding fee of 2.15% on a first-use purchase with no deposit is one. So is the absence of any VA minimum credit score — 38 CFR §36.4340 sets none. This is the only category presented as a rule.
Lender overlays. Extra conditions a lender imposes on top of the programme: credit score floors, debt-to-income caps, reserve requirements, property-type restrictions. They vary by lender, they are not law, and a decline against an overlay is not a decline against the programme. Where a quoted "requirement" is really an overlay, the article says so.
Industry averages. What happens in the market — context, never a requirement, always labelled with its source. You cannot qualify under an average.
Research and checking
Each guide starts from the governing document — the IRS publication, the regulation, the agency page — not from an outline of what it should say. Figures are recorded with the date they were read.
Before publication, each article is checked against three questions. Does every figure appear in a cited primary source? Is each number labelled as a programme rule, an overlay or an average? Does it name the common error and state the real position?
Review schedule
Every article carries a published date and a last-modified date, both on the page.
Tax guides are reviewed when the Internal Revenue Service releases figures for the new tax year, and again at the filing deadline. Mortgage guides are reviewed when the FHFA publishes conforming loan limits, when the Department of Veterans Affairs changes funding fee tables, and when HUD revises mortgage insurance premiums. Health cover guides are reviewed annually. Beyond that, any article is updated as soon as a cited source changes — an out-of-date number is an error, not an article awaiting its slot.
Corrections
Errors are corrected on the page, not quietly deleted.
Report one to [email protected]. The most useful report names the article, quotes the passage, and says what the correct position is and where it is published. Reports are read within five working days.
An error that could change a decision — a wrong rate, fee, threshold or deadline — is corrected once confirmed and noted at the foot of the article with its date. Typographical fixes are made without a note. The last-modified date updates either way.
AI tools in drafting
Stated plainly: AI language tools are used in drafting and editing articles on this site.
They are used for structure, phrasing and first drafts from source material already gathered. They are not used for sourcing. No figure enters an article because a language model produced it. Every number is taken from the primary document and checked by a human before publication.
That order matters, because language models are confidently wrong about exactly the detail this site exists to get right — fee percentages, thresholds, regulation citations, which agency owns which rule. Every article is read, checked and signed off by a person, who is responsible for it.