This page describes how the figures on this site are produced and what we will and will not do with them. Our editorial policy covers who decides what gets published and how it is reviewed. This one covers the machinery underneath: where a number comes from, what happens when a lender has not published one, and how anything on this site gets ordered.
It is written so you can hold us to it. Where a commitment below can be checked from the outside, it says how.
Where every figure comes from
A lender is not a product, and a product is not a set of terms. We keep them apart, because the same product often has different terms for a different state or a different credit profile, and flattening them into one record is how a site ends up quietly presenting one lender’s Texas rule as though it applied everywhere.
So each lender has one or more products; each product has a base set of terms plus any exceptions; and each set of terms carries the page we read it from, the kind of source it was, and the date we read it. Fees are recorded one by one underneath, each with its own amount or range, its own conditions, and its own source and date.
A figure with no source and no date is not published on this site. That is a rule in the code, not a habit.
Three states, not two
Every material fact is in one of three states, and we show which:
- Published. The lender states it. We link the page we read it from and the date we read it.
- Our reading. We worked it out from what the lender published rather than reading it directly. These are labeled in place, next to the figure, not in a footnote.
- Not published. The lender does not disclose it. We say so.
The third state is the one most of this industry does not have. A lender that publishes no minimum credit score gets a blank cell, a dash, or a plausible-looking number on most comparison sites, and a reader takes all three as information. We would rather tell you the question cannot be answered, because that is the true answer and it is also useful: it tells you what you will have to ask the lender yourself.
It is worth saying plainly that this makes our pages look emptier than our competitors’. That is the trade, and we are not going to fill the space.
How the comparison answers, and when it refuses
On the comparison page you can state a credit score, a combined loan to value and a state. Each lender is checked against each one, and each answer comes back as met, not met, or unanswerable from what that lender publishes.
Two rules decide the overall result, and both are deliberate:
- One failed criterion decides it. A lender that will not lend in your state will not lend to you however good your credit is.
- An unanswerable criterion outranks a met one. Two criteria met and one unknown is not a match. It is “nobody can tell you”, and we will not round that up to a green tick.
Where a lender publishes better terms under a condition, for example a higher combined loan to value at a higher credit score, we apply that only if what you entered actually satisfies the condition. Leaving a box blank never counts as satisfying one, so an empty form gets you a lender’s standard terms rather than the best terms it offers somebody else.
How anything on this site gets ordered
Lenders are listed alphabetically unless you pick one of the fields they publish to sort on. There is no score, no star rating, no badge, and no “best for” anywhere on this site.
We are not paid by any lender, and there are no affiliate links. That much any site can say. Here is the part that can be checked: our data has no field that records a commercial relationship. Not a disabled one, not one defaulting to false. It does not exist, so there is nothing for ordering to read even by accident, and an automated check fails the build if such a field is ever added to the comparison code.
A site that separates editorial ordering from commercial ordering is asking to be trusted. A site with no commercial ordering to separate is making a weaker promise that is easier to keep.
A lender appearing here is not a recommendation, and a lender missing from here usually means we have not researched it yet.
How fresh the figures are
Rates move and structural terms mostly do not, so we treat them differently. A rate is shown as current only if we have checked it within the last 30 days; past that we stop presenting it as today’s rate. A combined loan to value ceiling or a minimum credit score read six months ago is very probably still correct, so it stays, still carrying the date we read it, and gets flagged internally for rechecking.
Nothing is ever deleted or downgraded to unknown by the passage of time alone. An old figure is a dated observation, not a lie, and blanking it would make the site less useful without making it more honest.
What the calculators do
Both calculators work out their answers in your browser. Neither sends what you type to this site or saves it anywhere.
They are arithmetic on figures you supply, and they state their assumptions on the page rather than underneath it. Assumptions are not a disclaimer; they are the difference between a number that describes your loan and one that does not.
How to hold us to this
- Every figure on a lender page links the source we read and shows the date we read it. If a link does not support the figure, tell us and we will fix it against the source.
- Anything a lender does not publish is written as not published. If you see a blank where a figure should be, that is a bug.
- Nothing is marked reviewed by a person unless a person marked it, and if the underlying figures change afterwards the reviewed mark is withdrawn automatically rather than left standing.
- If we ever take money from a lender, this page and how we make money have to change before anything else does. Watch those two pages.
Corrections and questions: contact us.