Editorial policy

This page sets out how Mortgage Ledger decides what to publish, how it checks what it publishes, how often it revisits it, and what happens when it gets something wrong. It applies to every article, calculator, and glossary entry on this site.

How topics are selected

Mortgage Ledger publishes on a topic when it meets three tests:

1. It answers a real borrower question. Topics come from questions that people actually face at a decision point — whether to pay points, whether a recast beats a refinance, why the payment jumped after escrow was re-analyzed — not from keyword lists.
2. The arithmetic matters. This site's advantage is that it can show the math and let you run it. Topics where a worked number changes the answer get priority over topics that are purely definitional.
3. It is not already covered well here. An existing article is expanded rather than duplicated with a second near-identical page.

Mortgage Ledger does not accept guest posts, sponsored posts, paid placements, or contributed articles, and does not publish content supplied by a lender, broker, or marketing agency.

How mortgage facts and formulas are researched

Two different kinds of claims appear on this site, and they are checked in two different ways.

Arithmetic — payments, amortization, breakevens, totals — is derived from the standard published formulas and then verified independently: the schedule is rebuilt from first principles and the outputs are reconciled against a hand-worked example before anything is published. Every formula, compounding assumption, and rounding convention used anywhere on the site is written out on the calculation methodology page, so a reader can check the work rather than take it on trust.

Rules — cancellation thresholds, disclosure timelines, insurance duration, tax treatment — are traced back to the instrument that actually creates the rule: the statute, the regulation, the agency handbook, or the investor's servicing guide. If a rule cannot be traced to a source of that kind, it is either presented explicitly as a common lender practice rather than a legal requirement, or it is not published.

Which sources are treated as authoritative

In descending order of authority:

• Federal statute and regulation — e.g. the Homeowners Protection Act (12 U.S.C. § 4901 et seq.), Regulation Z (12 C.F.R. Part 1026), Regulation X (12 C.F.R. Part 1024).
• Federal agencies and regulators — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, HUD and the FHA, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Federal Reserve, the IRS, the Federal Trade Commission.
• The investors and insurers who set the underwriting and servicing rules — Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's selling and servicing guides, HUD mortgagee letters and the FHA Single Family Housing Policy Handbook (4000.1), VA and USDA handbooks.
• Primary market data — e.g. the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey for rate context, FHFA for conforming loan limits.

Lender marketing pages, affiliate comparison sites, SEO blogs, and content farms are not used as sources of fact. Where a secondary source is cited at all, it is because it is reporting on a primary document, and the primary document is cited alongside it. Sources are listed at the foot of every article, with links, so you can check them yourself.

How articles are reviewed before publication

Nothing publishes automatically. Before an article or calculator goes live, it is checked against this list:

• Every numerical claim is recomputed independently and must reconcile.
• Every rule, threshold, and deadline is verified against a primary source, and the source is cited.
• Simplified rules are qualified. Thresholds that vary by loan type, investor, or jurisdiction are described as examples, not as universal limits.
• Risks and limitations are stated in the piece, not buried in a footer disclaimer.
• The piece carries an author name, a published date, and a last-reviewed date.

How often content is reviewed and updated

• At least annually, every article and calculator page is re-read and re-verified, and the last-reviewed date is refreshed — whether or not the content changed.
• Immediately, when a rule changes. Statutory, regulatory, or investor changes that affect a published claim are applied as soon as they are identified, and every affected page is updated, not just the most obvious one.
• Annually in the fourth quarter, for figures that reset each year — conforming loan limits, tax thresholds, insurance premium schedules.
• On report, whenever a reader flags something. See the corrections policy.

The last-reviewed date on a page is the date a human actually re-checked it. It is not bumped to game freshness.

Conflicts of interest

Mortgage Ledger is independently operated and is not affiliated with, owned by, or compensated by any lender, mortgage broker, bank, insurer, real estate brokerage, or loan-origination service. It runs no affiliate links, accepts no referral fees, takes no payment for coverage, and does not sell leads or user data.

Mortgage Ledger may use third-party advertising services, including Google AdSense, after approval. No advertising is running on the site at present. Should advertising be approved, it will be separated from editorial: advertisers get no pre-publication review, no influence over topic selection or conclusions, and no ability to have content altered or removed. Ads will be labelled as advertising and kept away from calculator controls so that they cannot be mistaken for part of a tool.

Use of artificial intelligence

Yes — AI tools are used on this site, and here is exactly how. AI assistance is used for research support, for drafting, and for editing prose. It is not used to publish.

Every piece of content on Mortgage Ledger — including any content drafted with the help of AI tools — is reviewed, edited, fact-checked against primary sources, and approved by a human being (Dominic Wu) before it is published. AI output is treated as a first draft to be verified, never as a source. In particular:

• Numbers generated or suggested by an AI tool are recomputed by hand or in a spreadsheet before they appear on the site. AI models are unreliable arithmetic engines and are not trusted for it.
• Rules, thresholds, and citations suggested by an AI tool are verified against the primary document. Any citation that cannot be located and read is removed.
• No article is published without a human having read it end to end and taken responsibility for it.

The author is accountable for every published word regardless of how the first draft was produced.

How to report an error

Use the contact form or write to pacificledgerstudio@gmail.com. Naming the page and the inputs you used makes an error much faster to reproduce. Error reports are read before anything else in the inbox. What happens next is set out in the corrections policy.