The review process
Nothing publishes on one person's say-so.
| Role | What they are responsible for | Named on the page? |
|---|---|---|
| Writer | Research, structure, and drafting from primary sources | Yes |
| Editor | Accuracy of every claim against its cited source; clarity; house standards | Yes |
| Licensed reviewer | A licensed property & casualty producer would read the page before it publishes and again on the review schedule, and sign off that the insurance content is correct | Not yet in place. No producer has reviewed any page here. When one does, their name, license number and NPN appear on each page they reviewed |
| Data reviewer (data pages only) | Independent re-derivation of every published figure from the source files | Not yet in place. We have no data pages published, and the byline carries three roles rather than four. This row describes what we will do before publishing one, not what we do today |
The reviewer role is not filled. No licensed producer has reviewed any page on this site, and every byline says so rather than leaving the role blank and hoping you do not look.
When it is filled, the reviewer will be our own contracted licensed producer, engaged by us to check accuracy — not the agency that answers the phone, and their name will stay on the page regardless of who we route calls to. That separation is deliberate: the accuracy of what you read should not depend on a commercial relationship. We will compensate them for their time and will say so on every page carrying their name; they will be paid for reviewing, not for outcomes, and will receive nothing tied to whether you call or buy.
How we handle sources
Insurance writing has a bad habit: a figure appears in one article, gets quoted by a second, and by the fifth nobody can say where it came from. We try not to add to that.
| Source type | How we use it |
|---|---|
| Statutes and regulations | Cited to the section. Quoted where the wording matters |
| State insurance department material | Cited to the issuing department, with the date |
| Federal data — FEMA, Census, NOAA, Treasury | Used directly. Public domain, and we state the vintage |
| NAIC publications | Individual figures only, always attributed. NAIC's tables are copyright, so we do not reproduce one as published — where we lay figures out in a table of our own, it is a short extract selected for the point being made, and the report, its date and its stated exclusions are named with it |
| Industry research from a named firm | Cited with the firm, the publication date, and what the sample actually was |
| Another content site | Never for a rule, a statute or a regulator's position. If a claim about the law or an insurer's obligations can only be traced to another publisher's article, we do not publish it. The one exception is a publisher's own original survey, which is primary for what its respondents said and is labeled as such — not as a fact about the market |
| Anything we cannot verify | Not published — or published with the uncertainty stated plainly. See the rule below |
The rule we are most serious about: saying when we do not know
A great deal of what people want to know about home insurance varies by state, and a great deal of it is not published anywhere authoritative.
The tempting response is to assemble a confident-looking fifty-state table out of inference. We do not do that. Where we have verified some states and not others, we publish the ones we verified, say plainly that the rest are unverified, and point you at your own department of insurance.
What we will not publish, ever
These are standing rules, not editorial preferences.
No reviews, ratings, star scores or testimonials of any insurer. We intend to take compensation for connecting readers to a licensed agency, and no site that does that can honestly present itself as an independent rater. The rule binds us now, before any money exists, because it is easier to keep than to adopt later.
No claim that we compare every carrier or find the cheapest policy. We do not compare carriers at all, and no site paid for referrals — which is what we intend to become — can credibly claim to survey the whole market.
No invented people. Every human name on this site belongs to a real, verifiable person. No stock personas, no invented experts, no fabricated quotes. Today that rule bites us rather than anyone else: no individual is named as writer or editor, and the about page says who is behind the site and why the bylines carry a company rather than a person.
No personalized quotes or premium predictions. We publish sourced, dated aggregate figures with their assumptions stated. We do not tell you what you will pay, because we cannot know it.
No date changed to look fresh. An updated date on this site means something on the page actually changed.
How often pages are reviewed
Different facts go stale at different speeds, so the schedule varies by page type. Cost and market pages are reviewed most often; policy-mechanics explainers least often. Any page is reviewed immediately when a statute or regulation it describes changes.
The date shown on a page is the date of its last substantive review. If nothing changed, the date does not move.
Corrections to this page (3)
We publish these rather than editing quietly. Our corrections policy explains how we handle errors.
- — An FAQ said every substantive page here carries a further review by a licensed property and casualty producer, and that the reviewer's license number and producer number are published for verification. No licensed producer has reviewed any page here, every byline says so, and the rest of this page said so too. One FAQ contradicted all of it.
- — This page gave three different counts of how many roles are unfilled, and referred readers to a byline state — a role shown as “pending” — that we removed on 26 August precisely because a placeholder in a credential slot borrows the credential's authority.
- — Our search-result description asserted licensed producer review. A meta description is prose, it is the first prose most people read, and it was the last surface we corrected.
How we researched this
This page describes our own process and carries no external sources. It is reviewed whenever the process changes.
What we could not find
This page makes 1 claim that something does not exist. That is the one kind of claim you cannot check by following a link, because there is no document to link to — so here is the search behind each one, and what we opened. Not finding something is not a finding. If you know of a source we missed, our corrections policy says how to tell us.
“There is no public, authoritative table of roof-age underwriting thresholds by carrier and state”
Where we looked 24 August 2026.
- Searched for any state regulation requiring carrier underwriting guidelines to be filed with, or released by, the regulator
- Searched separately for a NATIONAL public table of roof-age thresholds
What we actually opened
- Missouri 20 CSR 500-9.100, Required Filing of Underwriting Rules — guidelines are FILED in some states, which is not the same as published
- No national public table of roof-age thresholds located in either search
Frequently asked questions
Who writes this site?
Home Cover Desk writes and edits it, and every byline says so. No licensed insurance producer has reviewed any page, and every byline says that too. We are recruiting one; when the role is filled, that reviewer's name, license number and NPN will be published on each page they reviewed, so you can check them against the national producer registry rather than taking our word for it.
Do insurers pay you to be featured?
No. We do not accept payment from insurers, we do not rank or rate insurers, and no insurer has any influence over what we publish. At present nobody pays us anything at all: the number on this site reaches us rather than an agency, and there is no advertiser and no referral agreement. Our how we make money page sets this out in full.
Do you use AI to write this content?
Yes, alongside other tools. We are not going to be coy about it, because the honest answer matters more here than a reassuring one. What we do about it: every factual claim is tied to a named primary source with the part of the document identified, and pages are audited adversarially against those sources — a process that has repeatedly found real errors, including quotations that did not exist in the documents they were attributed to and corrections that were themselves wrong. Those are recorded on the pages where they happened. Writing and editing are done by Home Cover Desk and every byline says so. The licensed-producer role is not filled, and every byline says that too, in those words rather than as a placeholder. When it is filled, the reviewer's name, license number and NPN appear on each page they reviewed.
Why do some pages say you do not know something?
Because we do not, and the alternative is inventing it. Many state-level insurance rules are not published in any authoritative, comparable form. Where that is true we say so and point you at your own department of insurance.