Editorial policy

Who writes what

Loan product pages, the comparisons listed on /compare, the first set of question pages linked from Mortgage Questions, the blog, and the trust pages (this one, Methodology, Licensing) are written by Ralo's team and changed only through a reviewed code change.

Three families are drafted by Ralo's editorial automation and say so on the page: question pages under /questions/, glossary definitions under /glossary, and the company comparisons under /compare/ralo-vs-. The weekly rate report is assembled from pricing records with a short machine-written commentary. Page titles and descriptions across the site may also be rewritten by automation when search data shows a page is seen but not clicked; the body of the page is not touched by that process.

What the automation may and may not say

A drafted page may use only figures from Ralo's fact registry: numbers that already appear on a hand-written page with a public source, such as HUD, the FHFA, the CFPB, Freddie Mac or the Census Bureau, plus Ralo's own NMLS number. The draft must cite each figure to its source in a visible table. A draft that introduces any other number is rejected, not edited.

Every draft is checked by the same compliance lint that runs on the hand-written pages: Ralo is described as a broker, never a lender; its pricing is described as a thin commission, never as free or without cost; no rate appears without its APR; and the text may not forecast rates, promise an outcome, or count customers or reviews. A draft that fails gets one automated repair attempt; if it fails again, nothing is published that week. The checks are code in this site's repository and run again on every deployment, so a page that passed once cannot drift.

Company comparison pages are stricter still. A fact about another company is kept only if the automation fetched it from that company's own website, a regulator, or a securities filing and confirmed the text there. Opinions, rate claims and unverifiable statements about other companies are dropped. If too few facts survive, no page is published.

Review and accountability

Each question page carries a byline naming the licensed mortgage loan originator who is accountable for it, with that person's NMLS number. The reviewers are Ralo's founders:

• Helly Shah, Co-Founder & CTO, NMLS #2695701
• Arjun Lalwani, Co-Founder & CEO, NMLS #2753950

For hand-written pages the reviewer read the page before it shipped. For pages drafted by automation, publication is gated by the automated checks above rather than a person reading each draft, and the named reviewer is the licensee responsible for the page: they answer for what it says and are the person who corrects or removes it. Readers should treat the byline as a statement of accountability, not as a claim that a human proofread that specific page.

Sourcing and dates

Figures come from primary sources, linked where they appear: federal agencies for program rules and loan limits, the Freddie Mac survey for the market average, the New York Fed for SOFR, the Census Bureau and FHFA for housing data, and Ralo's own pricing engine for rates. Every rate is an illustration for a stated borrower scenario on a stated date and is paired with its APR; how each series is priced and refreshed is set out on the methodology page. Pages show a last-reviewed date, and data-driven pages show the date of the data.

What Ralo does not publish

• Rate forecasts or predictions of where the market is going.
• Guarantees of approval, savings, a rate, or a closing timeline.
• A rate without the APR from the same pricing result.
• Counts of customers, loans or reviews, which cannot be independently checked.
• Personalized advice. Pages describe how products work; a quote needs your details.
• Paid placement. No lender, company or product pays to be mentioned or ranked.

Corrections and removals

If a page is wrong, write to hello@ralo.com with the page address and the figure in question. Corrections to a figure update the page and its last-reviewed date. When a published number cannot be reconciled with the underlying records, the page is withdrawn rather than silently edited: it redirects to its hub, and the withdrawal is noted in the site's change history. A company named on a comparison page may request a review of any statement about it through the same address.

Independence

Ralo earns a thin commission from the lender a borrower chooses. Pages on this site are not sponsored, and no lender influences which products are described or how. Where a page mentions Ralo's own service it says so plainly, as a broker comparing lenders, and never as a lender.