Conventional.LoansPublic beta

Trust

Methodology

How Conventional.Loans researches, writes, calculates, reviews, updates, and corrects everything we publish about conventional mortgages — and where our educational content ends and a licensed mortgage transaction begins.

1. Source hierarchy

Substantive claims about conventional mortgages must be traceable to a primary, official source. We use the following hierarchy and prefer the highest tier available for any given claim.

  1. Statute and regulation. The U.S. Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, and Federal Register notices — including CFPB Regulation Z (12 CFR §1026) and Regulation B (12 CFR §1002).
  2. Federal agency guidance. Publications and data releases from FHFA, CFPB, HUD, and VA Home Loans for comparative context.
  3. GSE seller/servicer guides. The Fannie Mae Selling Guide and Freddie Mac Single-Family Seller/Servicer Guide and their dated bulletins and announcements.
  4. State regulator and NMLS records. NMLS Consumer Access and state financial-regulator publications.
  5. Peer-reviewed research and official statistics. Cited by name and publication date when used.

Secondary write-ups (news, competitor guides, aggregators) are never treated as authoritative for a mortgage claim. If we cannot locate a primary source for a specific statement, the statement is qualified, marked as unverified, or removed.

2. Update cadence

Every published source in our registry carries a publisher, an effective or published date where verifiable, a last-checked date, and a list of affected routes. Our Living Source Tracker is regenerated from that registry every day.

Automated monitoring

A background watchdog fetches the official URL for each tracked source on a 90-minute rotation. It normalizes the response, strips volatile chrome (scripts, styles, hydration markers, anti-cache tokens), and computes a stable content fingerprint. A new fingerprint is staged as pending and is only enqueued for editorial review after a second successful observation returns the same fingerprint — or when a versioned identifier (for example, a Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac bulletin number) changes.

Editorial review

Confirmed changes never edit consumer-facing content automatically. A human editor reads the changed primary source, decides whether any published page is affected, and — only if it is — updates the affected page and records the review date. If the change does not affect our content, we log that decision and close the item.

3. Calculator methodology

Every calculator on Conventional.Loans is deterministic, inspectable, and educational. We do not use a calculator to generate a price, a rate, an approval, or a commitment to lend.

Formulas and inputs

  • Fixed-rate monthly payment uses the standard amortization identity M = P · r · (1 + r)n / ((1 + r)n − 1), where P is principal, r is the monthly interest rate, and n is the term in months.
  • Front-end and back-end debt-to-income ratios follow the definitions used by the CFPB and by the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac selling guides: monthly qualifying debt divided by monthly qualifying income, expressed as a percentage.
  • Loan-to-value uses LTV = loan amount / property value using the lesser of purchase price and appraised value, per the GSE seller/servicer guides.
  • PMI-removal illustrations reference the Homeowners Protection Act of 1998 (HPA, 12 CFR Part 1024) automatic-termination and borrower-requested-cancellation framework for borrower-paid PMI on residential mortgage transactions.
  • Points break-even divides upfront discount-point cost by the monthly payment difference produced by the rate change the user enters.

What our calculators do not do

  • They do not request or transmit Social Security Numbers, dates of birth, government IDs, bank data, tax data, or credit-report data.
  • They do not fetch or quote live interest rates. The user enters an assumed rate; the output is illustrative at that assumed rate.
  • They do not produce an approval, preapproval, underwriting decision, rate quote, rate lock, or commitment to lend.
  • They do not model program overlays that vary by lender, investor, mortgage insurer, or state.

Formula behavior is covered by unit tests kept in the repository and run before every deployment; changes to any formula require an accompanying test.

4. Authors and reviewers

A byline or reviewer credit only appears on a page when a real, verifiable person has produced or reviewed that specific content. We do not fabricate authors, reviewer names, credentials, awards, testimonials, ratings, or affiliations. Pages that do not yet have a named human author or reviewer are published as institutional editorial content under Bolt Home Loans LLC rather than under an invented person.

See our editorial standards for the qualifiers we require in mortgage writing ( “may,” “often,” “depends on”) and the categories of copy we refuse to publish (doorway pages, keyword-stuffed pages, thin location pages, hidden text).

5. Corrections workflow

Accurate content is more important than fast content. If a published page contains an inaccuracy — a wrong figure, a misstated regulation, an outdated guideline, or a claim we cannot support — we correct it and note the correction on the page along with the review date.

  1. Report an issue via the corrections page.
  2. An editor confirms the issue against a primary source in the source hierarchy above.
  3. The page is updated, the correction is noted, and the last-reviewed date is refreshed.
  4. If the change is material to consumer decisions, related pages and the source tracker are reviewed in the same pass.

6. Where education ends and a mortgage offer begins

Conventional.Loans is an editorial and decision-support platform. Nothing on this site is an offer of credit, an approval, a preapproval, an underwriting decision, a rate lock, or a commitment to lend. Application, disclosure, credit evaluation, and lending activities are carried out only through the licensed workflow operated by Bolt Home Loans LLC (NMLS 2784913), which you can verify on NMLS Consumer Access.

Educational calculators and guides on this site do not collect sensitive personal or financial information. Any transition from education to a licensed mortgage transaction happens through a separately identified, licensed workflow — never through an educational form or calculator on this site.

7. AI-assisted monitoring and generation

We use software — including automated monitoring and templated generation — to keep our source registry current and to produce structured, source-backed reference pages such as the Living Source Tracker. Templated pages use only data from our verified source registry, apply the same disclosure requirements as human-written content, and are subject to the same corrections workflow. Automated systems are not permitted to invent rates, APRs, fees, program eligibility, licensing, awards, or outcomes.

8. Primary sources cited across the site

The following verified primary sources are referenced across our guides, calculators, and insights. The full registry with affected routes lives on our source policy page.

Operator disclosure

Conventional.Loans is operated by Bolt Home Loans LLC, NMLS 2784913.

Verify on NMLS Consumer Access.

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