Primary sources only
Every verified cell in the 50-state ruleset cites a primary state-legislature URL or, where the state legislature site is hostile to deep-linking, a Cornell Legal Information Institute archive of the statute. We never paraphrase Nolo, FindLaw, RentPrep, or any secondary commentary as authority. Practitioner commentary is useful for orientation but is never the cited source for a rule.
Tiered verification priority
Tiers set the order we verify states in — by renter population — not a guarantee of how many cells are done. Every cell is either primary-source verified or rendered as a visible PLACEHOLDER; we never imply a cell is verified when it is not. The live count of verified clause cells per state is shown on each state page as an n/12 badge, so what you see is always the current, real coverage.
- Tier 1 (CA, TX, FL, NY, IL): verified first, and the furthest along — every Tier-1 state has its highest-impact clauses (security deposit, late-rent eviction) primary-source verified, with the remaining cells PLACEHOLDER-pinned.
- Tier 2 (PA, OH, GA, NC, MI): next in the verification queue. Verification here is still in progress — most cells are PLACEHOLDER-pinned today, and some Tier-2 states have no verified cells yet. Check the
n/12badge for the current count. - Tier 3 (remaining 40 + DC): scheduled after Tier 2, so most cells default to PLACEHOLDER. A few high-litigation clauses (e.g. security-deposit caps) are already verified for some Tier-3 states where the statute was straightforward; again, the
n/12badge is the source of truth. The state-legislature landing link is always present so users can verify directly.
Annual re-verification cadence
State landlord-tenant law evolves annually. California's AB 12 (2024) reset the security-deposit cap. New York's HSTPA (2019) reshaped deposit rules and pre-eviction notice. Florida's HB 1417 (2023) preempted local landlord-tenant regulation to the state and extended month-to-month termination notice from 15 to 30 days. Cells older than 12 months re-enter the verification queue. Every cell carries a public ISO YYYY-MM-DD last_verified field so users can see at a glance whether a rule is freshly checked.
No fabrication
When we don't know, we say so. Unverified cells render a visible PLACEHOLDER pin and link to the state-legislature landing page. We will never invent a statute citation to fill a row in a 50-state grid — fabricated citations are disqualifying for both E-E-A-T and basic ethics.
Affiliate ethics gate
Affiliate links are vetted before they appear. We exclude:
- Eviction-mill marketing operators (services targeting landlords with "evict in N days" pitches).
- Tenant-screening platforms that resell tenant data — fundamentally incompatible with the privacy promise.
- Operators with active FTC consent decrees, state AG actions, or BBB pattern complaints.
- Operators marketing predatory framing ("fight your landlord!").
v1 ships with no live affiliate links — the ethics-gate verification queue is not yet complete. Any future affiliate must clear the gate before going live; CPL alone is never sufficient.
Architecture as moat
The redact-before-hop architecture is documented at /how-our-analyzer-works. We document the pipeline so the privacy promise is verifiable at the network layer — not a marketing claim.
Corrections
If you spot a stale citation, an unverified cell that should be verified, or a state-statute change we've missed, please send a correction. The reviewer + project maintainer track every change with a public last-verified date. See the sources page for the current citation manifest.