How we know

Known

From a public record, a published statistic or a signed document, with its source and date.

Estimate

Our own math from stated inputs, marked “≈” or “est.”, with its basis next to it. It gets a range only when the range is measured or comes from stated assumptions, and we say which. If we haven’t tested it against real outcomes, we say that too.

Sample

Made up for the demo: homes, prices, photos, people, companies, sales and quotes. Marked “Sample”, and never mixed into a real figure without saying so.

Rule

What a law, contract form or local custom says, as researched on a date, with the law or form named and linked. Not legal advice.

Home facts: beds, baths, size, lot, year builtSample

Fictional in the demo. At launch they would come from the listing broker through the local MLS or from county records, with the date, and Homiy wouldn’t have measured them unless it says so.

Asking price and price historySample

Fictional in the demo. A real asking price is what the seller asks; it isn’t a value.

Homiy estimateEstimateSample

Automated estimate, not an appraisal. Not tested against real sales yet.

In the demo it’s worked out from sample sales nearby, so it shows no range and no confidence level, and nothing is sorted or badged by it. Before showing a range, we’d test it against real sales and publish how far off it was: the median miss and the share within 10%, by city.

PhotosSample

Stock photos from Unsplash. They don’t show the sample homes.

Screens that use numbers you entered, such as a home’s costs and the offer page, say at the top: “Your actual rate, payment, and costs could be higher. Get an official Loan Estimate before choosing a loan.”

Monthly housing paymentEstimate

Principal and interest on a 30-year fixed loan, plus property tax, home insurance, HOA dues and, below 20% down, mortgage insurance, each on its own line. Until you enter your own numbers, it assumes 20% down at the benchmark rate below. Not included: upkeep, utilities, flood insurance, special assessments.

The rateKnown

7.03% is Freddie Mac's average 30-year fixed rate for the week of Sep 24, 2026, for buyers with 20% down and excellent credit. It isn't an offer or an APR.

It’s a benchmark, not a quote. Freddie Mac averages applications for conventional, conforming home-purchase loans on owner-occupied single-family homes, from borrowers with good or excellent credit putting 20% down, received Thursday to Wednesday. It doesn’t report points or fees. With less down, lower credit, or a jumbo, FHA or VA loan, the rate you’re offered will differ; compare Loan Estimates from more than one lender. Source: Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey, week of Sep 24, 2026.

Cash needed in totalEstimate

Down payment, closing costs, Homiy’s planned fee and any deposit paid before closing, line by line, before any money from the seller. For a real home you check, the planned fee is shown apart, not in the total: Homiy couldn’t act on it. Not included: a home inspection, moving, immediate repairs, or reserves a lender may want you to keep after closing. Your lender’s Loan Estimate will show its actual charges.

Closing costsRuleEstimateSample

Transfer taxes follow each state’s and county’s published rates, with the law linked. Recording, lender, title and escrow fees are estimates or sample figures, and each line’s basis says which. Your lender’s Loan Estimate will show its own.

Property taxRuleEstimateSample

Whether a sale resets the tax comes from each state’s law. Your likely bill after buying is estimated from that rule and the city’s tax rate or the home’s current bill; where the rate is uncertain, the screen shows a range and says why. A sample home’s current bill is sample data.

Home insuranceEstimate

Not a quote. An assumed range from state average premiums (mostly the NAIC’s 2023 data; Seattle uses a projected 2026 state average), adjusted for the home’s size; condos and co-ops use the average unit-owner policy. Premiums have risen since, and flood and earthquake need separate policies. Where the U.S. Treasury published a ZIP’s average premium for 2022, it’s shown as a second reference. Get quotes before your inspection period ends.

HOA duesSample

Fictional in the demo. For a real home, dues come from the listing, and the association’s reserves, special assessments and board minutes need a review before your deadline.

Mortgage insuranceEstimate

Below 20% down, from sample yearly rates for a credit score around 740 that rise as the down payment shrinks. Your lender and the insurer set the real price. On a conventional loan you can ask to cancel it when your balance is scheduled to reach 80% of the home’s original value, and it ends automatically at 78% (CFPB).

UpkeepEstimate

Shown on each home, not in the monthly payment. It’s a range between two measured medians, not an error band: what long-time and new owners of older homes spent on upkeep a year, as a share of the home’s value, in the Census Bureau’s 2021 American Housing Survey, scaled down for homes under 20 years old. Condos and co-ops use the survey’s per-square-foot figures for the unit, since the building’s upkeep is in the dues. Utilities aren’t estimated yet.

Homiy’s feeRule

Planned: $5,000 flat, paid at closing, $0 if you don’t buy. How Homiy would make money has who would pay it and when.

Real public statistics, each shown with its source and period. They’re Known, but surveys and indexes carry error of their own, so we show it. Past change, not a forecast.

People and homes: Census survey figuresKnown

Population, incomes, rents, home values, property taxes paid and owners’ monthly costs, from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2020–2024, by ZIP code and for each city’s official limits. Each comes with a 90% margin of error (“±”). When an estimate’s sampling error is large (a coefficient of variation of 12–30%), it’s marked “less reliable” and left out of rankings; above 30%, we don’t show it. A population change counts only if it passes the Census Bureau’s 90% test; otherwise we say “no clear change”. A city’s change adds up its ZIPs that have comparable counts in both periods, says how many, and takes the same test. Home values are owners’ own estimates and lag sale prices.

House price changesKnown

FHFA’s house price indexes: for metro areas every quarter, and for ZIP codes once a year in an experimental index. They count single-family houses with conventional loans bought by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac; condos, co-ops and multi-unit buildings aren’t in them. ZIP rankings use the change from 2022 to 2025 and leave out small ZIPs, jumpy ones and changes within ±7%. Rankings like this often don’t repeat, and each list says how often.

What buyers borrowed and paidKnown

2025 mortgage records (HMDA) from the FFIEC (published June 23, 2026), via the CFPB’s HMDA Data Browser: home-purchase first mortgages on owner-occupied 1–4 unit homes in each city’s census tracts. Rates on 30-year fixed conventional loans, total loan costs, how much of the home’s value buyers borrowed (every loan on the home combined, so not the down payment), loan types and points. Loans only, so cash buyers aren’t in it; rates move every week, so these are 2025’s, not today’s. We don’t show a figure from fewer than 30 loans.

Home insurance by ZIPKnown

The U.S. Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office (January 2025): the average premium per policy in 2022 and, where published, the share of policies not renewed. It leaves out state insurers of last resort, surplus-lines insurers and flood insurance, and ZIPs with fewer than 10 insurers or 50 policies. An average over many homes, not a quote.

Flood insuranceKnown

FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, by ZIP: federal flood insurance policies in force on June 30, 2026, and claims for losses since 2000. Federal policies only: private flood policies aren’t included, and a count of policies isn’t a share of homes.

This product uses the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s OpenFEMA API, but is not endorsed by FEMA. The Federal Government or FEMA cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from the Agency's website(s).

RentsKnown

HUD’s Small Area Fair Market Rents for fiscal year 2027, by ZIP and number of bedrooms: a standard-quality rent plus utilities, set from the 40th percentile of rents paid by recent movers. Not an asking rent.

Loan limitsKnown

The 2026 conforming loan limits (FHFA) and FHA limits (HUD), by county. A loan above the conforming limit is a jumbo loan, with each lender’s own rules.

Natural hazardsKnown

FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025): each hazard’s Expected Annual Loss rating for every county the city lies in, compared with other U.S. counties. It describes the county, not a home. We use this rating, not FEMA’s overall Risk rating, which also weighs who lives in a county. Check an address on FEMA’s flood maps; in a high-risk zone, a federally backed loan requires flood insurance (42 U.S.C. §4012a).

Jobs, new homes and populationKnown

Jobs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the latest months are preliminary and get revised), homes permitted from the Census Bureau’s Building Permits Survey, and population from the Census Bureau’s 2025 estimates.

Each city’s Prices page explains how its own figures are put together.

State purchase contracts and deadlines, closing taxes and who customarily pays them, buyer-agreement rules, property-tax rules, rebate rules and basic zoning allowances, researched from public sources as of September 2026. Each names and links its law or form. Some findings still need a lawyer’s review. Not legal advice.

Your chance of winning an offerNot shown

We can’t estimate your chance of winning yet: we haven’t tested this against real offers.

The offer page shows what we do know instead: how long the home has been listed, its price changes, and dated national figures.

Lender quotesSample

Sample rates, fixed for the demo, sorted by APR for your loan, lowest first. That APR counts only points and lender fees.

People, companies and deal eventsSample

The brokers, agents, lenders, inspectors and other companies in the demo are fictional, and the purchase tracker’s events are simulated.

Drafts and analysisAutomated

Rules-based software with no language model. It never signs or sends anything. At launch, a named licensed broker would review every draft before it’s sent; in the demo, no one reviews it.

Planned: Homiy isn’t licensed and offers no services yet. Wherever the site describes a service, it says what would happen. How Homiy would make money says who would pay whom, and Privacy says what stays in your browser.

If a number looks wrong or has lost its label or source, email Jake Liu at Jake@JakeLiu.me with the page address and what you expected. We’ll check it against the source and fix what’s wrong.

Every version of this site is a dated entry in our code history, and our host, Cloudflare, keeps each version we publish, so we can show what a page said on a given day. Each public figure is stored with its source and its period or retrieval date, and our research notes record each source’s link and the date we read it. Ask if you need a copy of what a page said on a past date.