The Listing Gate

A word list catches wording. It cannot read your market, your file or your contract. Run these yourself before anything goes public.

• Does any sentence describe who this is for rather than what is there? Cut it, or turn it into a physical fact.
• Any protected-class proxies left: places of worship, ethnic area names, school quality used as a selling point?
• Does every number trace to a document you could produce today? Crime, schools, taxes, days on market, appreciation.
• Could every superlative survive a written challenge? If not, it is a claim you have published.
• Have you read it aloud at normal speed? Your ear catches what your eye slides over.

• Photos and people in them. HUD's rule covers photographs and illustrations as well as words. This page only reads text.
• Where the ad runs. Choosing media or ad targeting that keeps groups from seeing a listing is covered by the same rule. Nothing here checks that.
• Phrases not on the list. New or unusual wording passes silently. The test below shows four real misses.
• State and local law. Many states protect more groups than federal law. This list is federal only for now.
• Lawful exceptions. Legally age-restricted housing (55+ or 62+) may say so. The tool will still flag it for you to confirm.

Internal test, run 20 October 2026 on word list v2.0. Fifty short listings: 25 with a known problem and 25 clean ones full of phrases that look risky but are not.

Read this before you trust the number. The author wrote and scored these listings, and the word list was adjusted using them. An independent test, written and scored by a Fair Housing professional, would be fairer. That is the next step.

After this test, the four phrases it missed were added to the list (v2.1). The score above is from before they were added. Re-scoring on the same listings would make the number look better without proving anything.