Methodology & Editorial Policy
What "independent" and "verified" actually mean on this site, how data gets sourced and updated, and where the line sits between editorial coverage and paid placement.
- We collect public and builder-provided information, tax records, plats, community and builder disclosures, and what we see on site.
- Important facts are cross-checked against a primary source before we publish them.
- Every page shows when it was last verified, so you can judge how current it is.
- Unknown or changing information is labeled, we mark what's an estimate, what's builder-reported, and what isn't tracked yet, rather than guessing.
- Builders cannot purchase editorial conclusions. Rankings and analysis aren't for sale; representation (through Seider Realty Team) is a separate, optional service.
The full methodology, sourcing, verification, corrections, and the line between editorial coverage and any future paid placement, is below.
This reporting and this policy are Pete Seider's. Ten years selling new construction in South Austin, Buda, Kyle, and San Marcos, and the reason field verification works the way it does below: it is what he actually checks on site visits, not a policy written for a hypothetical team. About Pete →
Where New Home Dispatch is today
New Home Dispatch is in Austin pilot coverage, 77 communities and 49 builders are currently tracked in the Explorer, out of dozens active in the Central Texas market. This is a starting dataset, not a complete one. Coverage is expanding on a rolling basis, and this page will be updated as it does. Any claim on this site about "verified" data refers specifically to what has been checked against the sources listed below, not to full market coverage, and not to a fixed publishing schedule.
Expanding beyond Austin
New Home Dispatch is built around one market first: Austin–Central Texas. The verification approach used here — cross-checked primary sources, dated pages, field visits, structured comparisons — isn't Austin-specific by design. It's built to run the same way in any new-construction market.
No second market is live yet, and no launch date is set. When one is added, it will follow the same rule this page describes: nothing is called "verified" until it has actually been checked, and the criteria for choosing where to expand next will be published here first.
Two things, and they mean different things
New Home Dispatch has two update commitments, and they're not the same claim:
- Site pages, re-checked on an ongoing basis, dated individually. The Explorer, community and builder profiles, Reports, and Library briefings are working editorial pages. Facts get re-verified and corrected as the market changes, a new phase release, a confirmed incentive shift, a price move, rather than on a fixed weekly calendar. Each page shows exactly when it was last checked, so the date does the work a cadence claim shouldn't.
- The Playbook download, quarterly, on a fixed schedule. The Central Texas New Home Playbook is the collected edition: a stable, dated snapshot refreshed once per quarter and re-sent to subscribers automatically. This is the one cadence commitment on the site that's a firm calendar promise. If the site and the Playbook ever disagree, the site is the more current source.
Every page shows its own "Verified" date, so you always know how fresh what you're reading is, that date is the actual claim, not a description of how often the whole site refreshes.
How data gets verified
Every community and builder entry is checked against at least two independent sources before publishing, drawn from these categories:
Every community and builder page shows a "Verified" date. If you find something that's changed or wrong, that's expected in a fast-moving market, flag it and it gets checked and corrected.
The same primary sources used to verify every fact on this site are collected on the Resource Desk, appraisal districts, school ratings, and public records, organized by task.
The NHD Score Framework
Every scored community shows a scorecard, never a single blended number. There is no overall "8.5/10" anywhere on this site, a composite score hides more than it reveals, and we’d rather show you the parts than average them into something that looks more certain than it is.
Each category on a scorecard carries five things:
- Value, the exact verified fact, in the same words used everywhere else on the page. The scorecard never restates a number differently than the rest of the site does.
- Band, Low, Moderate, or High, ranking that one community against the other communities with a completed scorecard, on that category only. A band is a relative position, not a verdict, "High" HOA cost isn’t labeled bad, "High" builder count isn’t labeled good. Read the category to know what the direction means.
- Confidence, how directly the underlying number traces to a primary source. County appraisal district data is High confidence; a range compiled from multiple listing sites with minor disagreement is Medium.
- Weight, a plain-language editorial note on how much a category typically matters to a buyer’s decision, not a multiplier folded into a hidden formula.
- Limitations, stated plainly whenever a category can’t be fairly banded. A community with a PID instead of a standard tax rate, or an HOA with no single published figure, is marked Not Banded rather than forced into a false comparison.
Bands are recalculated from the same verified fields shown elsewhere on each page, there is no second, separate "scoring" dataset that could drift out of sync with the facts. When source data changes, the band changes with it.
What "Incentive Tracker: Reporting in Progress" means
Builder incentives change weekly and are the single hardest thing to verify at any given moment, they depend on inventory age, month-end and quarter-end sales goals, and individual sales-office discretion. Rather than publish a number that's likely stale by the time you read it, every community's Incentive Tracker field is marked "Not yet tracked" until a real quarterly verification cycle is in place. That's a deliberate choice, not an oversight.
The wall between editorial and paid placement
Community and builder profiles, comparisons, and Briefings are reported independently. Editorial coverage is independent buyer intelligence, no builder or community can pay for a better profile, a better comparison result, or inclusion in a Briefing.
As the platform grows, builders and communities will be offered dedicated, clearly labeled showcase space, separate from editorial coverage, and never mixed into it. If that ever changes, this page changes first.
Relationship to Seider Realty Team powered by The Ascend Group at LPT Realty
New Home Dispatch is an independent education and research platform. It does not require using any particular agent or brokerage, and nothing on this site is gated behind representation. For buyers who want hands-on help touring, negotiating, or closing, buyer representation is available through Seider Realty Team powered by The Ascend Group at LPT Realty, disclosed here and in the site footer, not built into the editorial content itself.
Corrections
Mistakes happen in a fast-moving market. When something on this site is found to be outdated or incorrect, it's corrected directly on the page along with an updated "Verified" date, not quietly edited without a trace.