How we check the rules, and how we count the days.

1. How a rule gets in

1. Fetch the official text. We download the section from the state legislature's own site (or the official code publisher it points to) and read it in full, not a summary. Secondary sources such as law-firm blogs and landlord sites are never the source of a rule.
2. Quote it verbatim. Every rule carries the exact words it rests on, with a pin cite (the subsection) and the URL. When we shorten a quote we mark the cut with an ellipsis; we never paraphrase inside quotation marks.
3. Model what changes the date. For each state we record what starts the landlord's clock (vacating, surrender, the end of the tenancy, a demand, or the day the landlord gets your address), calendar or business days, any precondition, “whichever is later” second tracks, shorter refund periods when nothing is deducted, and deadlines that fall on you, such as Florida's 15 days to object or Michigan's 7 days to answer a notice of damages.
4. Stamp it. Each rule shows the date its text was checked. Its status is text verified until a named, qualified reviewer signs it with a date; only then can it become reviewed.
5. Version it. Every edit in our admin is validated, saved as a new version with the full previous text and a diff, and written to an audit log.

States we haven't verified show no date at all. Some are still waiting because their official code is published by a commercial host or a script-only site we couldn't read and quote on the day we checked: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee. We'd rather say “still being checked” than guess.

2. Review and freshness

Law pages stay out of search engines until a named reviewer signs them. Once signed, a review is good for 12 months; after that the page shows a stale banner, and at 18 months it drops out of search again until it is re-reviewed. Every statute and self-help link is re-checked by an automated job, and dead links go into our review queue. See legal review for the state-by-state status.

3. How we count days

Dates are calendar dates, worked out in UTC so daylight saving can never shift a deadline. “Within 30 days after” an event means we add 30 to the date of that event. When a statute says “one month” (Texas notice to vacate), we move to the same day of the next month, or to the last day of a shorter month; the statutes don't define that edge, so we say so.

Business days. Arizona counts “fourteen days, excluding Saturdays, Sundays or other legal holidays”. We start counting the day after the event, skip Saturdays, Sundays and US federal holidays, and stop on the 14th business day. Federal holidays are computed for each year from 5 U.S.C. §6103: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day (third Monday of January), Washington's Birthday (third Monday of February), Memorial Day (last Monday of May), Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day (first Monday of September), Columbus Day (second Monday of October), Veterans Day, Thanksgiving (fourth Thursday of November) and Christmas, each moved to Friday when it falls on a Saturday and to Monday when it falls on a Sunday.

For 2026 that gives: Jan 1, 2026 · Jan 19, 2026 · Feb 16, 2026 · May 25, 2026 · Jun 19, 2026 · Jul 3, 2026 · Sep 7, 2026 · Oct 12, 2026 · Nov 11, 2026 · Nov 26, 2026 · Dec 25, 2026.

The Arizona caveat. Arizona's own list of legal holidays is not identical to the federal list, and we haven't modelled the differences. If a state holiday falls inside your window, the real deadline can be a day later than ours. Example: 14 business days after Friday, November 20, 2026 is Dec 11, 2026 by our count, skipping Thanksgiving.

4. Fair Charge

Fair Charge works out a prorated estimate: charge × (useful life − age) ÷ useful life. A $906 carpet charge on a carpet 3 years into a 5-year life gives $906 × 2 ÷ 5 ≈ $362. It is not a legal limit, and we never call it one. The useful life is always visible and editable, with its source and source type. The only figure we can cite today is the IRS recovery period for carpets and appliances in a residential rental (5 years, or 9 under the alternative system, IRS Publication 527). That is a tax schedule, not a lifespan, and we label it that way. Where we can't cite anything, Fair Charge asks you for the life instead of assuming one.

5. Evidence receipts

When you take condition-report photos, housr can record a signed server receipt of each photo's hash and the server's time. A receipt proves the file existed unchanged when housr's server saw it; it doesn't prove when the photo was taken. How receipts are signed and how to verify one yourself is documented at the condition report.

6. What we don't do

• We don't give legal advice or tell you how a court will decide. Letters state facts, dates and the statute.
• We don't model local ordinances (city rules that add to state law) yet.
• We don't invent figures. Anything that isn't from a cited source or computed from your inputs is labelled as a suggestion or sample.

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