Homes you check are saved in this browser — no account yet. Compare them side by side, reopen a full dashboard, and watch their local markets.
The free check shows what the public record says. The full report adds the analysis behind every flag — for one address, 30 days.
Six calculators — affordability, true monthly cost, rent vs. buy, payoff, points and refinancing. They run in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.
How a report is built from government and county records, how the Caution Index works, and the rules we hold ourselves to.
Live government sources, the county’s own roll and tax bill, and official links where records aren’t published — grouped the way the report reads.
For homebuyers · before the offer
Flood claims, fire zones, tax resets, quick flips, special assessments — pulled straight from FEMA, EPA, USGS and the county’s own records. Every fact sourced and dated.
Read straight fromFEMAEPAUSGSUSDACensusDOTUSACEUSFWSNPSCAL FIRESt. Louis Fed+ county assessors
Same house, two stories. Here’s our sample property the way a listing would sell it — and what its public records actually say.
“Fully renovated charmer with low taxes on a peaceful street — move-in ready. Won’t last!”
The listing says“Fully renovated”
The listing says“Low taxes”
The listing says“Peaceful street”
Illustrative sample property — not a real listing or a real address. Open the full sample report →
Zillow tells you what a house costs. We tell you what it might cost you later.
We lock the parcel against the Census Bureau’s own geocoder — coordinates, county and census tract, the keys every record system needs.
Twenty-plus government systems at once — FEMA flood maps and claims, EPA sites and tanks, USGS quakes, soils, dams, pipelines — and the county’s own assessment roll and tax bill.
The findings that matter come first, ranked, each with what to do about it. Every line names its source and date. What no website can show goes on your escrow checklist.
Every check runs on county records, federal data and FRED market series, then turns into something you can use at the kitchen table.
Type the asking price. See it against what the house last sold for, that sale with FHFA’s price index applied, nearby recorded sales and the county’s own value, wherever the county publishes them — plus the seller’s gain, then-vs-now payment and your tax at that price.
Every transfer in the county data we can reach, charted — with the change between market sales and the rate per year. Quitclaims, gifts and foreclosures are listed, never passed off as a price.
A printable checklist from the parcel’s county record and the area’s federal hazard maps — build year, radon, soils, flood zone, quakes, wells, leaking tanks. Hand it to your inspector before the walkthrough.
LIVE reads a government source when you run the report — directly, or from a dated copy we refresh (every card shows its date). COUNTY reads the county’s own roll and tax bill — never a data broker — in counties home to 4 in 5 Americans. LINK takes you to the official record, deep-linked where we’ve verified it. CA LIVE is live in California only.
When a source doesn’t answer, we say so and point you to the official record. A failed lookup never reads as “all clear.”
Every line names its source and its as-of date, so you can check our work — and your agent can too.
No contact details, ever — the owner’s name only as the county records it, removable on request. No demographics in the score. We audit the house, never the neighbors.
We’re not paid by agents, lenders or the sale closing. Our only job is to show you what might make you walk.
An inspection happens after you’re under contract. This happens before you offer — while walking away is still free.
The listing price is the start of the math, not the end. These run entirely in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere. Run a report and we prefill them with the parcel's own records.
This is the comfortable number — 28% of your income on housing, 36% on total debt. It uses the property-tax rate that applies to you after purchase, not the seller's lower grandfathered bill — the quiet shortcut most calculators take to make you feel richer. Below 20% down, PMI is folded in. Not a mortgage pre-approval.
PMI is added automatically below 20% down (est. 0.6%/yr of the loan, dropped here at 20% equity is not modeled — ask your lender). Tax rate defaults to a ~1.10% national ballpark; a report prefills your state's regime.
Assumptions (deliberately conservative): home appreciation 3%/yr and rent growth 3%/yr; maintenance 1% of value/yr; insurance $2,000/yr; buying closing costs 2.5%; selling costs 6%; PMI 0.6%/yr under 20% down; renter earns 4%/yr on the down payment they didn't spend. Ignores tax deductions (most buyers now take the standard deduction). This is a framing tool, not financial advice.
Assumes a fixed-rate loan and that every extra dollar goes straight to principal — confirm your servicer applies it that way and that there's no prepayment penalty. Not financial advice.
One point = 1% of the loan, paid at closing. Your lender's quote sets the real rate cut — 0.25% per point is a common figure, not a promise. Break-even compares monthly payments only (it ignores what the cash could earn elsewhere and the slightly faster principal paydown). Moving or refinancing before break-even means the points cost you money. Not financial advice.
Refinancing restarts the clock and costs money up front (typically 2–5% of the loan). "Buy now, refinance later" only works if rates actually fall and you still qualify then — nobody can promise either. Not financial advice.
Reports you run are remembered in this browser only — nothing is uploaded, no account exists. Tick two or three to compare them signal-by-signal.
Median listing price, days on market, inventory, permits, mortgage rates, county-vs-county comparison, and a 30-year price index for any county in America — straight from federal data (Realtor.com, FHFA & Census series republished by the St. Louis Fed). Your address report folds the local numbers in automatically.
The Caution Index is a 0–100 summary of physical and records-based risk only — flood zone, earthquake history, fire hazard zone, FEMA tract hazards, EPA sites, radon, wetlands, and flip patterns — normalized to the inputs that actually resolved for your parcel. If fewer than 40% of applicable inputs resolve, we withhold the number entirely rather than print false precision.
Never an input: race, ethnicity, income, or any demographic variable. Demographics appear as labeled Census context — they never move the score, by design.
Deliberately excluded: owner contact info of any kind — phone, email, mailing address (full reports show only the owner’s name as the county records it, never in New Jersey, and removable on request), and sex-offender registry data (state-law limits on housing-related use — check your state's official registry directly).
What no website can show — insurance claim history (CLUE), HOA reserves and litigation, sewer condition, unrecorded agreements — your report ends with an ask-in-escrow checklist so you get those from the only people who can legally hand them over.
Informational use only. HonestLot reports compile public records and licensed public-records data with dated source attribution, for personal due-diligence use in evaluating real property.
Not a consumer report. FCRA prohibition. HonestLot is not a consumer reporting agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and its reports are not consumer reports. You may not use HonestLot, in whole or part, to determine any person's eligibility for credit, insurance, employment, housing/tenancy, or any other FCRA-covered purpose. Screening tenants, employees, or any individual is expressly prohibited.
No professional advice. Nothing here is legal, tax, insurance, engineering, or appraisal advice. Value estimates are automated model outputs, not appraisals, and must not be represented as appraisals.
Accuracy. Public records contain errors and lag. Every fact is attributed and dated; verify critical facts against the primary source before relying on them in a transaction. Where a source returns nothing, we say so rather than guessing.
Acceptable use. No harassment, stalking, doxxing, or contacting occupants; no automated scraping; no resale of report data.
No accounts required. Stripe processes payments; we never see your card. To honor an unlock we store a random device ID paired with a one-way hash of the purchased address — not the address itself — for 30 days. Free-check rate limiting uses your IP for one hour. No data sales, no ads, no owner contact data of any kind. Owners can remove their name from reports. The parcel map uses public-domain USGS The National Map tiles (OpenStreetMap tiles as a fallback) and Esri World Imagery for satellite; your browser fetches those tiles directly from those services. The buyer tools (monthly cost, rent vs. buy) compute entirely in your browser — nothing you type in them is transmitted.
HonestLot aggregates third-party and government data "as is," without warranty of completeness or fitness for a particular purpose. The Caution Index is a summary of sourced signals — not a prediction, a safety guarantee, or a statement about any person. Real-property decisions should rest on primary-source verification and licensed professionals.
Portals are paid by the transaction — agent leads and mortgage referrals. Their structural incentive is to make homes look buyable. Our only job is the opposite: surface what might make you walk. We take no listing-industry money.
Live federal and state sources (FEMA, EPA, USGS, USDA, Census, USFWS, NPS, DOT, CAL FIRE, the St. Louis Fed) plus each county’s own assessment roll, read directly from the county or state — never a data broker. Every card names its source and as-of date. No listing-site scraping, no MLS data, no owner contact data.
The card says so, plainly, and routes you to the official viewer. An honest "no data" beats a confident guess — that's the founding rule of this tool.
No. It's a bounded, transparent summary of sourced physical and records risk, shown with its coverage percentage and full component math. It never uses demographics, and below 40% input coverage it refuses to print a number.
No — prohibited. HonestLot is not a consumer reporting agency and its reports may not be used for FCRA-covered decisions about people. It audits properties, period.
One address, 30 days, on the device you bought it from. Re-run it as often as you like in that window — data refreshes on our cache schedule.
Free check · no account · every fact sourced and dated.