Would a Fair Housing reviewer flag your listing?
Fair Housing language is the easiest rule to break by accident, because most of it sounds like good marketing. It is our largest rule set at 145 phrases — more than the other six combined.
A screening tool, not legal review. Your compliance officer has the last word.
Free · 25 checks a day · no sign-in. We log which phrases matched — never your copy.
Why it doesn’t cry wolf
A phrase list flags everything. This doesn’t, and the difference is the part that took the longest to build.
29 negation words. “We can’t guarantee a closing date” is not blocked as a guarantee — the screen notes it and clears the piece.
Curly apostrophes count. The negator list holds “don’t” with a straight quote. Written the way a word processor actually produces it, it used to tokenise as two words and match no negator — so we don’t guarantee read as a guarantee. There were 222 of them in the corpus when we found it.
A negation has a reach. “With no side effects and permanent results” promises permanence. The word and ends what the no governs, so the second half is still caught.
Warning about a thing isn’t doing it. “If anyone offers to cover your deductible, walk away” is advice against the practice, not an offer of it.
Every one of these exists because the scan got it wrong on real copy first. When the rules are ambiguous it fails toward flagging, never toward clearing — a false alarm costs you a minute, and a miss costs you the thing you bought this for.
And what you have to include
Every checker sells the list of things you cannot say. This is the other half: the identifiers a published piece is supposed to carry in real-estate listings.
✓ the agent’s licence number — checked automatically
? the brokerage name — we cannot confirm this from the copy alone, and we say so rather than show you a tick
✓ Equal Housing Opportunity — checked automatically
A missing identifier is not a phrase you can search for, which is why most checkers ignore this half entirely.
Why this rule set catches people out
The test is whether the copy describes the property or who ought to live in it. Steering language is still steering even when it is complimentary, and the intent of the writer is not the standard.
Real examples, and how to rewrite them
Every flag below is genuine output from the checker above — not an illustration. Paste any of them in and you will get the same result.
Flagged
“Great starter home for a young family in a quiet Christian community. Walk to the parish school.”
Publishable
“Three-bedroom home within walking distance of the parish school and the neighbourhood park.”
Flagged
“Ideal bachelor pad. No children. Master bedroom is handicap accessible if needed.”
Publishable
“One-bedroom condo with an open plan. The primary bedroom and bathroom are step-free.”
Flagged
“This neighborhood is very safe and exclusive. Integrated area with good schools.”
Publishable
“The home sits in the Washington Township school district. School ratings and district boundaries are public record.”
Questions
Why is “good schools” a problem?
It reads as a proxy for the demographics of a neighbourhood rather than a fact about the property. Name the district instead and let the buyer look up the ratings themselves.
Is “walk to the parish school” allowed?
Describing a landmark near the property is different from describing who belongs there. The checker flags the community descriptor, not the geography.
What about accessibility features?
Describing a feature of the home is fine. It becomes a problem when the copy assigns that feature to a type of person.
Does this replace my broker’s review?
No. It is a screening tool. Your broker or compliance officer has the last word.
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The gate on its own
This page is the free front of the same engine. The subscription opens all seven rule sets — 258 prohibited phrases, plus the ones you add — and checks a screenshot or a link, not just pasted text.
Already included in Starter, Pro and Teams. This is for people who want the checking without the marketing around it.
Run it on every listing, before it publishes
You are the one carrying the advertising risk for your agents. This page checks one listing at a time; the Founding Broker Program checks all of them — unlimited, up to 25 seats, with a dated record you keep. Ten brokerages, $299/month, locked for life.