Credible research depends on transparent methods. This page documents exactly how the California Rental Experience Project gathers information, protects privacy, and decides what to publish — so that journalists, researchers, and policymakers can judge our work on its merits.
Rental criteria are contributed by the public and by our research team from publicly advertised rental listings. Contributors record only the criteria a listing advertises — such as rent, minimum credit score, income requirement, reserves, and cosigner policy. We do not solicit or record private or non-public information.
Renters, landlords, property managers, and housing professionals submit their experiences through a voluntary form. Participation is self-selected. Submissions are stored privately and are never published as individual stories.
Before a listing is counted, our research team checks for duplicates using listing source, location, and property details. Duplicate submissions of the same listing are merged or removed so that no property is counted more than once.
No listing counts toward published statistics until a member of the research team reviews it and marks it Verified. Entries that cannot be verified, or that fall outside our scope, are marked Rejected or Archived and excluded from all figures.
We publish aggregate, anonymized statistics only — medians, percentages, counts, and county-level comparisons. Published reports rely on this aggregated data to describe patterns across the market.
We never publish individual listings, individual experiences, or the names of any renter, landlord, agent, or brokerage. We do not produce rankings, ratings, or any 'worst of' lists. Personal identifying information is never published without explicit permission.
Our data reflects listings and experiences that are voluntarily contributed and publicly advertised. It is not a random or representative sample of the entire California rental market, and advertised criteria may differ from criteria applied in practice. Figures are provisional and update as new verified data is added. We report these limitations openly so our findings are interpreted responsibly.
We document. We verify. We publish only what the aggregate data supports — and nothing that identifies an individual without permission.
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