Last updated: 2026-04-27
StelaHome is committed to fair housing. We design our property-intelligence products, composite grades, and educational content to surface property- and place-based facts — not characteristics of the people who live in or near a home. We do not adjust, weight, score, or filter any output by race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, source of income, military or veteran status, age, ancestry, arrest or conviction record, immigration status, or any other characteristic protected under the federal Fair Housing Act (42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq.) or under state or local fair-housing laws of the jurisdictions where we operate.
Our composite grades (SafetyGrade, WaterGrade, RoofGrade, HazardGrade, and — where deployed — StelaSchoolScore) are computed from physical, geographic, regulatory, and operational inputs about the property and its surroundings. They are not derived from demographic, ethnographic, or census-block characteristics of nearby residents.
We acknowledge that some of the public datasets we consume — including water-infrastructure records, lead-service-line inventories, school operating data, and historical environmental-justice data — reflect long-standing public-investment patterns that are correlated with the racial composition of communities. Surfacing the underlying physical facts in a property-level report is intended to inform homeowners, not to steer them. We document these correlations transparently in each methodology document and we rely on operational, non-demographic weights.
Every composite grade is governed by a published methodology document at stelahome.com/methodology that lists every component, weight, threshold, and edge-case rule. Each methodology document includes its own fair-housing statement and disparate-impact analysis. We invite review of those documents, including by fair-housing advocates and counsel.
SafetyGrade combines crime statistics (sourced from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting and analogous municipal data), proximity to registered sex offenders (count and distance bands only — no identities are surfaced), and emergency-response distance (fire, EMS, hospital). Crime data is presented on a CBSA-relative basis to avoid encoding national absolute disparities. Registered-offender presentation is limited to suppress identification and to comply with arrest-record protections in jurisdictions such as New York City.
WaterGrade incorporates a Water Infrastructure sub-grade (lead service line status, interior plumbing era, goosenecks) and a Water Quality sub-grade (EPA MCL contaminant tracking). The methodology surfaces underlying physical facts (for example, "service line: confirmed lead replacement underway" vs. "service line: unknown") so that buyers see the operational picture, not a single opaque score.
Where deployed, StelaSchoolScore uses only operational data published by the U.S. Department of Education Common Core of Data: state-assessment performance, year-over-year improvement, class size, and resource adequacy. The grade does not consume third-party school-rating aggregators. The fair-housing statement in the StelaSchoolScore methodology document explains the operational-only weighting choice and the public-school suppression rules that apply.
HazardGrade combines flood, damaging events, climate exposure, earthquake, landslide, hurricane, and pipeline proximity. Regional curves apply different weights based on physical hazard profile. HazardGrade is not an insurance rating, an underwriting product, or a substitute for an insurer’s own evaluation.
Our Lifestyle and neighborhood narratives use preference-neutral language. We do not characterize neighborhoods as "good" or "bad," and we do not include language that could be interpreted as steering toward or away from any community based on protected-class composition.
StelaHome marketing copy, on-page meta descriptions, and shared social cards do not target or exclude based on protected-class characteristics, and do not use language prohibited by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s advertising guidance.
If you believe a StelaHome output has produced a discriminatory or steering effect, contact fair-housing@stelahome.com. We respond to fair-housing complaints in writing and we maintain an internal review process that includes our fair-housing officer and outside counsel. You may also file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development at hud.gov, or with your state or local fair-housing enforcement office.
StelaHome reviews each composite grade against fair-housing posture on a recurring cadence and at every methodology version change. Methodology updates require counsel and CEO sign-off before publication.