Conflicts & Disclosures

Housing Unpacked is written by people who work in housing. That is why the analysis is grounded in how projects actually get built, and it is also why readers are entitled to know what interests the authors have. This page describes those interests and the rules we follow so they do not shape the work.

Standing author disclosure

Our founder and editor, Max Benedict, is an active real estate developer. Every article he writes carries the following disclosure:

In practice this means he has a professional stake in the general subject: development that is cheaper and faster to approve, finance and build is better for developers, including him. It does not mean the site argues for that outcome. Our Editorial Standards prohibit advocacy, and the method we use, stating assumptions and showing arithmetic, is designed so that a reader who suspects bias can check the work rather than take our word for it.

How article-level disclosures work

Each article carries one of three disclosure settings. Author applies the standing disclosure above and is the default for the founder’s work. Custom adds a specific statement when the article touches something closer to the author’s interests than the standing disclosure covers: a municipality where the author has an active project, a program the author has used, a financing structure the author is party to, or a company with which the author has a relationship. None is used only for contributors with no relevant interest, and the absence of a disclosure is itself a statement we stand behind.

Disclosures appear on the article itself, near the author’s name, not on a separate page a reader has to find. Housing Unpacked does not write about the author’s own projects or company, and it is not a marketing channel for either.

What we do not accept

• Paid placement. We do not publish articles, mentions, links or data in exchange for payment, and we do not sell positions in our newsletter or on our pages.
• Undisclosed sponsorship. We do not accept funding for coverage from any party, and we would not accept funding whose existence could not be disclosed.
• Gifts and favors. Authors do not accept gifts, travel or other consideration from companies, associations, governments or individuals in connection with their work here.
• Supplied content. We do not publish material written by outside parties as if it were our own analysis. Guest contributions are identified as such and held to the same standards.

If sponsorship is ever introduced

Housing Unpacked has no advertising and no sponsors at launch. We may at some point accept sponsorship to support the publication. If we do, the following rules will apply, and we will update this page before any sponsored content appears:

• Sponsorship will be visually distinct from editorial content and clearly labeled as sponsorship wherever it appears.
• Sponsors will have no influence over topics, conclusions, assumptions, corrections or the content of any analysis.
• Sponsorship will never appear inside the body of an analysis, a Housing 101 lesson, a glossary entry or a tool, and never in a way that could be mistaken for a source or a finding.
• We will not accept sponsorship from a party that is the subject of a current or planned article, and we will disclose any sponsorship relationship on articles where a reasonable reader might think it relevant.
• A list of sponsors will be published on this page.

Reporting a concern

If you believe an undisclosed interest has affected something we published, write to corrections@housingunpacked.com. We treat disclosure failures as corrections and handle them under our Corrections Policy.

Last revised: September 2026.