Methodology

Where the data comes from

Every day we read the Consumer Data Right register and collect product data from each registered bank and lender. We keep every version we receive, so any day's rates can be rebuilt. Values keep the Consumer Data Right's own field names, with fixed units: rates and LVRs as decimals, terms in months and days, amounts in cents.

Verified lenders and their staff can add products and corrections; they and verified brokers can register channel prices. Those are stored separately and labelled with who supplied them. Corrections are shown beside the Consumer Data Right value; channel prices only in the Registered channels part of a product page. How we verify them

How the rate tables are ordered

You choose the order: interest rate, or comparison rate for home loans. Each lender gets one row, showing its product that comes first in the order you chose; open the row to see the lender's other matching products. The first five lenders show, and More lists the rest.

The order uses the Consumer Data Right value; a verified lender's correction is shown beside it and doesn't change the order. Lender-reported products take part and are labelled. Disputed rows are marked and keep their values. Channel prices are never part of the order.

A product is comparablewhen its rates carry no blocking data-quality tag (for home loans, when more than half of its rates are usable). Products whose rate depends on conditions written in the lender's own words are listed under Other products, unranked. Products for a narrow purpose or a different customer group sit in their own tables or behind a filter.

Bonus and introductory conditions are shown in the row. Home loan tables carry the comparison rate warning directly underneath.

Homepedia notes

Figures, filters and rankings follow the Consumer Data Right data as the lender publishes it. Where that data contradicts itself, or the lender's website, documents or staff say something different, we add a note to the product and leave the figures as published. Rows with a note carry a Homepedia note label; the product page shows each note and where it came from.

Some notes are found automatically in the data itself: several rates for one product with nothing that says which applies, a count field holding what reads like a dollar amount, a minimum balance that appears only in the lender's text, a name that says “intro” on rates the data doesn't mark as introductory, or eligibility types that contradict each other. Others we add by hand, with the page, document or call they came from.

Tags

Facts the Consumer Data Right already structures, such as loan purpose and repayment type, are stored as fields. Tags hold only two kinds of judgement: things the lender says in text, and our own data-quality checks. Every tag records where it came from, the rule and version that set it, and the evidence behind it. When a rule changes version, every product is tagged again and the earlier result is kept for comparison.

Sources you can check

Next to each value on a product page you can open its source: the source type, URL, the time we checked it, a content hash, the excerpt we relied on and the rule version. Full copies of web pages and PDFs are kept by Homepedia; the hash identifies the exact version we read.

Rate history

A rate keeps its identity while the product, rate type, purpose, repayment type, fixed term, LVR band, amount band and conditions stay the same. When its value changes, the old period closes and a new one opens, so each rate has a time series. A product is marked as withdrawn only after it is missing from three daily collections in a row.

People listed on a product

A product page lists the verified lender staff and brokers who have reviewed, current information on that product, such as the price available through their channel. Each person gives one postcode, where they work, and is shown with its state. You choose a state and a language; the language starts as the one you're using. Everyone who matches is listed in a random order that changes each day, and the first three are shown before “Show all”. Fees, logins, discount size and activity play no part, and the order can't be bought. Contact details appear only on the product page.

Every published value has an edit history: who changed it, when, what changed and on what evidence.

Calculators

The tax, home loan and savings calculators use fixed formulas and the published tax rates. Each result shows the assumptions it used, the calculator version and the date of the rates behind it. The same calculators answer questions asked through Claude or ChatGPT.

How Homepedia makes money · How we verify lenders and their staff