How BuilderStudy intelligence works

BuilderStudy collects voluntary accounts of home quality, builder experience, warranty support and HOA experience. The results describe participating respondents; they do not represent every household or establish that a reported problem has been independently confirmed.

Contributing does not instantly change a score

Your saved contribution appears in your account history. Public survey intelligence requires an eligible submitted review, approved property context and moderation, and duplicate checks. Pending, rejected, incomplete and ineligible submissions do not enter those reviewed scores. Review does not prove a unique household or independently verify every claim.

Read the count beside each measure

• Following accounts receive or seek community updates. Following does not verify residence or ownership.
• Contributing accounts submitted applicable reviews or active structured issue reports. An account can contribute more than once.
• Accounts with submitted surveys count signed-in survey accounts across generations, including rejected submissions. This historical count differs from Pulse participation, which excludes rejected or duplicate-rejected submissions and includes active structured issue reports.
• Survey submissions count submitted survey records, not unique people.
• Reviewed respondents belong to the eligible review cohort. Category samples count eligible answers to that category's question; they are not total participation.

Counts can overlap and should not be added together. We do not publish household participation percentages without defensible household identity and inventory.

Category ratings and Community Pulse

Eligible 1–5 answers are averaged separately for builder experience, construction quality, warranty support and HOA experience. Skipped answers are not zero. Each reviewed category needs at least five respondents, or a stricter configured minimum.

Each category's 0–100 score is its 1–5 average converted using (average − 1) × 25 and rounded. Community Pulse is the rounded average of the four published category scores, with equal category weights. All four must qualify. A community without an applicable HOA can have useful individual scores and no overall Pulse.

Legacy 1–5 displays and reviewed Community Pulse use different rules and may cover different cohorts. Follow the sample label and review explanation attached to the specific measure; do not treat them as interchangeable.

Small samples and changes over time

“More data needed” means the sample does not qualify; it does not mean a poor rating. Fewer than ten category respondents is an early sample. A larger voluntary sample still does not establish scientific representativeness or a confidence interval. Each category shows its own sample; Pulse uses the smallest category sample as context.

Issue percentages use people who answered that exact question, not all community residents. Small issue counts stay hidden. Quick issue confirmations are separate self-reports and never enter survey satisfaction scores. Dates describe recorded updates. Trends appear only with comparable methodology, sufficient samples and suitable historical snapshots; they are not proof of what caused a change.

Map precision

Map points represent communities, not individual homes. Some are approximate city locations and are labeled accordingly. A pin is not a development boundary or property location. National heatmap layers remain unavailable while data is too sparse.