Our Mission → Our Editorial Policy
Our editorial policy at The Close is driven by our mission: to give agents, teams, and brokerages actionable, strategic insight from industry professionals.
We tie every piece of content we produce back to that mission, with a focus on helping real estate professionals succeed at every level of their careers and answering the many questions that come up in the course of their everyday work.
Our expert writers bring decades of combined experience as licensed real estate agents and brokers to their articles. They also employ deep research and hands-on product knowledge to come up with the most strategic and up-to-date advice and insights for readers.
Editors and content producers at The Close rely on a comprehensive editorial process to produce deeply researched articles that are clear, accurate, authoritative and trustworthy. They also ensure content is accessible to readers with varying levels of time and interest, satisfying people who want their questions answered simply in 30 seconds, succinctly in three minutes, or comprehensively in 30 minutes. We know agents and brokers are a busy bunch!
As a whole, our editorial team works together to create auxiliary materials to help our audience take the next step after every article. If one of our expert writers is guiding you through creating a business plan, you better believe we’re going to give you the template you need to get started today. And if you’re shopping for a new CRM, we’re going to get you an inside look at the tools that our experienced writers recommend.
Our Recommendations
We also recognize that every real estate professional is different. The processes, tools and partners we recommend for a brand-new agent are not going to be the same for a team leader or managing broker. Our expert writers offer recommendations on products, processes, and strategies for specific use cases, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses depending on the situation. You can learn more about this process on our methodology page.
Our readers’ trust is vitally important to us. When you read an article on The Close, we want you to know you can trust that the article is accurate and objective, and the recommendations we make are based on the expertise and independent analysis of our expert writers — not just our partner affiliations.
The recommendations we make in our buyer’s guides are made independently with no influence from our partners. Our expert writers create content based on research, their experience in the field, and their assessments of the products or services they’re evaluating. Though we partner with a lot of great companies, those partnerships have no bearing on these recommendations.
We do not accept money, services, or products in exchange for positive reviews or product placement. We do work with a select group of software companies and service providers that we feel provide real value for our readers. We have affiliate partnerships with these companies and make money when we feature their products on the site. But none of the companies you see in our articles have the opportunity to influence, steer, or affect our editorial copy. Furthermore, all paid posts are labeled as “sponsored content” across the site.
Our Partners
We’re committed to editorial independence and an objective assessment of the products we review and recommend. We also partner with product and service providers to make money. Here at The Close, we believe it’s important to be transparent about that process.
We partner with companies that provide products and services that can be helpful to real estate professionals. We suggest or recommend thousands of products on the site, from partners and non-partners, and we often earn commissions when our readers click on links to our partners’ sites. These commissions generate the revenue we use to build our own business and continue to deliver the best advice and insights for real estate agents and brokers.
We’re committed to partnering with companies that provide quality products and services. Our writers meet with company leaders across the industry and vet products to ensure they meet the needs of real estate professionals in the field. In addition to making us money, we view this as a benefit to our readers. It’s akin to the service you might get walking into a specialty store where an expert behind the counter can help you decide on the best product to achieve your goal or complete a project.
We do evaluate our partners’ products to determine whether they warrant inclusion in our buyer’s guides, but they are held to the same standards as the other products we’re reviewing. Any placement or recommendation is based solely on the product’s merit as determined by the writer and editor.
In our strategic guides, our main goal is to help real estate professionals improve their businesses. In the busy lives of successful agents and brokers, our recommendations sometimes include outsourcing tasks such as posting on social media or qualifying leads. Writers may choose to include links to our partners as a part of that recommendation, and The Close may earn money based on those links to partner websites. But no partner can purchase space in our editorial. Again, none of the companies you see in our articles have the opportunity to influence, steer, or affect our editorial copy. Our ads are labeled as such and all paid posts are categorized as sponsored content.
Our Plagiarism & Duplication Policy
The Close does not tolerate plagiarism in any form. The copying of other people’s work and/or ideas is not permitted. We do not allow any of our writers, whether they are on staff or freelance, to use artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT to create copy. Reusing one’s own writing on The Close is also not allowed. Any acts of plagiarism and duplication will be met with disciplinary action up to and including termination.