Copyright Statement for the Home Buying Institute

The Home Buying Institute maintains full copyrights to all content on this website. We do not allow republication of our content. Please refer to the information below for more details.

Share by Linking, Not by Copying

If you find an article you like and wish to share it with your audience, we encourage you to link to the article. This is how the Internet is supposed to work, and it fully complies with U.S. and international copyright laws. We encourage you to link to our website as you see fit.

But copying an entire article onto your own website is strictly prohibited, and constitutes copyright infringement.

How to Quote an Article

We encourage you to cite articles on our website, if you feel your readers would find them interesting. You may quote small portions of an article (one or two sentences) along with your citation hyperlink. This is referred to as "fair use" in copyright lingo. Here's an example of how to properly quote an article from our website:

According to the Home Buying Institute, "most mortgage lenders want to see a FICO credit score of 640 or higher. If you use the FHA program, you might be able to get approved with a score below this range." -Source [with link included]

If you have any questions about how to cite an article or news story, you can email us at editor@homebuyinginstitute.com.

How We Handle Plagiarism

We have a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism, because it harms our business. When webmasters copy our articles without consent, they are stealing more than the article itself. They are potentially stealing traffic, revenue and brand recognition. These are things we work hard to acquire. Thus, we take plagiarism very seriously.

When we encounter plagiarized versions of our articles, we take the following steps:

  1. We use Copyscape on a weekly basis to find occurrences of plagiarism.
  2. We will first send a polite request to the owner of the offending website, asking that the plagiarized content be removed.
  3. If the owner of the website does not respond to our initial request, we will send a second request along with a warning of the actions below.
  4. If the webmaster still refuses to correct the situation, we will file a DMCA complaint with their web-hosting company. We will work closely with their web host to have the offending website or web page shut down.

This is obviously a big waste of time for all parties involved. That is why we ask webmasters to behave in a professional manner. If you have any questions about our copyright statement, please send an email to editor@homebuyinginstitute.com.

Thanks for being a responsible publisher.