Correction history
The headline homeowner-research count was published as “5,342 homeowner quotes” — a row count from an earlier research snapshot that counted the same account more than once where it recurred across states. The deduplicated figure is lower; and the count was sometimes shown “across 33 trades”, conflating the 33 published guides with the 40 trades the research actually covers.
The canonical research database (buyer voice): 7,152 collected rows / 4,302 distinct homeowner accounts across 40 trades and 8 states.
Corrected the count site-wide to “more than 4,300 distinct homeowner accounts” (4,302 distinct of 7,152 collected), and separated the two scopes — the research spans 40 trades and 8 states, while 33 trade guides are published. Updated siteStats (the single source) and every hardcoded instance.
A follow-up review found wording remnants inside reusable components and checklist copy that the main patch had not reached: the homeowner checklists still listed “CEC (solar)” for installer accreditation and gave deposit caps as a generic “NSW 10%; most states 5–10%”; the shared regulator links still used the old “NSW Fair Trading” and “VIC Building Authority (VBA)” names; the plumber page used “Compliance Certificate” as a single national term; and the builder warranty and demolition asbestos sections stated state-specific rules as national absolutes.
QBCC (deposits), Solar Accreditation Australia, Building Commission NSW, Victoria’s Building and Plumbing Commission (commenced 1 July 2025), and state work-safety regulators, Jun 2026.
Updated the checklists to cite SAA installer/designer accreditation (CEC for approved products) and to show per-state deposit caps (NSW 10% / QLD tiered 20–10–5% / VIC 10–5% / others vary); renamed the shared regulator links to Verify NSW / Building Commission NSW and the Building & Plumbing Commission; reframed plumbing paperwork as state-specific (NSW Notice of Work / Certificate of Compliance / Sewer Service Diagram, VIC plumbing compliance certificate, QLD Form 4); softened the builder statutory-warranty wording to note periods vary by state and should be verified; changed deposit red-flag headings to “Deposit over the state cap”; and softened the demolition asbestos wording away from “illegal in every state”, noting Queensland’s homeowner-certificate pathway for larger non-friable quantities.
A compliance and trust review found several items to tighten: Queensland deposits were described as a flat 10% cap; solar installer/designer accreditation was attributed to the Clean Energy Council; public-liability figures were framed as legal minimums; plumbing-certificate wording was generic; the “Reader-funded” funding claim did not match the actual model; and there was no consolidated licence-check block, complaint pathway, or plain-English liability disclaimer.
External authority-site review + QBCC (deposits), Solar Accreditation Australia / Clean Energy Council, and state regulator sources, Jun 2026.
Corrected Queensland deposits to the tiered QBCC rule (20% for work ≤$3,300, 10% for $3,301–$19,999, 5% for $20,000+) with a QBCC source link; moved solar installer/designer accreditation to Solar Accreditation Australia (SAA), keeping the Clean Energy Council for approved products; reframed public-liability amounts as recommended screening thresholds rather than legal minimums; made plumbing-certificate wording state-specific (NSW / VIC / QLD); replaced “Reader-funded” with accurate independent-funding wording; added a “Check before you hire” licence/insurance-check block and an “If something goes wrong” complaint pathway to the guide and main trade pages; added a footer legal disclaimer (educational purposes, engage a licensed professional, verify with the regulator) with an Australian Consumer Law liability limitation, plus a homepage disclaimer line; and expanded the glossary (CCEW, COES, SAA, Form 4/5, statutory warranty, and more).
The site claimed "all 8 states & territories", but the per-trade "compliance by state" strip rendered only NSW/VIC/QLD, and the headline stats still showed the original three-state totals (104 buyer-research files / 2,037 homeowner quotes).
Internal 8-state research synthesis (FINDINGS-Trade-Research-VOC-8STATE, Jun 2026) + the validated regulatory master.
Expanded the StateCompliance component to all 8 states/territories and generated per-trade, per-state compliance data from the regulatory master (single source of truth). Corrected the stats site-wide to 260 buyer-research files / 5,342 homeowner quotes across all 8 states, and named the 8 study cities (Greater Sydney, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Darwin, Hobart) on the methodology page.
Several regulatory references were outdated or incorrect: "VBA" (the Victorian Building Authority was absorbed into the Building and Plumbing Commission on 1 Jul 2025), "NSW Fair Trading" for building/trade licensing (Building Commission NSW has held this since Dec 2023), "CEC" as the solar installer-accreditation body (Solar Accreditation Australia replaced it on 29 May 2024; the CEC now maintains only the approved-product list), and an incorrect statement that South Australian painters need no licence.
Full regulatory validation of all 33 trades across 8 states against official .gov.au regulator sources, Jun 2026.
Replaced VBA → Building and Plumbing Commission and NSW Fair Trading → Building Commission NSW site-wide; reframed solar accreditation to SAA + NETCC (with the CEC as the product-list authority); corrected the SA painter position to a Building Work Contractor's licence; and verified each state's regulator, compliance certificate and Australian-Standard edition for every trade from the regulatory master.
Authority-site review identified that the editorial wrapper around the trade content was thinner than the content itself. Homepage lacked an explicit proof module and a homeowner-vs-tradie-vs-editorial path triage. Trade pages had no visual authority components (quote anatomy, comparison matrix, state-compliance strip, copy-friendly ask card) — only dense prose.
External authority-site review, May 2026
Phase 1: Homepage gained "The Research Base" 4-card proof module (104 files / 2,037 quotes / 33 trades / 8 states) and a "Three ways into the site" triage (For homeowners / For tradies quiet outbound / Editorial trust). Phase 2: Built 7 reusable visual-authority components (QuoteAnatomy, CompareMatrix, StateCompliance, AskExactly, Timeline, DecisionTree, RedFlagStack, EvidenceLabel) and added a universal "Toolkit" section to every one of the 33 trade pages featuring Quote Anatomy + Compare Matrix + State Compliance + Ask Exactly.
Backslash-apostrophe escape sequences rendered as literal text inside HTML body content — approximately 324 visible artefacts across the affected pages (e.g. "they\'d", "couldn\'t", "doesn\'t"). Caused by JS-style apostrophe escaping applied to raw HTML where backslashes have no semantic meaning and render as literal characters.
External authority-site review, May 2026
Parser-aware body-only find/replace removed the backslash-apostrophe sequences inside HTML text nodes while preserving JS string-literal escapes in frontmatter data arrays and JSX expression blocks. Verification: zero residual artefacts in rendered HTML across all 22 pages after redeploy.
Six trade pages linked to a Service NSW URL (`service.nsw.gov.au/transaction/check-trades-people-licence`) that returned HTTP 404.
Editorial link audit, May 2026
Replaced with the verified live equivalent: Building Commission NSW search-for-a-licence-holder.
Disclaimer claimed "State regulator licence-check tools are linked from our glossary" — but the glossary had no licence-check section. The claim was hollow.
External authority-site review, May 2026
Added the glossary Licence-check tools section — a verified 4-group, 19-entry directory covering all 8 states & territories, work-safety regulators, accreditation bodies, and business-identity checks. Disclaimer language updated to point at the section and make the claim accurate.
Five footer-linked editorial pages did not exist — routes resolved to the homepage via Cloudflare's SPA fallback, making the footer dishonest.
External authority-site review, May 2026
All five pages built and deployed with the locked editorial template. Each is now a distinct page with its own title, structure, and content.
A note on what we don't log here. Typo fixes, layout adjustments, formatting consistency, and minor copy edits aren't logged — they happen continuously and don't change the substance of any guide. If we change a price band, alter a regulatory claim, add or remove a recommendation, or update a state-specific threshold, that's a logged correction.