About HelocPilot

HelocPilot exists for one reason: most of what you’ll read online about home equity is written by companies that make money when you borrow.

Search for “HELOC rates” or “how much equity can I tap” and the top results are dominated by lender-owned content and lead-generation sites. That’s not a conspiracy — it’s just how the incentives line up. A lender’s content team has one job: move you into the application funnel. When the publisher’s entire business is originating the loan, the advice bends toward borrowing, even when borrowing is the wrong move for you.

We’re built differently.

What HelocPilot is

HelocPilot is an independent research and editorial site about home equity — HELOCs, home equity loans, and the math behind them. We publish explainers, calculators, and analysis designed to help you understand what a home equity product actually costs, when it makes sense, and when it doesn’t.

We’re part of the Pilot family of sites, alongside our sister site RefiPilot, which covers mortgage refinancing the same way: independent research, no loan funnel.

What HelocPilot is not

Let’s be plain about this, because it’s the whole point:

• We are not a lender. We don’t fund loans.
• We are not a broker or loan originator. We don’t arrange loans, take applications, or negotiate terms on your behalf.
• We never see your financial information. We don’t pull your credit, collect your income, or pass a file to anyone.

We’re a publisher. Our product is the analysis, not the loan.

Why independence matters here

A HELOC is secured by your house. Get the decision wrong and the consequences are worse than with almost any other consumer credit product. That’s exactly the category where you’d want guidance from a publisher whose analysis isn’t written by the company funding the loan — and it’s the category where that kind of guidance is hardest to find.

To be clear, we do make money. Primarily through affiliate partnerships, which we explain in detail on our How We Make Money page. The short version: we may be compensated when readers engage with partner offers — through clicks, inquiries, or in some cases completed loans. Partners never see or influence our editorial conclusions, and we are not paid by readers. The independence isn’t that no money changes hands — it’s that no partner can buy a conclusion, a ranking, or a number in our math. That’s what keeps the analysis honest.

How we hold ourselves to it

• Every statistic we publish links to a primary source in the article’s source list. The full standard is in our Editorial Policy.
• Rate-sensitive content is reviewed and refreshed after each Federal Reserve FOMC meeting.
• Every article is reviewed by our founder and editor, Alex, before publication.
• When we get something wrong, we fix it promptly and say so on the page.

If you disagree with us

Good. Check our sources, run the numbers yourself, and verify everything directly with lenders before you sign anything. If you find an error in our work, tell us — our correction policy means we’ll actually fix it, not bury it. A site that asks for your trust should make it easy to check whether that trust is deserved.