How we research, write and check what we publish
Every page here makes claims about money, insurance or the law, often to a reader in a crisis. This is the standard each one has to meet before it goes live, how the cost estimates are built, and what we do when we are wrong.
Who writes and who reviews
Pages are written by the RestorationMatch editorial team, and each one is checked against the sources listed at its foot. We have not yet appointed a technical reviewer, so no page claims to be expert reviewed.
When a named reviewer is appointed, this section will show their name, credentials, state, years in the trade and a link to any public registry entry, and each page they have read will say so. Until then, treat the sources at the bottom of each page as the authority and check anything that matters with your state or your insurer.
Where the numbers come from
| Figure | Source | How often it is checked |
|---|---|---|
| Population, housing age, home value | U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey five-year estimates, as cited on each city page | Each ACS release |
| Wages | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for the nearest occupation, hazardous materials removal workers, read through O*NET OnLine. BLS has no water or fire restoration occupation, so the mapping is our inference. These are wages paid to workers, not prices charged to homeowners. | Each BLS release |
| Loss and claim figures | State insurance regulators, FEMA and OpenFEMA data, and insurance trade bodies, each labelled with who published it and whether it is national. Where we computed a figure from public records, the page says it is our calculation. | Each review |
| Insurance and claims rules | State insurance regulator pages and state statutes, linked on the page that uses them | When a rule changes or a reader reports one |
| Standards | IICRC's public statements about its standards (S500, S520, S700, S540) and EPA guidance. The paid text of a standard is not read, and a page says when a definition is left out for that reason. | When an edition changes |
| Licenses, permits, utility numbers | State licensing pages and statutes, city and township permit pages, and utility emergency pages, each linked on the page that uses it | When a rule changes or a reader reports one |
The rules every page follows
- 1A fact we cannot source is left out. A fact we could only read through a summary stays in only if the sentence says so. We do not guess a license rule or a deadline from memory.
- 2Every cost figure is labelled an estimate and shows how it was built. We never present a range as a quote.
- 3Pages say when you do not need a company. If a mop and a fan fix a small clean spill, the page says so before the form.
- 4We do not publish reviews, rankings, promises of results or "best of" lists. We have no basis for ranking companies we do not inspect.
- 5Referral income never changes what a page recommends. Companies that pay for requests do not see pages before publication and cannot edit them.
- 6Each page shows the date it was last reviewed and, where it quotes prices, the date those prices are as of.
- 7Pages may be drafted with software help. A person reads each one, and every factual claim has to trace to a source we list, or it comes out.
- 8Industry standards are labelled as industry standards. A private credential is never described as a license.
How we estimate costs
The ranges on this site are estimates, not quotes. Restoration is usually priced by the job from measured damage and drying equipment, and it is often paid by an insurer. Where we found published national cost ranges for a job, we show an Estimated range row built from them: the median of the lows to the median of the highs, widened 15 percent each side when only one range exists, then multiplied by the state's wage ratio to the US (0.94, hazardous materials removal workers, the nearest federal occupation, from BLS May 2025 data read through O*NET OnLine). The national ranges come from third-party cost guides that we have not verified, so we do not cite them. No permit fee is added. Storm damage and contents restoration have no estimate, because we found no published range for them.
Beside that row we show what we can cite: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wages for the same occupation, which are pay and not price, and statements from state insurance regulators, FEMA data and an insurance trade body about the scale of water-damage losses. We have not collected customer quotes or invoices from restoration companies, and we found no restoration company in the state we have opened that publishes a price we could count. We will show company prices, with a count and a date, once at least five are in. Each page shows its last review date, and your actual price depends on the damage, the work and the company you choose.
Corrections
If something on this site is wrong, tell us which page, which number or rule, and what you saw instead, with a link if you have one. We check it against the source. If you are right we fix the page, write the date of the fix at the foot of that page and add a line to the log below.
- Oct 19, 2026: First pages published. No corrections yet.
How the site is paid for
RestorationMatch earns money when a restoration company, or a referral partner acting for one, receives a homeowner request from us. That is a conflict of interest and we say so on every page. The way we deal with it is in the rules above: sources on every claim, no rankings, no paid placement, and pages that tell you when not to call anyone. The full account is on how it works.
- RestorationMatch: how we estimate costs (editorial policy) Read Oct 19, 2026.
- O*NET OnLine (U.S. DOL/ETA), BLS 2025 wage data: Hazardous Materials Removal Workers (SOC 47-4041), United States Read Oct 19, 2026. Our reading of the source, not something it states outright. Confirm before you rely on it.
- Flood Cleanup (EPA) Read Oct 19, 2026.