This is not NC Transparency

If you are looking for the NC Transparency project or the John Locke Foundation, this is not it. We are an independent commercial review site for rental property owners and we have no connection to that organisation.

Are you NC Transparency or the John Locke Foundation?

No. Blue Ridge to Banks has no connection to the John Locke Foundation, its NC Transparency project, or any think tank, policy institute or government body.

We publish reviews of vacation and short-term rental management companies and host software for people who own rental property in North Carolina. We hold no government data, no public records and no transparency database, and we cannot answer questions about state or local government spending.

Why does this page exist?

Because this web address previously hosted a government-transparency project, and people still arrive here looking for it. A commercial page with no explanation would leave them guessing about whether they were in the right place.

Where should you go instead?

To the John Locke Foundation directly, which runs its transparency and public-integrity work today. It is an operating organisation and the only authoritative source for its own research.

• For that project's research: the John Locke Foundation's own website.
• For state spending and budget data: the State of North Carolina's own published portals.
• For county and municipal records: the relevant local government directly.
• For public records requests: the custodian agency, not a review site.

We deliberately do not reproduce that organisation's material, republish its research or copy its contact details here. Stale contact information for a live body is worse than none.

What is this site, then?

An independent editorial desk reviewing companies that manage privately owned short-term and vacation rentals in North Carolina. Our readers are property owners choosing a manager, not researchers looking for public records.

• What we cover: rental management companies and host software.
• Who we write for: owners of privately held rental property.
• What we are not: a think tank, a watchdog, a government body or a data portal.
• How we are funded: editorial recommendations, never paid placement.

Do you take a political position?

No. We review services for property owners. Where we describe a law or an ordinance — the Vacation Rental Act, a town's registration scheme — we are describing what it requires of an owner, not arguing about whether it should exist.

That distinction matters given this address's previous use. Somebody arriving here expecting policy advocacy should know they have landed on a trade review site instead, and that nothing here is a continuation of, or a response to, the work that used to be published at this address.

How can you tell an independent review site from a sponsored one?

Look at whether placement can be bought and whether the reasoning is shown. A site that recommends without saying why, or that never publishes an unflattering fact, is selling something.

• Stated method: the criteria and their weights are published.
• Unbought placement: no company can pay for a position or a rating.
• Sourced claims: company facts are quoted from what the company publishes.
• Admitted gaps: "not published" appears instead of an invented figure.

Do you make money from this page?

No. This notice carries no recommendations and no links to any company.

Will this notice stay up?

Yes, for as long as people arrive here looking for the previous project. It is linked from every page on this site.

Who runs Blue Ridge to Banks?

Our editorial team and grading method are on the about page and in how we test. We take no payment for placement in any ranking.

What do you do with the previous project's material?

Nothing. We hold none of it, we have republished none of it, and we make no claim over it. The research published at this address belonged to the organisation that produced it and still does.

That means we cannot supply an old article, a dataset, a spending database or an archived report. If something published here years ago matters to you, the organisation that wrote it is the place to ask, and any surviving copy belongs to them rather than to us.

Why keep a notice up instead of just redirecting?

Because a silent redirect to a commercial site is exactly the confusion we are trying to avoid. Somebody looking for policy research should be told plainly that they have arrived somewhere else, and why.

The alternative approaches are all worse. Dropping people onto a rental review home page leaves them wondering whether the project moved and rebranded. A bare 404 tells them nothing. A page that says clearly what this site is, what it is not, and where the real organisation lives costs us nothing and is simply the honest option.

• We name the organisation rather than vaguely disclaiming "any body".
• We state what we are in the footer of every page, unprompted.
• We keep this page indexed so the correction is findable.
• We reproduce nothing of the previous project's work.

What if you are researching short-term rental policy?

You may still find part of what you need here, but read it for what it is. We describe the North Carolina Vacation Rental Act and the local-ordinance layer from an owner's point of view, because owners have to comply with both.

What we do not do is take a position on whether those rules are good policy, model their effects, or publish original research about them. That is a different discipline and other organisations do it properly. Our pages are practical guidance for somebody deciding how to run a property, and should be cited as that and nothing more.

• We describe what a rule requires of an owner.
• We do not argue about whether it should exist.
• We do not publish datasets, models or original policy research.
• We say plainly when a figure is unverified rather than estimating it.