Overview

Congress, researchers, and practitioners in the field of housing counseling have asked whether homebuyer education and counseling for first-time borrowers are effective in expanding access to homeownership and improving borrower outcomes, such as improved credit scores and reduced mortgage delinquencies. HUD designed a large-scale, rigorous, randomized experiment – called the HUD First Time Homebuyer Education and Counseling Demonstration – to evaluate the effectiveness of offering free, voluntary, homebuyer education and counseling services to a large random sample of prospective first-time homebuyers.

Impact analyses of administrative and survey data at every phase of the Demonstration detail outcomes of interest on prospective first-time homebuyers throughout the homebuying process, participation rate analyses, subgroup analyses, and a comparison of remote (online education plus telephone counseling) and in-person (group education and in-person individual counseling) services.

Timeline of the HUD First-Time Homebuyer Education and Counseling Demonstration