Homeownership Education and Counseling: Do We Know What Works?

Abstract

Over the past decade, concerns have been raised about the extent to which Americans as a whole are sufficiently financially literate to make the complex decisions required in the ever-changing financial marketplace. In response to these concerns, financial education, which aims to make consumers more informed decision makers, has proliferated. Homeownership education and counseling (HEC) has emerged from the same basic impulse - namely, that giving consumers more information (in the case of education) or advice (in the case of counseling) can improve their decision making when it comes to purchasing a home, managing a mortgage, and dealing with setbacks that limit their ability to make monthly mortgage payments. Research about the effectiveness of HEC remains underdeveloped, however.