With the industry and the market changing faster than ever, make plans to come together with the best community in real estate at our flagship event. Join us at Inman Connect New York, Jan. 24-26, and punch your ticket to the future. Check out these just announced speakers for this must-attend event. Register here.
A study that offered free homebuyer education and counseling to thousands of first-time homebuyers found that it didn’t reduce the risk of getting behind on their mortgage payments in the years to come, but it did improve credit scores for women and younger homebuyers.
Those are among the key findings from the first-ever randomized study of the benefits of housing education and counseling, which analyzed outcomes for more than 5,800 prospective homebuyers in more than two dozen markets, 4 to 6 years down the road.
The study, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and conducted by Abt Associates, found that offering homebuyer education and counseling had “no detectable impact on 60-day delinquency or any other measure of loan performance.”
That includes African-American and Hispanic first-time homebuyers, who “did not specifically benefit from the homebuyer education and counseling services provided,” the study found.
But women and younger adults (under 30 when they entered the study) both saw improvements in their credit scores compared to members of a control group, averaging 6 points for women and 7 points for younger adults.
Laura Peck
“While the results of this study indicate there’s no single, monolithic solution to educating homebuyers, the improvements for women and younger people imply greater customization for certain population segments might work well,” said Abt’s Laura Peck, one of the study’s authors, in a statement. “However, programs that advance equity in homeownership may need to be more intensive, for example, by considering structural and systemic barriers.”
Study caveats
In…