HOMEOWNERSHIP CONSULTING PERFORMANCE - HOW CAN IT BE MEASURED

Homeownership counseling encompasses several educational activities. E arly approaches focused on reducing the risk of default and foreclosur e among participants in government-assisted mortgage programs, but mor e recent approaches have focused on increasing homeownership opportuni ties among low-income and minority households. Unfortunately, little i s known about the effectiveness of these approaches in terms of the nu mber of new homeowners and the mitigation of default risk. To address that gap, this article presents a theoretical and methodological frame work to evaluate counseling efforts. A successful counseling program i s defined as one that assists a household with a low long-term probabi lity of ownership in buying a home and reducing its default risk. We c oncede that the methodological requirements for evaluating counseling are somewhat restrictive. However, if we establish an evaluation proce dure using these goals as a framework, we can more accurately determin e the effects of counseling on the sustainability of low-income homeow nership.