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Housing Counseling
What is Housing Counseling?
Housing counselors provide guidance to consumers who are buying or renting a home, are homeless, seeking reverse mortgages, have credit issues or are at risk of default or foreclosure. Housing counselors provide first time homebuyer education, help homebuyers select the right mortgage product and help buyers avoid predatory lenders. RCAC housing counseling subgrantees have helped more than 100,000 clients since 2004!
RCAC is a HUD-approved national intermediary. As such, RCAC provides technical assistance, training, and financial support to a network of housing counseling agencies serving rural communities throughout RCAC's service area. RCAC's Housing Counseling program builds the capacity of established and emerging housing counseling agencies, including tribal based organizations. In fiscal year 2012, this resulted in housing counseling services to more than 24,000 clients. For a nationwide list of HUD approved housing counseling agencies, visit HUD's website. To determine if you qualify to be a HUD-approved counseling agency through RCAC and access the application, go here.
RCAC's assistance to housing counseling agencies includes:
- Housing counseling program planning and development
- Internal systems and effective tracking of housing counseling clients
- Marketing strategies for housing counseling programs
- HUD housing counseling rules, regulations, and procedures
- Fiscal management
- Accessing other housing counseling financial resources
- Pre & post-purchase housing counseling curriculum design
- How to set up a foreclosure prevention program
- Anti-predatory lending
- Individual Development Accounts (IDA's)
- Fair housing
Please note that RCAC does not provide counseling services directly.
Resources
Resources for housing counseling agencies
Resources for counseling agencies that want to become HUD approved