Housing Counseling Works!

Join Prosperity Indiana, NeighborWorks, and this exclusive Indiana cohort of service providers for an online educational opportunity to stabilize Hoosier Households. 

Introduction to Housing Counseling

By participating in this course, learners explore the principles and applications of housing counseling from the industry's and the counselor's points of view and acquire the basic skills needed to be an effective counselor. Learners are introduced to the principles of effective counseling, essential elements of pre- and post-purchase counseling for homeowners, and delinquency and default counseling. Learners are introduced to common client issues and effective intervention strategies. Learners are provided with practical tools to help renters, prospective homebuyers and existing homeowners develop and manage basic household budgets, enhance their savings practices, timely loan payments, improve credit scores, and recognize and avoid predatory lenders.

Week 1: Getting Started in Housing Counseling

• Match relevant timelines to key events in the history of the housing counseling industry and National Industry Standards benchmarks for housing counseling service performance and delivery.
• Correctly complete a fill-in-the-blank worksheet regarding the National Industry Standards recommended benchmarks for housing counseling delivery.
• Evaluate counselor scenarios and determine whether the situation poses potential violations of the NIS Code of Ethics and Conduct.
• Complete a self-assessment worksheet tool to acknowledge the housing counseling characteristics they currently possess and identify skills and knowledge gaps to cultivate in their professional development strategy.
• Complete a personalized fill-in-the-blank housing counseling training and certification timeline worksheet to strategically set and achieve their certification goal.
• From a sample, learners will correctly select the version they feel would net the most feedback from the client.
• Use a worksheet to correctly answer questions about monthly mortgage payment components.
• Use worksheets to correctly perform income, housing, and debt ratio calculations for client scenarios.

Week 2: Financial Coaching and Counseling

• Work to brainstorm 7 key aspects of the COUNSEL model and 4 key aspects of the COACH model and distinguish the differences and similarities between coaching and counseling.
• During the course learners will be presented with client scenarios and will work in to identify both a coaching and counseling approach.
• Share their personal feelings about provocative financial questions relating to money management, receive comments from their peers and provide critical feedback to others’ responses.
• Correctly identify credit scoring factors that will be impacted by 7 different credit actions.
• Review non-traditional lending case study scenarios and determine the advantages and disadvantages of each along with at least 2 alternative options.
• Determine whether the action will have a hard or soft impact on the credit score for 8 different scenarios.

Week 3: Housing Counseling for Renters and Homebuyers

• List at least 3 pros and cons of renting.
• Brainstorm at least 3 features and drawbacks of single and multi-family housing for rental clients.
• Evaluate a case study and determine rental housing affordability and brainstorm at least 3 counseling strategies for the rental client scenario.
• Answer questions about why talking about fair housing discrimination is difficult, how we can improve nonverbal communication and increase cultural sensitivity.
• Develop a list of at least 3 open ended questions for clients relating to future housing goals, finances, and home maintenance/repairs to determine homebuying readiness.
• Use a worksheet to accurately perform affordability ratio calculations for client scenarios and list factors that would increase a client’s buying power.
• Refer to a worksheet to correctly identify which of the 4C’s of borrowing is impacted by different credit activities.
• Analyze the household income for different client scenarios to determine eligibility in down payment programs.

Week 4: Keeping Your Home

• Define the 6 options available to homeowners using a matching activity worksheet.
• Work individually to identify the most appropriate retention or disposition options for client scenarios.
• Correctly organize the steps in the judicial and nonjudicial foreclosure process.
• Distinguish between certain features of judicial and non-judicial foreclosure processes.
• Work in pairs to perform calculations to identify the break-even point for client scenarios and formulate an open-ended question to the client about moving forward in each scenario.