| This paper examines the effects that pre-purchase homeownership counseling has on first-time home buyers in the City of Philadelphia. Since 1995, there has been a proliferation of affordable lending programs made available to low- and moderate-income households, most of which have required pre-purchase homeownership counseling as a condition for this population receiving a mortgage. While housing counseling and education programs have been available for many borrowers for decades, the current emphasis on pre-purchase housing counseling programs as a risk mitigation measure has provided the research community with an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs, in terms of value to the home buyer and the housing counseling agencies involved. This dissertation evaluates the outcomes of borrowers who received pre-purchase homeownership counseling services in 1997, with a specific emphasis on the borrowers' dwelling unit and neighborhood satisfaction, along with their financial performance. These outcomes were measured on both an absolute basis and relative to the borrowers' previous rental situations. The results indicate that after receiving housing counseling services: (a) borrowers move to neighborhoods of higher quality; (b) they have better than average dwelling unit and neighborhood satisfaction levels after moving, both on an absolute and relative level; (c) there is some limited variation among individual agencies, in terms of outcome measures provided by the agencies' clients; and (d) some characteristics of the housing counseling agencies did have an effect on the borrowers' outcomes. In the final chapter, a theoretical longitudinal research design is presented for future researchers of pre-purchase homeownership counseling services. |
