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Homeownership Education and Outreach

Recognizing that educated homebuyers are more likely to be successful over the long-term, Freddie Mac – often in collaboration with other organizations–has developed a variety of initiatives and tools to help lenders and housing professionals reach consumers where they live, work, play, and pray. These education and outreach initiatives are being used across the country to prepare borrowers for homeownership, protect consumers from financial traps, and preserve successful homeownership.

Making Home Affordable

Freddie Mac is proud to play a key role in sustaining homeownership by supporting President Obama's Making Home Affordable Program. At this critical time for the market and homeowners, our support of this program reinforces our long-standing commitment to help at-risk borrowers with Freddie Mac-owned mortgages avoid foreclosure. Our support of Making Home Affordable includes media outreach, foreclosure prevention workshops for homeowners, industry training, educating through our existing initiatives, and more.

CreditSmart®

CreditSmart is an award-winning credit and financial education curriculum designed to help consumers build and maintain better credit, make sound financial decisions, and understand the steps to sustainable homeownership. We encourage housing professionals to join us in preparing borrowers across the country for successful homeownership by utilizing the CreditSmart curriculum and its supporting workshop materials. In addition to English, CreditSmart is offered in Spanish (CreditSmart Español), plus Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese (CreditSmart Asian).

Take Root Community Stabilization Initiative

The Take Root Community Stabilization Initiative provides funding and expertise to help targeted local municipalities stabilize their neighborhoods and sustain homeownership. Through this initiative, we collaborate with lenders, state and local governments, and housing professionals in municipalities across the U.S. to develop strategic outreach campaigns that will encourage new homeowners to consider purchasing vacant properties within the local community and help existing homeowners keep their homes and avoid foreclosure. Local Take Root collaborating organizations leverage two federal programs – the Neighborhood Stabilization Program and the Making Home Affordable Program – as part of their application of the Take Root concept to help communities bring new homeowners into neighborhoods and to stem the tide of foreclosures.

Workforce Home Benefit^SM

Workforce Home Benefit can be a vital instrument to increase employee retention and enhance recruiting and hiring capabilities. This initiative provides organizations with a powerful tool to help their employees become homeowners. It also provides employers and participating lenders with the information required to efficiently implement an employer-assisted homeownership plan within their organizations. Specifically, this tool offers suggestions on the types of benefits they can offer their employees from homebuyer education to down payment assistance and matched savings accounts.

Loan Prospector® Outreach

Loan Prospector Outreach is an online client assessment tool for housing counselors. It enables housing counselors to use the power of Freddie Mac's automated underwriting technology to objectively assess whether their clients are ready to apply for a mortgage. Loan Prospector Outreach gives housing counselors an efficient way to conduct a reliable client assessment, offers information to shape pre-purchase counseling, and facilitates a client's transition to a lender to begin the home purchase process.

Your Step-by-Step Mortgage Guide From Application to Closing

Research studies show that the mortgage process and specifically the paperwork involved in obtaining a mortgage loan are a source of confusion for many borrowers. Freddie Mac developed Your Step-by-Step Mortgage Guide to help homebuyers understand the mortgage process and provide lenders with a value-added resource to reach both first-time homebuyers and other borrowers.

Your Step-by-Step Mortgage Guide helps homebuyers navigate the mortgage process – from the people involved to the costs and forms they'll be asked to complete – and also includes information about how homeowners can take steps to make sure they keep their home long term. The guide includes seven sections that take the consumer from application to closing, and into the first months of homeownership.

For more information, please contact Corporate Relations & Housing Outreach Manager Julie Sun at Julie_Sun@FreddieMac.com or 703-903-3209.