This post was originally published by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

This report describes the overall financial outcomes before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic for a sample
of low- to middle-income first-time homebuyers who purchased a home by December 2019. The sample of recent
homebuyers analyzed in this report participated in HUD’s First Time Homebuyer Education and Counseling
Demonstration, but the report does not speak to the impact of housing counseling. This report only analyzes how the
sample of homebuyers fared during COVID-19, based on their status as recent homebuyers, regardless of whether they
were randomly assigned to the treatment or control group in the FTHB Demonstration.

The analysis uses credit bureau data from July 2017 through December 2021 to examine (1) how the levels in the
financial circumstances of the homebuyers changed in July 2020 relative to prepandemic trends in these financial
measures. This analysis does not try and separate the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic from any national or local
pandemic responses or to look at the impact of the intervention tested in the demonstration, but rather interprets
the findings as capturing the influence of the pandemic in its totality on this study sample of first-time
homebuyers up to December 2021. Findings include that this sample of recent homebuyers had improvements in several
financial indicators between 2017 and 2022, including an increase in credit scores, a decrease in nonhousing debt,
and a decrease in student loan and mortgage delinquencies. These financial indicator improvements were experienced
by a range of recent homebuyer subgroups, including age, gender, race, and ethnicity.