First-time home buyers often enjoy improvements in their financial status, better relationships with their neighbors and better neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) of New York's "Home-Ownership Survey" (on page 6 of the PDF file) of families it has assisted over the years found numerous positive changes in the lives of first-time home buyers.

Serving the areas of Newark, NJ, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Bronx, Nassau County and Westchester County since 1993, NHS has assisted more than 2,000 families purchase homes with its first-time home buyer program of home buyer education, prepurchase counseling, loans and grants for closing costs or down-payment assistance, and mortgage facilitation.

Looking back in on some of those families, NHS surveyed by mail program participants who had closed loans in 1997. Fifty-seven responses were received from a total of 150 mailed for a response rate of 38 percent.

Not surprisingly, NHS found

• Forty-five percent of respondents felt their overall financial situation had improved and 73 percent attributed that change to home ownership, largely do to an increase in the home's value. Others cited home owner tax benefits and better jobs as reasons for improvements in financial status.

• Interaction with neighbors increased for 76 percent of new home owners who said they spend more time talking to neighbors than they did before they purchased a new home.

• Sixty-two percent of the home owners who responded to the survey said their new neighborhood had better conditions than their old neighborhoods.

The findings were similar to those found in "Home Ownership Improves Lifestyles for the Poor in Distressed Neighborhoods: Does This Make Sense?" a study released last year by the Institute for Policy Studies at Baltimore-based John Hopkins University.

That study revealed how home ownership improved chances for higher education and better earnings while reducing idleness, the incidence of teen pregnancy and the need for public assistance.

NHS's study, conducted by NHS's Becky Himlin, director of research, planning and information services and Ramona Burns, a student intern, also found that home owners attributed much of their positive changes in their life to NHS's home buying program services.

• Eighty-nine percent said NHS made a difference in their ability to purchase a home.

• Every respondent said NHS's home buying education was helpful in their efforts to buy a home.

• Ninety-three percent said NHS services helped prepare them for the responsibilities of home ownership.

Counseling and home buying programs often have been cited as key to successful home ownership.

"Understanding the myriad of loan products, tracking interest rates and protecting yourself throughout a complicated loan and legal process is usually beyond most everyone's capabilities," said Earl Peattie, president of Morro Bay-based Mortgage News Co.

Freddie Mac's "A Little Knowledge Is a Good Thing: Empirical Evidence of the Effectiveness of Pre-Purchase Homeownership Counseling", an analysis of 40,000 Freddie Mac mortgages originated between 1993 and 2000, said effective pre-purchase counseling reduces the delinquency rates of mortgages by as much as 34 percent.

"The quality of life and the financial positions of most of our homeowners have changed for the better," said Himlin.

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