The American Homeowner Education and Counseling Institute has released its long awaited curriculum for the nation's home buyer counseling programs, a curriculum whose original draft 14 months ago infuriated the National Association of REALTORS® because it suggested real estate agents were historically untrustworthy.

The final draft, released last week at a news conference in Washington, no longer carries the offensive warning against real estate agents. Karen V. Hill, director of AHECI, only barely alluded to the controversy during the news conference in which she thanked participants for the torrent of feedback received after the original draft was sent out for comment.

AHECI, originally created by Fannie Mae, was intended to develop a standard curriculum of information that home buyer counselors around the country could use to teach would-be homeowners on how to engage in the home buying process.

Nationwide there are thousands of community counseling services whose goal it is to show low-income and minority families what it takes to buy a home, maintain it, refinance it and ultimately sell it.

The AHECI curriculum was developed to make sure that the information given out by those counselors was accurate and up-to-date. AHECI will now invite those counselors to attend education sessions on the new curriculum. Preliminary estimates are that at least 2,500 counselors nationwide will be eligible for the AHECI course, and probably many more.

The first draft of the AHECI curriculum was release in mid-1998, put together largely by academic instructors. That draft warned would-be home buyers to be careful in how they dealt with real estate agents because agents often were "untrustworthy." It noted that most agents had relationships with sellers and that any confidential information imparted by the buyers was unlikely to remain confidential.

NAR directors were angered that the statements were included in the AHECI draft, especially because NAR was one of a dozen housing organizations that, along with Fannie Mae, had funded AHECI. The NAR directors urged the organization to withdraw funding until the curriculum was corrected.

AHECI's Hill met with NAR liaisons. The final draft does not contain the allegation.

Ironically, during that period Hill also attended the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agent's convention. NAEBA members applauded the draft.

"How to work with real estate agents" is actually a small part of the overall curriculum. Much of the focus is on helping potential home buyers get their credit in order, understanding the mortgage application process, understanding the need for home maintenance and suggesting methods of avoiding foreclosure if the owner does get behind in payments.

In the final standards released last week, AHECI emphasized that real estate professionals were welcome to apply for certification as counselors, which would then make them eligible to lead home buyer education conferences.

Published: December 20, 1999

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