MISMO Housing Counseling Dataset Advances Standardization to Improve Borrower Outcomes and Industry Insights

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 26, 2026) – MISMO®, the real estate finance industry's standards organization, today announced that the new Housing Counseling Dataset has reached “Candidate Recommendation” status. This milestone recognizes that the standard has been thoroughly reviewed by a broad range of industry participants and is available for implementation across the mortgage industry.

The Housing Counseling Dataset brings together data points from the MISMO Reference Model into a unified collection designed to support housing counseling use cases across the mortgage industry. The dataset enables housing counseling agencies and technology providers to capture and share consistent, higher-quality borrower information in a standardized format, improving communication with lenders and investors and supporting more informed decision-making.

“Standardized data is essential to improving how the industry delivers housing counseling services and measures their impact,” said Brian Vieux, President of MISMO. “By establishing a common dataset for housing counseling information, MISMO is helping organizations share data more efficiently, support better borrower outcomes, and strengthen the housing counseling ecosystem.”

The dataset was developed through collaboration within MISMO’s Housing Counseling development workgroup, led by Chair David Young of Housing Action Illinois and Vice Chair Tong Zhang of Freddie Mac. The effort was initially driven to support greater alignment between housing counseling data and existing industry standards, including the Uniform Loan Application Dataset (ULAD), enabling housing counseling technology providers to more easily integrate with loan origination systems. This alignment supports improved data exchange between housing counselors, lenders, and investors, and enhances the industry’s ability to evaluate the impact of housing counseling on borrower outcomes, loan quality, and long-term homeownership sustainability.

By enabling standardized data collection, the dataset supports tangible benefits across the ecosystem, including expanding access to homeownership opportunities, providing higher-quality borrower information earlier in the origination process and during default scenarios, and allowing stakeholders to better track borrower outcomes when housing counseling is part of the homebuying journey. It also positions investors to more effectively assess the value of housing counseling in improving loan performance.

MISMO will also host a workshop, “Mortgage Ready: Exploring How MISMO Standards Could Transform Financial Guidance into Homeownership,” during the MISMO Spring Summit in Louisville, Kentucky, on June 2, 2026. The session will explore how standards like the Housing Counseling Dataset can support the industry in translating financial guidance into sustainable homeownership outcomes. Registration information for both the webinar and the MISMO Spring Summit is available at MISMO Spring Summit and MISMO LinkedIn Live.