NID-HCA (The National Association of Real Estate Brokers–Investment Division, Inc., Housing Counseling Agency) has expanded the principles and practices of traditional housing counseling and has established Centers for Housing and Homeownership Advice across our nation. We help build our communities through outreach efforts, education and the creation of partnerships, uniting counseling, business and community groups. Through hard-won experience, NID-HCA has found that community building must begin in our streets and neighborhoods and grow through towns and cities; it germinates at the bottom and sprouts upward. A safe and decent community is not created by words of wisdom from ivory towers but by the people who live there. Come with us as we map out the path to the future and extend a helping hand to the community builders of our nation.

Outreach
Our first duty as housing counselors is to make the community aware of the value of our services—that we offer training and information that can change people’s lives. Many times, the people most in need of our services are the least aware of them. For this reason, NID-HCA centers are located in central cities and rural areas across the nation where they can serve people who may not be a part of the housing and financial mainstream. We have constructed outreach systems designed to bring quality counseling services to this under-served group in a very cost-efficient manner. With a long history of dedication to the communities it serves, NID-HCA is a well-known and established resource for providing general housing information and home-buying advice to all the people in our service areas.

Education
The guiding educational objective of the NID-HCA is to help consumers and organizations make informed, knowledgeable and fiscally prudent housing decisions. To accomplish this goal, NID-HCA provides a broad base of educational services, including technologically advanced housing education, general financial literacy training, and access to vital housing information. We are not concerned with merely generating statistics showing we have served a large number of people; statistics without genuine success stories are hollow measurements. NID-HCA is committed to having its clients gain a comprehensive financial understanding, enabling them to operate successfully and independently in the real world.

Partnerships
Creating viable partnerships with people and organizations within a community is central in our effort to facilitate community building. The first and most important alliance we seek to develop is with each of our housing clients. Our client/counselor relationships are based on shared efforts, a mutuality of interests and honesty. Over the long term, these relationships are the ties that bind us with the neighborhoods we serve.

Second, we seek to develop partnerships with both community-based organizations and people who are active community builders. In its local service area, each NID-HCA center establishes coalitions and opens lines of communication with churches, community development corporations, housing authorities, lawyers, real estate agents/brokers, property managers, real estate appraisers and developers, financial institutions, elected officials, educational institutions, mentoring programs and others too numerous to list. In addition to providing our centers with the support and resources necessary to carry out our local programs, these partnering ventures align our efforts with the particular interests of the local groups and community activists.

Lastly, we seek partnership with our institutional partners: national banks and mortgage lenders, secondary mortgage market participants, national housing counseling intermediaries, trade organizations, and branches of local, state and federal government agencies. Although generally coordinated through our national office, these alliances supply technical and financial support that is managed through our local centers. Each center is encouraged to work independently with our regional offices to innovate solutions appropriate to local issues. We also provide overall program performance reports to our institutional partners.

It is important to remember that our partnership endeavors exist for one reason: to bring the highest level of counseling support to all our clients in a cost-efficient and professional manner.