Module Summary
An important role of a housing counselor is to help clients understand the importance of establishing and maintaining a good credit history in order to achieve their financial goals. In this module, you’ll learn how to analyze a client’s credit report and explain the components of a credit score. You’ll also learn to advise clients on the pitfalls of bad credit, and how to improve credit scores. Last, you’ll become familiar with consumer rights protected by credit laws and how to explain these to clients.

Learning Objectives
By the end of this module, counselor will be able to:

• Analyze a client's credit report in order to break down the information for the client into easily understood concepts.
• Evaluate a credit score and be able to explain to a client how this score is calculated.
• Advise a client on understanding credit challenges and methods to improve credit scores, including how to correct reporting errors, how much credit to have, and which types are better.
• Comprehend consumer rights protected by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA), and the Fair Credit Billing Act (FCBA), and be able to explain these rights to clients.