On September 25, the White House sent Congress a requestpdf to cancel $810 million in previously approved federal spending across 11 programs, including $56.1 million for HUD's Housing Counseling Assistance program. That amount is nearly all of the $58 million Congress provided for housing counseling in FY 2025—the same funding HUD made available to counseling agencies earlier this year. HUD's announcement of that funding excluded prepurchase counseling as an eligible activity and limited post-purchase counseling to homeowners with federally backed mortgages. NAR has pressed HUD and Congress to restore prepurchase counseling, and in June the House Appropriations Committee adopted NAR-supported language backing prepurchase counseling as part of its FY 2027 HUD spending bill.
With the funds set to expire on September 30, the request is considered a “pocket rescission." Federal budget law allows the president to ask Congress to cancel funding and to hold the money for 45 days while Congress considers the request. When the request arrives this late in the fiscal year, the money can expire before Congress acts. On September 29, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress's nonpartisan watchdog, concluded that the law does not allow the administration to hold these funds past the end of the fiscal year, since Congress's review period would run until at least November 9. The administration has rejected GAO's position on pocket rescissions before. When it used the same approach last year, the Supreme Court allowed the funds to be withheld in a preliminary order that did not decide the underlying legal question.
The request drew criticism from both Republicans and Democrats, including the chair and vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who argued it undermines Congress's authority over federal spending.
NAR has long supported housing counseling as a way to help buyers enter and stay in the market. In its FY 2027 appropriations letter, NAR noted that the share of first-time buyers has fallen to a record low of 21% and pointed to studies showing that buyers who complete education and counseling are less likely to experience delinquency and foreclosure. Homeowners who receive foreclosure mitigation counseling are almost three times more likely to receive a loan modification than similar borrowers who were not counseled.
NAR is engaging with Congress on the rescission request and its impact on housing counseling.
