Published research on credit counseling and mortgage termination is surprisingly scarce, despite substantial growth in this industry. While the purpose of counseling is to assist low-income borrowers to improve their handling of debt and thereby reduce default, counseling may also improve the...

We study whether social capital affects low-income borrowers' decisions to terminate their mortgage loans, originated after church leaders connected these borrowers with a lender. Loan termination is modeled in a competing-risks framework, where social capital, demographic and religious...