MISMO Seeks Public Comment on New Housing Counseling Dataset Specification

WASHINGTON, D.C. (February 27, 2025) – MISMO®, the real estate finance industry's standards organization, today announced that it is seeking public comment on a new Housing Counseling Dataset Specification (HCDS). The 60-day public comment period runs through April 28, 2025.

“The Housing Counseling Dataset Specification, prepared by the MISMO Housing Counseling Development Workgroup, is designed to facilitate greater access to homeownership for first-time homebuyers,” said MISMO Acting President Rick Hill. “The dataset should bring greater portability of client data and improve the sharing of housing counseling data between industry peers – namely counseling agencies, their intermediaries, and lending organizations.”

By leveraging data standards shared across the industry, housing counselors will have a common language to communicate with trading partners, allowing them access to data previously not available and enabling new business opportunities. The Housing Counseling Development Workgroup will be using the HCDS in the future as the foundation to create implementation guides and mapping specifications for more specific use cases, such as intake and budgeting. 

The public comment period allows those who participated in the proposal at least 60-days’ notice prior to final release to review and disclose any applicable Patent Rights (as defined by MISMO’s 2018 Intellectual Property Rights Policy).

MISMO requests that any organization that may have any patent or patent applications, or other intellectual property rights that might be infringed upon by an organization that uses or is compliant with these proposed MISMO products to disclose them at this time in writing. All comments and disclosures are due by April 21, 2025, and should be directed to [email protected]. 

MISMO’s work to solve key business challenges is made possible by its members, champions, sponsors, and lender support through the Innovation Investment Fee. Visit MISMO.org to learn how you can get involved.