Homeownership counseling can help lenders mitigate losses, a new study from Freddie Mac suggests. But the timing and the type of counseling a borrower receives appear to play a key role in success. "The results presented in this study provide the first empirical evidence of the past 20 years that pre-purchase homeownership counseling can significantly reduce delinquency rates of borrowers," researchers Abdighani Hirad and Peter Zorn wrote in a recently released analysis.