Celebrating 17 Years of Home Buyer Education

Welcome to the Home Buying Institute (HBI). We've been providing helpful and unbiased advice for home buyers since 2006. You can learn more about our history and mission below.

Clear and Helpful Advice for Home Buyers

Let's face it. The home-buying process can be complicated and overwhelming. This is especially true for first-time buyers who have never been through it. There are a lot of moving parts, a lot of steps in the process. That's where we come in.

Our mission is to provide clear and comprehensive advice for home buyers and mortgage shoppers in the United States. We take complex ideas and concepts, and break them down so that anyone can understand them.

We want to create a smarter class of home buyers in the U.S. History shows there is a need for more (and better) advice for first-time home buyers. Many of the problems associated with the 2008 - 2009 housing crisis could have been avoided, if buyers were better educated about the process. Quality education is in everyone's best interest — and that is what we offer through this website.

Unbiased and Objective

There's no shortage of websites that provide advice for home buyers. But many of them are either owned, or heavily influenced by, real estate and mortgage companies. In such cases, consumer education becomes the secondary objective. The first priority is to sell homes or generate mortgage loans.

HBI is different. We are not beholden to any real estate or mortgage company, or to any industry group. We are 100% independent, sustaining our operation solely through advertising revenues. This allows us to provide unbiased, objective advice for home buyers across the U.S.

The bottom line: We are not trying to sell you a mortgage loan or convince that now is the time to buy a home. We're trying to help you make an informed decision on those subjects.

Local Housing Market Analysis

In addition to publishing advice for home buyers nationwide, HBI provides in-depth housing market reports for major cities in the U.S. Our reports give buyers a better understanding of local housing conditions, enabling them to make informed decisions about a home purchase. We publish new reports on a weekly basis. You'll find the latest on our news page.

To produce a local market report, we analyze a variety of factors that are relevant to buyers. We look at home-price trends, inventory levels, population growth and more. We use these and other factors to paint a clear picture of what's happening in each individual housing market.