At the request of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), staff from the Center for Behavioral Science Methods (CBSM) cognitively pretested new and revised survey questions for the 2021 American Housing Survey (AHS). It included several questions about home mortgages and loans, and about wildfire risk. Other questions were about the housing search process, for those who recently moved and currently rent a home, and about the number and types of pets in a home.  
Results of 15 telephone cognitive interviews and 158 web survey responses, both administered in August 2020, include the following: 1) some respondents had difficulty answering particular questions about their mortgages or loans if they did not have certain records readily available, such as financial statements. These respondents answered some questions with estimates rather than precise amounts, and some made an attempt to obtain records during the interview when questions called for reporting certain details; 2) a few respondents initially did not include their home equity line of credit in their answers when asked about their mortgages and loans. These respondents did not have any outstanding balance on their home equity line of credit, and interpreted the questions to be asking about current debt.