The new profile of reverse mortgage borrowers are couples aged 62 or 63 who are using the loan as a way to bridge financing for retirement, according to a recent Reuters article. It’s a pretty big change from recently-widowed 75-year-olds who were previously the most common applicants, and these newly-eligible borrowers often pay off the [...]

Past website compliance issues have landed reverse mortgage lenders with steep fines and penalties. Reverse Fortunes is providing RMD readers with a free website compliance webinar coming up on Thursday, November 3 at 12:00 PM EST (9:00 am Pacific). Mark your calendar. The session will help you navigate website compliance including licensing requirements and NMLS’s role [...]

When it comes to who’s responsible for educating prospective reverse mortgage borrowers, it seems everyone is pointing fingers—at themselves. Lenders and counselors alike assume responsibility for making sure consumers know about the reverse product, especially following a court case in January of 2010 where a judge voided a reverse mortgage and held the lender ultimately responsible for [...]

Home Equity Conversion Loan limits set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development are likely to remain in place at their higher levels, FHA Acting Commissioner Carol Galante told reverse mortgage lenders on Tuesday. Appeasing concerns over the loan limit extension expiring on December 31, the acting commissioner stated that HUD does not have [...]

Following the announcement this week by the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association that the industry has developed guidance on limited underwriting for lenders to use in an effort to prevent reverse mortgage tax and insurance defaults, one software provider has adapted its platform to help implement the changes. The limited underwriting is based in part [...]

Reverse mortgage endorsements made a yearly gain on the total share of those insured by the Federal Housing Administration, according to the September 2011 Single-Family Outlook, although overall volume levels were down. Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECMs) saw a slight yearly increase in the number of FHA-insured mortgages, to 5.8% of all endorsements, compared to [...]