He calls himself “The Mortgage Professor,” stemming from varying roles as a teacher at the University of Pennsylvania (finance) and as a professional in the home loan market for many years. So, when Jack Guttentag’s essay appeared recently in the Washington Post – disputing the often-made connection between reverse and subprime mortgages – readers took notice.
“For reasons not clear to me,” he writes in the essay, “reverse mortgages are being bad-mouthed by an unlikely source: consumer groups that are supposed to represent the interest of consumers in general, and seniors in particular.” The author continues: “What is not useful is needlessly and gratuitously fanning the flames of senior anxiety about losing their homes.” In sum, he adds: “The current state of the HECM market has no resemblance whatsoever to the conditions in the subprime market that led to disaster.”
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