The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced this week that it will award $2 million to fund housing counseling training. “These funds for training will help HUD-approved housing counseling organizations be better prepared to offer valuable services assisting families in making better choices in buying or renting homes and in helping thousands of struggling [...]

Community development organization and reverse mortgage counseling resource NeighborWorks America has “re-launched” its website for current and prospective Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) counselors. NeighborWorks announced in April 2011 it was seeking a web redesign, and has since completed that redesign for a new look and improved capability. The new site, found at www.hecmcounselors.org, covers [...]

Generally speaking, reverse mortgage counseling agencies seem to be responding very favorably to the news that housing counseling funding has been restored—even if only partially compared with the most recent years—for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2012. The funds were approved by Congress and President Obama late last week as part of a congressional “Mini-bus” [...]

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced on Thursday that $40.05 million of housing counseling funds will be available for fiscal year 2012, $4 million of which is earmarked for reverse mortgage counseling. Grants will be awarded competitively to the hundreds of HUD-approved counseling agencies and State Housing Finance Agencies across the nation [...]

Housing counseling funding, including funding for HECM counseling, was approved by Congress late Thursday and was signed into law by President Obama on Friday. The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (“THUD”) appropriations “Mini-bus,” bill passed through Congress as a group of appropriations lumped together by the Senate and House. It includes $45 million in housing [...]

Reverse mortgage counselors have recently been informed of the changes lenders may be making to their HECM underwriting procedures. While the changes are straightforward, they say, they have the potential to shake up the role of counselors in the reverse mortgage process down the road. “For now, the general guidance is straightforward,” Daniel Fenton, housing [...]