In the complex world of home equity conversion mortgages (HECMs), a certification process would make it easier for seniors to navigate these financial products, writes Jack Guttentag, of The Mortgage Professor. And the best way to do so? Label them “kosher.” The kosher stamp on food means that it has been certified as fit for […]
Category: Commentary
In contrast to a recent column suggesting American retirees are doing just fine on the road to retirement, letters to The Wall Street Journal indicate otherwise. Andrew Biggs’ and Sylvester Schieber’s Sept. 29 column, “The Imaginary Retirement-Income Crisis,” stirred a heated discussion among WSJ readers, who wrote in to tell the writers that their conclusion was drawn […]
In mid-December, the Wall Street Journal published an article asserting the Federal Housing Administration should pare down its reverse mortgage support. In response, the WSJ last week published an op-ed by National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association President and CEO Peter Bell pointing to the disservice done by the publication in its assessment. In the original […]
The last few years of running a business in the reverse mortgage industry has been a wild ride. From principal limit reductions to lender exits, it has been anything but boring. But after what seemed to be one negative after another, things seem to be changing now for the better. After a few extremely challenging years […]
In the last seven days, we’ve seen the power of having a company like MetLife in your industry. A study released last week by the MetLife Mature Market Institute on reverse mortgage findings has driven media conversation about the product. While not necessarily touting the positives or negatives of the use of the reverse mortgages […]
During my time reporting for Reverse Mortgage Daily, I’ve talked to countless brokers, lenders, counselors, and others in the industry to gain knowledge of reverse mortgages—what they are and whom they impact. Even though I’ve heard numerous times about the involvement of family and the complexities that involvement can present, it took witnessing the dynamics […]
Nearly 20% of the Federal Housing Administration’s Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loans outstanding have a greater loan balance than the property is worth, but the worst may be over for FHA’s “underwater problem,” recent commentary published by New View Advisors states. Having stated in a recent piece of commentary that FHA’s outlook was “still too […]
Without the most relevant and timely data, it’s hard for anyone to make the right decisions—especially Congress. Even after consumer protections have been implemented for reverse mortgages, we continue to see the same outdated arguments presented before politicians. Case in point, during an early October hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee […]
A sword of Damocles hangs over the debt-driven “super committee” recently created by the Budget Control Act. Find $1.2 trillion in ten-year savings or else…automatic sequestration will meat-ax the same amount from mandatory and discretionary spending. [President Obama added another $447 billion to the super committee’s challenge by asking it to pay for his jobs […]
My introduction to the reverse mortgage industry began on February 7, 2011. For those who remember (and virtually all do), that was the Monday after Bank of America announced it would no longer originate reverse mortgages. I arrived to that first day on the job with virtually no background on reverse mortgages, and no way […]
