Last month during a marketing meeting on the expected growth of the HECM program, an electrician walked in from the adjoining room to inform me that he had completed his job, and then added, “I don’t want to butt in, but I overheard you talking about reverse mortgages and those reverse mortgages are bad news. I would stay away from them.”

It was like a hard slap across our faces. Here was a person who as it turned out never had a reverse mortgage or never even knew anyone who actually had a reverse mortgage, yet he harbored such negative feelings about the program he felt it necessary to tell strangers to stay away from it.

In the midst of the encouraging news surrounding the program, it is imperative we not forget that a substantial number of consumers still cling to negative misconceptions about reverse mortgages. These erroneous beliefs inhibit the HECM’s ability to become a popular, mainstream product.

This problem has been with us basically since the inception of the program. The Extreme Summit has identified this issue and is working on alleviating the problem, but we cannot wait for the summit to come to a city near us. We must do much more now.

We must become much more proactive in our work communities. We must grasp the opportunity to become a walking positive advertisement for our program.

Volunteer in the community where you work. Become an asset. When you volunteer, find a way to let the people around you know what you do for a living. It is much harder to have negative perceptions about a product if the person selling the product is an individual working to make the community a better place.

Seek out influential members in your community who may possess negative concepts about the program. Introduce yourself. Talk with them. Listen to what they have to say.  Hear their point of view. Offer to provide them with unbiased information about the program. Do not argue. Do not be confrontational.

I volunteer and receive tremendous satisfaction from working with Senior Legal Services. Through my volunteer work, I met two social workers who had negative impressions about reverse mortgages. After several friendly discussions, they are some of my biggest supporters.

We as an industry must stop shooting ourselves in the foot. In the past, we have made critical mistakes that fostered negative impressions and provided the impetus for excessive regulations. This must stop.

Currently, many reverse mortgage companies are aggressively recruiting forward mortgage loan originators who know little or nothing about the program. There are also reverse mortgage originators out there now who are not knowledgeable about different components of the program and cannot clearly explain it to others.

Companies in this industry have the responsibility and must implement procedures, programs, oversight and training to insure that the substantial majority of their reverse mortgage loan originators understand the product and have the ability to clearly explain it. Unleashing incompetent or marginally competent loan originators upon financial planners, real estate agents and the consumers themselves will have disastrous results.

My ideas barely scratch the surface of this important topic. If you have more to add, please submit your concerns and ideas on this issue to The Reverse Review by emailing [email protected]. Perhaps, by engaging in a conversation about how to turn this perception problem around, we can collectively help propel the industry forward.