In case you missed it, here’s what happened in reverse mortgage news this week:
Fred Thompson, You Will Be Missed—Reverse Mortgage Industry Loses an Icon—The reverse mortgage industry lost a beloved advocate this past week with the passing of Fred Thompson, who died Sunday following a recurrence of lymphoma. He was 73.
Reverse Mortgage Rules of the Road are Set, But Where Does the Industry Go?—This year has seen several significant rule-makings come to the Home Equity Conversion (HECM) program that have changed the way reverse mortgage professionals do business. Now that these long-awaited updates have finally arrived, it appears that the rules of the road have been set for 2015 and maybe even 2016. But where does the industry go from here?
Reverse Mortgages are ‘Triple Win’ for Retirees, Advisors and Mutual Funds—Reverse mortgages can offer many benefits to the borrowers they serve, but they can also be attractive to financial advisors and even mutual funds, said Barry H. Sacks, a practicing tax attorney in San Francisco, during a recent webinar provided by the Financial Planning Association.
Reverse Mortgage Endorsement Volume Dragged Down 7% in October—The impact of the Financial Assessment continues to rear its ugly head on HECM endorsements with volume now falling 7.3% in October to 4,332 loans, according to the latest industry data tracked by Reverse Market Insight.
HuffPost: Choosing the Right Reverse Mortgage—Reverse mortgages can be a saving grace for some retirees, but it takes knowing the complexities of these financial products to find out which type of HECM works best for a borrower’s particular situation, according to a recent column from Jack Guttentag, a.k.a “The Mortgage Professor,” published by the Huffington Post.
Written by Jason Oliva