A National Association of Realtors (NAR) blog post published Thursday aims to inform its members of Home Equity Conversion Mortgages by asking: What to Make of Reverse Mortgages?
NAR is offering an upcoming webinar on June 28 including a panel of National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association representatives, to answer questions the Realtor market might have, and to talk about the HECM for Purchase product.
“With baby boomers now well into their retirement years and many of them with elderly parents who are ready to move into a nursing home or assisted living facility, the likelihood of you listing or selling a home with a reverse mortgage is pretty good,” NAR writes.
With more reverse mortgage borrowers on the horizon, NAR tells Realtors to be prepared for situations where they may be listing a home for sale that had a reverse mortgage. It could mean managing expectations about the home condition, which is generally good for FHA-insured reverse mortgages, NAR says, or working with the children of a reverse mortgage borrower
“In short, you can expect all sorts of perplexities surrounding a transaction in which children are selling the house and trying to sort things out themselves,” NAR writes.
Reverse mortgage lenders see the opportunity to have a dialogue with the Realtor community and help to inform consumers about the HECM for Purchase as well.
“If realtors don’t understand the benefit to their client and themselves, they are not going to bring up the HECM for Purchase,” says Jerry Tomlin, a NRMLA member who will participate on the Webinar. Tomlin also notes that many Realtors have a senior-specific designation, Seniors Real Estate Specialist®, or SRES.
The webinar will include input from NRMLA’s Tomlin as well as Peter Bell, president and CEO and Steve Irwin, executive vice president.
“NRMLA has a history of working with organizations with shared interests—including other housing trade associations—to educate their members about reverse mortgages,” said Peter Bell, NRMLA president and CRO. “We have had an ongoing dialogue with the National Association of Realtors for years, presented a webinar for them previously on HECM for Purchase and are delighted to join them again for the June 28th webinar.”
Read the blog post from NAR.
Written by Elizabeth Ecker
