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As more Americans juggle caring for aging parents while supporting their own children, reverse mortgage professionals are increasingly navigating emotionally complex family dynamics that can determine whether a loan proceeds or stalls.
That reality is the focus of an upcoming webinar sponsored by the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA). “The Influence Factor: Family Dynamics in Reverse Mortgages,” will be led by Barbara Cripple, national sales training manager at Finance of America.
Families often enter reverse mortgage discussions with concerns centered on the home, inheritance and overall loan costs, Cripple said in an interview with HousingWire‘s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD).
“The most common concerns adult children raise usually center around three things: the home, the inheritance and the cost,” Cripple said. “Those are legitimate concerns and should be discussed directly.”
Cripple noted that reverse mortgages are loans secured by the home and come with ongoing borrower obligations, including payment of property taxes and homeowners insurance, maintenance and continuing to occupy the home as a primary residence.
“If those obligations are not met, the loan can become due and payable,” she said.
Adult children also frequently worry about how much home equity may remain for heirs over time as loan balances grow, Cripple told RMD. But she added that many concerns stem from outdated or incomplete information about the product.
“Today’s reverse mortgages include important consumer protections, but they are not risk-free and they are not right for everyone,” Cripple said. “The best conversations happen when families look at the facts together.”
The webinar will also focus on the role of the “sandwich generation,” referring to adults who are simultaneously caring for children and aging parents, and how these pressures shape borrower decision making.
“In sandwich generation households, adult children are often balancing caring for their own kids while also supporting aging parents,” Cripple said. “That creates added pressure and sometimes urgency in financial decisions.
“You’ll often see role reversal, where the child feels responsible for protecting the parent, which can lead to them dominating the conversation or second-guessing decisions,” she added. “At the same time, the parent may be trying to maintain independence and avoid feeling like a burden.”
These “competing needs,” Cripple explained, can complicate the decision-making process. Emotional barriers — including fear, anxiety and guilt — also frequently emerge during reverse mortgage discussions and only make the process more complicated.
“Adult children may fear making the wrong decision or regretting it later,” she said. “Borrowers may fear losing independence or being seen as financially unstable.”
Rather than immediately focusing on product education, Cripple said reverse mortgage professionals should first acknowledge emotional concerns and build trust.
“The key is not to rush into education, but to acknowledge emotion first,” she said. “Let people feel heard. … Decisions like this are not made on math alone; they’re made on emotion, trust and family influence.”
Cripple said families also commonly misunderstand how reverse mortgages work, including a belief that the lender immediately takes ownership of the home or assuming the loan automatically eliminates inheritance.
“The reality is more nuanced,” she said. “A reverse mortgage is still a loan secured by the home, so it has real obligations and risks, but the borrower remains on title as long as they meet the loan requirements.”
Remaining on title is a superficial answer to a much deeper issue. Why is it reverse mortgages rarely terminate (other than reverse mortgage to reverse mortgage refis) with either the borrower(s) or the heir(s) retaining ownership in the home? We all understand the loan has to be repaid but why is there so little retention of the ownership in the home? Yeah, yeah, we know children want cash, not mom’s and/or dad’s home but the percentage of ownership retention is still very, very low. Many times that issue troubles parents but they don’t know how to fully convey their concerns on this matter.
Remember since October 1, 2003, we have had four fiscal years of HECM endorsements lower than the HECM endorsements for fiscal year 2004 (ended 9/30/2004) of 37,829; the are as follows, starting with the lowest:
for fiscal year 2024 — 26,521
for fiscal year 2025 — 28,173
for fiscal year 2019 — 31,274 and
for fiscal year 2023 — 32,991.
Right now the trend for fiscal year 2026 is an even lower HECM endorsement total than for any other fiscal year following fiscal year 2003, 23 years ago. Despite wild claims that proprietary reverse mortgage origination unit volume is at an all time high, proprietary reverse mortgage origination unit volume was most likely higher (if not much higher) in 2007 when we not only had “jumbos” but also FNME Home Keepers, which were competitive with and complementary to HECMs.
While many people have opined and provided anecdotal explanations as to why HECM endorsement volume has been tanking in the last four years, no one has presented clear analytical, empirical, and statistical evidence as to why this is happening. Most everything so far is lazy anecdotes, speculative reasoning, and hearsay.