After a chance in Oregon’s state legislature dropped thousands of seniors from its longstanding tax deferral program because they were also reverse mortgage holders last fall, those borrowers may see some reprieve—for two years.
A House bill in Oregon passed Thursday doesn’t reverse the changes made in late 2011, but it does offer some help to seniors who were dropped from the program because of their reverse mortgages. The bill specifies that the state will pay the property taxes for those seniors for an interim period of two years before they will be required to pay the taxes on their own.
House Bill 4039 “Requires lender to notify potential borrower of prohibition against pledging tax-deferred homestead as security for reverse mortgage.” Thus, new participants who are reverse mortgage holders would not be permitted under the program.
If the bill is passed into law, however, the roughly 5,000 reverse mortgage borrowers who were dropped would see assistance for two years. The solution does not satisfy the hopes of senior advocates who spoke with Oregon news outlets following the bill’s passage in the house.
Written by Elizabeth Ecker
