As part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s changes to HECM counseling, all HECM counselors will need to pass an exam to demonstrate their knowledge of reverse mortgages. In cooperation with HUD, AARP Foundation’s Reverse Mortgage Education Project (RMEP) will be administering the HUD HECM Counselor Exam.
The HECM counseling exam has 100 multiple choice questions and covers four major content categories (see table below). In order for counselors to be eligible to join the HUD HECM National Counselors Network, they must answer at least 80 of the 100 questions correctly.
| CONTENT CATEGORY | Percent of Test | Number of Questions |
| I – Reverse Mortgage (RM) Basics | 25% | 25 |
| II – RM Costs and Benefits | 50% | 50 |
| III – Options and Alternatives | 13% | 13 |
| IV – RM Counseling | 12% | 12 |
| 100% | 100 |
The exam website also includes study materials as well as sample questions which you can see here. If you would like to see a copy of the most recent HECM counseling policies and procedures click here.
Currently, the HUD HECM National Counseling Network includes over 500 counselors who have achieved the qualifying scores on previous HECM Counselor Exams. To learn more about what to expect from HUD’s new counseling protocol, see here.
