Urban Financial of America has improved the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio on its proprietary jumbo reverse mortgage product, HomeSafe, and has expanded the loan’s availability to an additional state, the lender stated in a bulletin to its wholesale partners.
The LTV improvement on the HomeSafe product applies across the board for all ages and will be available beginning March 15, Urban said in the bulletin. For these loans, a new LTV table will be used to calculate the higher principal limit.
“The HomeSafe is a very attractive product for higher value single family homes and condos, which has allowed us to get to work with our product development team to make continued improvements to our LTV tables,” said Urban’s Chief Sales Officer Sherry Apanay in an email statement to RMD.
As a result of the update, associates who previously sent Urban a scenario where a borrower was either short or “not content” with the amount of loan proceeds they qualified for, they may re-send that scenario to the company for an updated proposal.
HomeSafe, which became available to borrowers September 2, 2014, is a fixed-rate reverse mortgage that allows borrowers with high-value homes the opportunity to borrow up to $2.25 million in loan proceeds. As a jumbo loan, the HomeSafe product offers a substantially greater maximum lump sum option compared to the Federal Housing Administration’s Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program, which is just under $470,000.
When the loan initially rolled out, it was only available to qualifying borrowers in California, Florida, Hawaii and New Jersey. Since then, Urban has expanded the availability of the product to Texas, Colorado, Arizona and, most recently, Illinois, which Urban also announced in the same bulletin as the LTV improvement.
“HomeSafe 2.0 is a great opportunity for UFA to potentially qualify even more borrowers. As we add additional states as well, we are solidifying HomeSafe as the nation’s premiere jumbo reverse mortgage,” said Vice President of Urban’s Wholesale Lending Division Jonathan Scarpati.
HomeSafe is the first jumbo reverse mortgage product the industry has seen in four years, the most recent previously being the Generation Plus from Generation Mortgage.
A top-five reverse mortgage lender, according to the most recent data from Reverse Market Insight, Urban recorded 381 loans in January, bringing its 12-month trailing tally to 3,379 total units.
Written by Jason Oliva
