Reverse Mortgage Lenders
When I started in the Reverse Mortgage business, many years ago, there were only two or three Reverse Mortgage lenders in the whole country. Today, there are many and out of the many lender choices, few of them provide funding for Reverse Mortgage loans without actually getting into the retail market as well. For those of you whom might not know what a retail lender does, it is simply explained that a retail mortgage lender will deal directly with the customer who is in fact the borrower. Here is a list of Reverse Mortgage lenders that might or might not provide retail services but they all definitely do provide money for the funding of Reverse Mortgage loans. I have had a relationship with all of these lenders at one time and can give you my “hands on” experiences with them.
In this first section, I have listed Reverse Mortgage lenders that only do Reverse Mortgage lending. None of the following lenders are involved in traditional mortgage lending and focus solely on Reverse Mortgages. If you are a Reverse Mortgage customer, you may find these lenders more Reverse Mortgage friendly than others. I have also issued my owned ratings for my experiences with these lenders. Five stars is tops and means the lender has never dropped the ball under any circumstances, four stars means there was a problem with one customer and three stars or less could indicate that my experiences with these lenders have been ongoing.
Urban Financial Group *****
Genworth Financial *****
Live Well Financial ****
Security One Lending ***
JB Nutter ***
Financial Freedom **
The next section of Reverse Mortgage lenders represents a group of companies that derive most of their income from other business lines like retail banking, insurance and other financial services. It is typical for customers of these companies to look to them for Reverse Mortgage services but buyer beware, as with any type of financial product, shopping around could save you a bundle. Especially if you are a customer of one of the larger retail banks that do not have a discounting policy for Reverse Mortgage customers and give no credit, whatsoever, to an existing banking or insurance customer based on the fact that they are already a customer and should probably get some kind of reward for that….you’d think. Five stars is tops and means the lender has never dropped the ball under any circumstances, four stars means there was a problem with one customer and three stars or less could indicate that my experiences with these lenders have been ongoing.
Sun West Mortgage *****
Wells Fargo **
Bank of America **
Met Life **
It’s no secret that the large banks score low here. After all, the person with whom you deal with directly is the most important person in a Reverse Mortgage transaction. When you go to the larger financial institutions, the loan officer or sales person you are working with is sworn into all of the big bank philosophies and policies. It’s the same for me. If I broker a loan to one of these banks, the employees that underwrite and process the transaction are all bank or insurance company employees that live under the big corporate rule of PROFIT. If there is anything I’v e learned in my 20 years in financial services, it is that profit doesn’t always follow taking care of the customer first.
Michael Manfredi is a Reverse Mortgage specialist who’s inside perspective on large financial services companies comes from his past employment with Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter, Prudential and many others. His current involvement with Reverse Mortgage lenders gives him a front-line perspective on Reverse Mortgage transactions.
