Currently viewing the tag: "United States Department of Housing and Urban Development"
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced today that $79 million (seventy-nine million dollars) will be made available for a broad range of housing counseling including how to qualify for a reverse mortgage in fiscal 2010. In times like these when reverse mortgage counseling can cost as high as $125, the additional money is a welcoming sign that more free reverse mortgage counseling should be forthcoming.
This funding represents a 27% increase over last year. HUD says the primary benefits of the program are to expand homeownership opportunities, improve access to affordable housing and preserve homeownership. Here is a list of some of the types of counseling the funds will pay for:
I thought it would be necessary to post this article just after my last “Lowest Reverse Mortgage Fees” because there are definitely some issues of concern about the ongoing costs of reverse mortgages, or any FHA loan for that matter. The last article defined the reasons for the dramatic decrease in up-front closing costs and fees associated with obtaining the reverse mortgage while this article aims to discuss the ongoing fees and charges that appear on a borrower’s reverse mortgage statement and thus, are added to the loan balance.
With all of the advanced warning and instructions we received from the state and many other sources, there can be no gray area when it comes to who has to have a license to originate loans in Arizona and how to get one. This is not the case for some loan officers who continue to ignore the SAFE Act requirements set by lawmakers that took affect on July 1, 2010.
I get the question a lot from prospective borrowers, “What are the disadvantages of a Reverse Mortgage?” It is a very easy question to answer because there actually are a few.
- Reverse Mortgages are Home Equity Loans and they will reduce the amount of equity you have in your home.
If you are in the market for a Reverse Mortgage, you probably are not trying to preserve long term equity, so this may not be a specific concern.
- Reverse Mortgages are currently insured by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) so the collateral for the loan, your home, must meet the HUD minimum property guidelines.
This is particularly difficult in some instances such as with mobile homes and condominiums.
- Reverse Mortgages are difficult to obtain if your loan closes with your property in a trust.
By now you have probably heard of the $250 million appropriation the Obama administration requested from congress in order to justify the expected losses from the FHA reverse mortgage program in fiscal 2011. A congressional sub-committee assigned a new number recently of $100 million less based on revised annual projections and the severe downturn in 2009 reverse mortgage volume. Even though the program is again, sure to get some kind of a principle loan amount reduction, at this time it’s not quite certain what exactly will happen to the program except that it won’t be as good to seniors as it was, just like last year’s principle loan amount reduction. I remember last year’s cut and how it was projected to reduce volume by 5% but low and behold, here we are down 30%! Now I am sure housing values had something to do with that and how much, I really don’t know. Let’s say the majority of the decrease in volume was from the decline in housing values nationwide and peg the number at, oh I don’t know, 25%. What that means is that the market worked all by itself without any turning of the screws by the fed. It means the principle loan amount reduction was not necessary and the housing crisis corrected the steep growth curve of reverse mortgage volume all by itself, rendering a much lower amount in losses for the program.
