Michael Pinter's Reverse Mortgage Blog

EverBank and Countrywide joined the lst of lenders looking to eliminate their 125 (1.25%)and 150 (1.5%)margin products. It just makes me wonder if we were better off to have started the lower margin products at all about two years ago (two years ago, the only margin available was 150) , because n...

I posted yesterday that Financial Fredom was eliminating it's lower margin products and that other lenders may follow. Three other lenders followed suit yesterday, JB Nutter, Senior Lending Network and Liberty Reverse all announced the elimination of their lower margin products. What amazes me ab...

I posted last week about how closing costs will rise for many Reverse Mortgage borrowers when the new housing bill gets figured out by HUD and put into place. Specifically, this was for borrowers who didn't need the additional funds they will be allowed to get, but will pay more for their 2% fee ...

I get a lot of comments at this blog and more than 95% of them are either strongly positive or strongly negative about Reverse Mortgages. I get very few people saying to me that they want to learn more about the product, or about the housing market or about the new housing bill. There is so much ...

I noticed two new things today. The first was that a bunch of economic "gurus" finally admitted that the housing market and the overall economy probably won't be recovering as quickly as they had first predicted. I heard that the housing market might take at least another year to recover. You can...

The math is simple, if your home is in a high-cost area and it is worth more than $450,000, and you are thinking about taking a HECM (an FHA insured Reverse Mortgage), you will pay more in closing costs after the new law goes into effect. Unless, you are looking for more cash than the current HEC...

If my calculations yesterday were correct, then MANY Reverse Mortgage loans will have higher closing costs (because of the higher limits) after the new laws go into effect. Remember, only the origination fee is getting capped, the 2% fee to HUD is based on the HUD limit for that area. If the limi...

I may have posted about this before, but I still encounter them all the time and I think it's imporatnt to explain what these are and that they are not true. 1) The lender "gets" the house - FALSE. A Reverse Mortgage is a lien on the property you continue to own, just like a regular "forward" mor...

Until HUD figures out the new bill that was signed into law last week, it is in most borrowers best interests to wait to see if they will get more funds and/or pay less in fees when the changes take effect. This is speculation because we don't know what HUD will announce in the coming weeks BUT  ...

I expressed a lot of joy last week that the new bill got signed into law and I got some negative feedback from several fellow originators about the provision in the bill that Down Payment Assistance (DPA) programs such as Nehemiah, were being ended soon. My feelings about DPA are mixed. While it ...