Michael Pinter's Reverse Mortgage Blog

The truth is that the precedent for this came in 1998 when the Fed organized the bailout of Long Term Capital. It was deemed "Too Big to Fail" and a book with that title was written about it. My question is: Who determines what is too big and what is not too big? Why are AIG and Bear Steans too b...

I am still in shock at what is going on. The government has chosen to guarantee the takeover of Bear Stearns, to completely take over Fannie & Freddie, to let Lehman liquidate itself and now to take a 80% stake in AIG and lend them 85 Billion dollars. I have no idea if these decisions were right ...

My rep from Everbank Reverse  (formerly BNY, now a subsidiary of MetLife) just called me to let me know that three of my loans are now dead because they are discontinuing their non-FHA product. I now have to wait until HUD makes their announcement so I can close the loans as Home Equity Conversio...

I thought we would know by the end of August. We are still waiting on HUD to tell us what the new Reverse Mortgage limits will be throughout the country, when they will take effect, and when the product will be available for purchases and co-ops.  On another note, the bankruptcy of Lehman and the...

I posted yesterday that there were "fools" who thought they had the answer to the housing crisis and I got caught up and forgot to elaborate on that point. The "fools" are anyone who thinks: 1) The housing crisis can be fixed by rates going down. As I discussed yesterday, rates played a very smal...

I discussed yesterday why I believe very strongly that rates have almost nothing to do with the housing boom in 2003-2006, the subsequent housing bust, or getting us out of the current mess. When people talk about liquidity issues today, they are referring to the macro fact that banks and other l...

I mentioned yesterday that I thought that the takeoever of Frannie won't help the housing crisis. I got some comments and e-mails about why I felt that way. I have posted a lot about why I think the housing market won't come back until 2011. Just to summarize, there are millions of homes in forec...

I wish I knew. Here is what I do know: Fannie is the number one buyer of FHA Reverse Mortgages in the secondary market. Government control should provide stability and confidence for most of what the two GSE's are buying Shareholders' of both Fannie and Freddie are probably screwed This and any o...

We were supposed to have the new mortgagee letter from HUD by teh end of August. I have a bunch of borrowers that are all waiting to hear the news. Remember we are waiting to hear: 1) What the new Reverse Mortgage (HECM) limits will be 2) When they will take effect 3) When the HECM will be availa...

No one cares, it was a terrible product that was almost never used.