A Few Innovative Alternatives to Reverse Mortgages
Written by Sagetips on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 in Reverse Mortage.
As the march of baby boomers into retirement continues, the race is on in the financial industry to find innovative and cost-effective ways to unlock the enormous store of retirees’ home equity wealth in a way that doesn’t require regular loan payments. Estimates place the value of seniors’ home equity wealth at $3-$5 trillion and growing, so stakes are very high.
Reverse mortgages, in their many manifestations (HECM 1xx, Jumbo, HomeKeeper, etc., etc.), are the leading product at this point. They’ve been around for nearly twenty years now, are rapidly growing in popularity, but suffer somewhat from an image problem.
The Achilles heel of today’s reverse mortgage products is high costs (more…)