The answer to the question of “Is now really the best time to get a Reverse Mortgage?” is mostly dependent on your own personal situation. If you need to increase your monthly income or reduce your housing expenses or require a lump sum of cash, then a Reverse Mortgage can be a great way to achieve your objective.
While the fall in home values means that you probably have less home equity to borrow from now than a few years ago, there are a few reasons that make 2009 a particularly good time to consider a Reverse Mortgage.
Designed to help seniors access more of their home equity to fund retirement expenses during this economic crisis, Congress passed legislation that increases Reverse Mortgage loan limits to $625,500. The new loan limit is effective for loans in 2009 and will remain in effect until December 31, 2009.
Reverse Mortgage loan limits were as low as $200,160 last year so this is a huge increase which could significantly improve your financial situation.
While $625,500 is the maximum, your HUD-approved lender will determine your actual loan amount by using the value of your home, prevailing interest rates, the amount of any outstanding loans against your house and your age.
In a continued effort to spur lending and spending, the federal government has lowered and kept interest rates at historically low levels. While impossible to forecast, rates are expected to rise slowly in the future.
Different reverse mortgage programs employ different base index rates, usually either the one-year Treasury bill (T-bill) rate, or the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR). All of these interest rates are currently very low compared to their average levels, meaning that the impact on your equity of a reverse mortgage may be proportionally smaller than it would normally be.
2009 is likely to be a year long remembered for the global financial crisis. The extent of the problem is deep, but how long these troubles will last is unknown.
For retirees, the economic problems are most apparent in retirement savings accounts. Anyone who had exposure to the financial markets has seen a significant decrease in their total assets. This is devastating for retirees who require these savings to fund retirement.
For retirees who can afford to wait, there is a new law that suspends required IRA distributions in 2009. This gives those who can afford to leave their retirement savings alone a better chance of recovering some of the investment losses they might have sustained last year.
A Reverse Mortgage could potentially help you bridge an income gap and enable you to either postpone any withdrawals from your savings or allow you to supplement any withdrawals.
A viable alternative to a Reverse Mortgage has always been a home equity loan. However, fallout from the economic crisis are making these types of loans much more difficult to get for many seniors.
To begin, housing values have fallen so much that many homeowners lack sufficient equity to borrow. Additionally, tougher income and credit requirements make these types of loans very difficult to secure right now.
Seniors who were once unsure about the viability of a Reverse Mortgage are flocking to the product. Loan applications have increased 14 percent over last year and the Wall Street Journal reports that demand for Reverse Mortgages is increasing as retirement savings have lost value during the current economic crisis.
Home equity represents the bulk of most seniors’ assets. A Reverse Mortgage enables you to tap that money to use on retirement expenses. A Reverse Mortgage also enables you to eliminate your mortgage payment – representing significant savings each month.
Continue here to get rate quotes and find out if a Reverse Mortgage is right for you.
