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My condolences, I am truly sorry to hear that happened.
Don't worry about the RM company. If they cannot sell the home, they assign the mortgage to HUD and file a claim to be reimbursed.
TY and they sure didn't make a bundle of money. It is the tax payer who takes the hit. Reverse Mortgages have been bad for both consumers and lenders at times. They assume home appreciation when there may be none or in fact depreciation.
My condolences, I am truly sorry to hear that happened.
Don't worry about the RM company. If they cannot sell the home, they assign the mortgage to HUD and file a claim to be reimbursed.
My sister had a price controlled condo that she brought. For I believe 25 years if she sold she had to sell it back to the county at lower than market price. After that she could sell for market price. She was a few years short when she passed. She had investment money, a small pension and SS along with insurance money from her deceased husband. She had no intentions of wanting to leave anything to her kids but was frugal with her money. It was the illness that ate up her resources and my niece spent them down as legally required. My sister never took great care of her place and was a hoarder of knitting and that stuff and had room full of yarn and artsy stuff like candle making etc. She even had a storage unit of stuff. Old appliances and could care less and the fixtures etc were old. Beat up carpeting but a gold mine of artsy stuff. What could be sold as possible. My niece didn't have the time or inclination to try to sell and make money to give to the debtors. My sister had good credit and had credit cards with high limits and little if any balance at first. So my niece was able to max them out to pay for medical costs. Because she had assets at first and the line of credit along with good credit ratings she was able to get into top tier assisted living, rehab and eventually nursing care.
It was a typical story that repeats itself daily. The article failed to focus on how the RM ends up becoming a life line for some at the expense of a pay day for the heirs.
My sister had a price controlled condo that she brought. For I believe 25 years if she sold she had to sell it back to the county at lower than market price. After that she could sell for market price. She was a few years short when she passed. She had investment money, a small pension and SS along with insurance money from her deceased husband. She had no intentions of wanting to leave anything to her kids but was frugal with her money. It was the illness that ate up her resources and my niece spent them down as legally required. My sister never took great care of her place and was a hoarder of knitting and that stuff and had room full of yarn and artsy stuff like candle making etc. She even had a storage unit of stuff. Old appliances and could care less and the fixtures etc were old. Beat up carpeting but a gold mine of artsy stuff. What could be sold as possible. My niece didn't have the time or inclination to try to sell and make money to give to the debtors. My sister had good credit and had credit cards with high limits and little if any balance at first. So my niece was able to max them out to pay for medical costs. Because she had assets at first and the line of credit along with good credit ratings she was able to get into top tier assisted living, rehab and eventually nursing care.
It was a typical story that repeats itself daily. The article failed to focus on how the RM ends up becoming a life line for some at the expense of a pay day for the heirs.
I won't rule out RM being a good idea in some scenarios. As long as it's understood (and accepted) that there is a chance that it won't be something that's passed on, mortgage could be upside-down, all your kids have places to live, etc. then sometimes it's the only thing that will balance a budget.
This is why the fees , cost of insurance and higher interest rates eat up equity way way to fast for my taste
Try living in a development where, in the same month, came through for both a tax value reassessment (+30% "they had neglected to reassess for several consecutive years") AND added homes to a new flood plain who weren't mandated to have flood insurance prior!!!
We live in New York ...we have real estate taxes that run 15-25k a year for a small house.
My son had a small 1800 sq ft house and paid 23k a year in westchester
Geeeeeez. Are you flexible in where you are able to live, given what you do?
If not, heck, I'd figure you'd be living in NH with an LLC in Wyoming!!!
All kidding aside, mother's house:
The valuation went from $150k to almost $200k, taxes, although roughly 1% of value, combined with flood insurance:
Homeowners = $1000/yr
Property Tax = $2000/yr
Flood insure = $2000/yr on $100k of coverage (req'd to have it on at least the mortgage balance)
That's almost another mortgage payment (if it were a 30y), but still. It's large in relation to the mortgage, which I think is what seems ridiculous to me.
Tax value can be appealed, but the flood insurance was what got me. They're supposed to zone based off of 100 year flood plain and recorded water levels. HOWEVER: it has been published in our local paper that we've had two "500-year floods" within a decade's time. Neither time did water touch the home.
We rent and the economy of scale is far cheaper then a single family home when you live in a high rise ...our rent is barely more then the taxes on a single family home .....you can’t touch a single family home for under 7 figures in our area .
So we like renting because our money generates so much more for us staying invested where it is .
We owned a second home in the poconos where we thought we would retire to ..but after five years of part time life , no thanks ..
It lacked way to much of the things that would be important to us in retirement ..everything we want is right here in queens in nyc where we are , including all the grand kids are local and within an hour of us.
Even housing was not cheaper .... here it is just my wife and I... so all we need is our 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment..but in pa everyone stayed over so we needed a whole house .
Paying cash for the house and no mortgage had the house costing us 10k a year .. but the 250k in the house was costing us almost 10-12k in investment growth since we no longer were generating a thing with that money ...so that mortgage free house cost us more then rent ...we would have had less cash flow if we moved to pa where it was supposedly cheaper.
We were going to relocate a few years earlier then retirement but it really was a worse deal .
While we could make do on a third less income ,pay for what I did was half ....
Plus being at my peak earning years I was bumping out lower income years in my ss record .. one thing about high cost areas is wages tend to be higher and that can result in a much bigger ss check for life .
So higher taxes are usually not higher in a vacuum.. they are higher because home valuations are higher and valuations are higher because wages can be higher....
That 700k home that appreciated 3% a year over the decades is a whole lot more then that home in cheapsville being 150k and seeing the same 3% appreciation..
When you have someone here selling that home and taking their ss check to cheapsville in retirement they generally have more wealth then locals do who lived in cheapsville all their lives
Last edited by mathjak107; 06-25-2019 at 03:30 AM..
My in-laws got a reverse mortgage about twenty years ago from Wells Fargo. A few years ago Wells Fargo sold it to Champion Mortgage. That was about the same time we purchased a home with a reverse mortgage from AAG.
A little over a year ago, my in-laws got a phone call saying they needed to pay 230,000 to champion or they were going to be foreclosed on, saying hat they had deeded the house to my wife, and were in default.
Long story short, a few months before they purchased the Wells Fargo RM, they had listed my wife as beneficiary, for the house. They didn't know that would begin the current nightmare. Wells Fargo never knew it either. If someone had just contacted us to have my wife's name removed we could have done that and been done with it. But that's not the way Champion does business. They are in it to foreclose on everyone they can. Our lawyer repeatedly calls them and sends them information, and he never hears back.
My wife's father was in a constant state of worry, and the morning of July 5th he had what appeared to be a stroke and died. On Monday we have an appointment for Mediation in the local State Courthouse.
We are ready to hear them recount their lies to the mediator, but our lawyers ready for them.
I hope so anyway.
Today, on a whim, I found a website called consumeraffairs.com, which has reviews and ratings of many different businesses. I can totally believe what other people have said about Champion Mortgage. Check it out for yourself, and while there, look up AAG. Night and Day.
Yes, there are horror stories, and you can't control who might purchase your loan, you can hope that a company with an excellent reputation like AAG won't sell out to crooks like Champion.
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