New Rules for Reverse Mortgage Interest Rate Pricing
If someone were to contact me under the former pricing policy, I could instantly quote and be almost 100% sure I could stand by my numbers.
Additionally, my numbers would be locked in for up to one hundred twenty days.
Today we can throw this nice long lock period out. Now this industry is pricing its loans like traditional forward mortgages such that we now have varying short lock periods.
Since most reverse mortgages take longer than the lock periods some customers will get burned. Quite a few senior borrowers are banking on the reverse mortgage to come in and pay off their forward mortgage.
Getting rid of the payment associated with the mortgage is their main goal.
Many times the lender will lend just barely enough to cover the payoff of the mortgage. Remember, part of the equation of how much a lender will lend is based upon interest rates.
The amount of money a borrower receives is inversely associated with the interest rate. For instance, when rates are low, the borrower gets more money. Conversely when they go up, the borrower gets less.
Where our group of customers may be in trouble is they will call in for a quote. Rates will be good that day and the lender will verbally green light the transaction.
Here is the worst case scenario. The customer goes through the process, gets counseling, application, even an appraisal and finally can lock in the loan. If rates take a turn for the worse during that period this loan is toast.
Now the borrower is stuck either waiting for rates to come down or is left with the choice of coming in with cash to pay off the mortgage.
This is the down side. The up side for the borrower is it will force lenders to be competitive in their pricing.
The new pricing should offer a better experience for customers such that it should, because of its complexity, sift out some of the weak reverse mortgage loan officers.
The reverse mortgage loan officers with knowledge and experience would understand how to properly present this to customers. My guess is they will win more customers.