subject: Reverse Home Mortgage – Why The Counselor Is Necessary [print this page] You may have heard stories about the reverse home mortgage marketers, who have sold too big loans with too high costs to seniors, who have not been able to judge the loan terms. A counselor is a representative of a nonprofit organization or a public agency. He is not handling a senior as an object of a sales pitch. His job is to help seniors.
1. Why To Meet The Reverse Home Mortgage Counselor?
The job of the reverse home mortgage counselor is to explain, how the reverse loan works, what are the alternatives and does it fit to your financial situation.If you plan to take the HECM loan, the counselor meeting is compulsory. It is possible to give a power of attorney to somebody, who goes to the meeting, but in the end of the day, you have to decide, whether you take the loan.
2. How To Find A Counselor?
It is really simple, because you have only one way. The correct place is the HUD owned National HECM Counseling Network. There you can find the closest counselor, the phone numbers, addresses, emails etc. Note, that before you take a contact, you should have done a question list for yourself.
3. Meeting Takes Only About An Hour.
It is up to you, how useful the meeting will become. The better you are prepared, the more useful are the results and the more you are able to ask. You can do a personal meeting, which takes an hour. A telephone meeting can require two meetings.
4. Ask The FAQ So You Can Prepare Your Questions.
This is the useful way, because most seniors ask the same questions. By using this list and adding your own questions. You can prepare an extremely useful list. This can cost you a little, but the agency must inform about that.
5. What Does The Counseling Cost?
The counseling is not free. The fee is maximum $ 125. However you can include this cost into your reverse mortgage expenses and pay it from the loan. I still underline, that you must go prepared to the meeting, because only then you will understand the guidance and are able to make the correct questions.
Because the counselors are not in the lenders payrolls, they are free to recommend to you the solution, which will fit to your financial situation. It can be something else, than the reverse loan. They can tell, how you keep the loan tax free and which of the lenders are reliable ones. They can even recommend, that you will wait for a while, if the market situation is not good for lending right now.
Reverse Home Mortgage Why The Counselor Is Necessary
