Reverse Mortgage Age Limits

These much-needed guidelines follow a phase of insecurity in which creditors and service providers were faced with uncertainties. While the new regulations tackle many of the problems of non-borrowing married couples, one of the main deficiencies of the regulations is that they do not adequately reflect the reweighting of capital that is often necessary to replace these new borrower.

In the mortgage lender's letter it is merely stated that "[a] disbursement may be made to decrease the amount of capital outstanding in order to satisfy the conditions. "It is not determined how this amount is to be calculated or whether the value enhancement of the associated assets would enhance the main lending ratio of the non-debt financing spouse. However, it is not determined how this amount is to be calculated. PLF is the amount that would have been claimed if the surrendering non-borrowing partner had been an initial debtor of the credit.

This means in practical terms that if a living, non-borrowing spouse is younger than the initial borrowers, he or she is likely to have to make an immediate flat-rate capital charge on the loans - a disbursement that the living, non-borrowing spouse may not have the funds to make. In order to determine the new main lending ratio, HUD needs to determine the methodology by which service providers should determine the actual main lending threshold for the non-lending partner.

HUD should also determine whether and how HECM's service providers use resources when a disbursement is made to decrease the main outstanding credit. The HUD should also provide guidance on how to handle non-lending marriage partners below the HECM age. Throughout eighteen time period, HECM investor person been accompanying with content related to the proceeding of residence busy by non-borrowers who outlived their recipient spouse.

From a historical point of view, some pairs who applied for reverse mortgage went to great lengths not to involve the younger partner in the loans in order to raise the amount initially disbursed and the related line of credit available under the loans. According to the HUD-HECM rules, the lifelong postponement of debt repayments is applicable only to the borrowers on HECM and is not expanded to non-lending partners.

In the event of the debtor dying or moving out of the home, the credit becomes due and payable, which means that a non-lending spouse either pays the entire amount of the credit or is subject to enforcement. It has the nature of the way HUD has long used HECM service providers to deal with the deaths of borrowers who survive a non-lending marriage partner.

According to the Tribunal, a clause of the HECM status permitted HUD to cover only those homeowners who became due after the death of both the owner of the home - the debtor and the owner's partner, regardless of whether that partner was a non-citizen or a fellow citizen. HUD published a press statement on 25 June 2014, following a similar order in a seperate case, FHA INFO #14-34, which gave HECM service providers an unlimited prolongation of the deadline for taking the first steps in law to initiate enforcement and to meet the appropriate due care periods laid down in HUD's rule.

Prolongation for an unlimited period is based on the fulfilment of several criteria, the most remarkable of which is that the amount of the credit must be converted to the main limiting criterion of the non-user partner. Unfortunately, HUD's instructions do not explain how HECM service providers should charge the new PLF of a non-borrowing spouse in order to be eligible for an unlimited prolongation of enforcement.

There is a potential that HUD could apply fines to the staff for the duration of the unlimited prolongation of the enforcement if HUD later finds that the staff members have wrongly applied the compensation coefficient. The Mortgage Letter 2015-03 does not sufficiently answer the exact question it was aiming at, in particular one of the industry's largest FHA INFO # 14-34 questions: How can you calculate the necessary amount of re-balancing to challenge a HECM for allocation to HUD?

The Service Provider must institute execution if it does not allocate HECM to HUD. Unless these questions are further addressed, HECM service providers will still face many of the same problems that have confused the sector since Bennett's ruling. Mortgage Servicing News first published this issue on February 24, 2015.