Yin Yang of Reverse Mortgage Closing Costs
There is no doubt, and I let my folks know this upfront, reverse mortgage closing costs, for FHA insured mortgages, are higher than typical forward mortgages.
Now, closing costs are high for three reasons... The first being closing costs are charged on the value of the home, not necessarily what the lender allows the borrower to cash out of the loan (aka "Available Principle Limit").
The second is FHA charges 2% of the value of the home up to $417,000. And the last is reverse mortgage lenders charge an origination fee .5% to 1% higher than typical forward mortgages.
One doesn't need to have a degree in advanced calculus to quickly figure out that closing costs are fairly expensive.
One could argue the origination fee is not really higher than a typical mortgage, because forward mortgages simply build the fee into the rate. That's another subject for another day.
Much of the differences in comparing closing costs between forward and reverse mortgages comes down to the FHA upfront mortgage insurance. For a home valued at $417,000 just the MIP is over $8,000. It's no doubt a bundle, but without it, most of the same people griping about costs couldn't use this tool.
To illustrate this point a 70 year old client with a 200 thousand $ mortgage, getting a HUD backed reverse mortgage, is entitled to receive somewhere in the neighborhood of $130,000.
Non-FHA products are not really in existence anymore. However, Fannie Mae had one prior to dumping it in the fall of '08. Here is one of the reasons why it's gone. The same customer would have been eligible to receive less than one hundred thousand dollars.
The reason the FHA product is so strong is that crummy insurance. The insurance guards the lenders against loss, thus allowing them to lend more money.
The biggest danger to a lender is the possible event that more is owed on the home than the actual value. The mortgage insurance covers lenders in this event.
Expensive, horrible, bitter FHA insurance hedges the lender's risk, which makes much more money available to borrowers. But in the end it allows so many seniors to solve stressful financial issues.
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