HUD Helps Elderly Stay At Home With Grants

HUD AWARDS OVER $12 MILLION TO HELP THE ELDERLY AND PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES CONTINUE TO LIVE INDEPENDENTLY AT HOME

WASHINGTON - Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson today announced $12.1 million in Service Coordinator grants to provide more than 6,000 low-income frail elderly and residents with disabilities in federally supported housing with assistance to identify and receive health care, meals and other critical support services.

 

Option Arm Holders over 62- STOP PANICING! Get A Reverse Mortgage

Option ARM-holders: Time to Panic!!!

A mortgage called the option ARM offers a tantalizing possibility: The minimum payment is so low that you owe more on the house at the end of the month than at the beginning.

If you read Norton Juster's "The Phantom Tollbooth" as a kid, you're familiar with the concept. As the characters dine on a concoction called "subtraction soup," they become hungrier by the spoonful. They feel ravenous at the conclusion of the course.

An option ARM is like subtraction soup, except that a steady diet of minimum payments can result in a feeling of homelessness instead of hunger. To pile on the alarming rhetoric, a recent cover story in BusinessWeek dubbed the option ARMs "nightmare mortgages" and called them "toxic" and "deceptive."

Payment option adjustable-rate mortgages are appropriate for some borrowers in certain circumstances, and they're dangerous for other people.

 

Peter Bell-- Surge In Reverse Mortgages

NRMLA Touts Surge in Reverses
Federally insured reverse mortgages grew by 77% in fiscal year 2006, according to the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association. The Federal Housing Administration insured 76,351 Home Equity Conversion Mortgages in fiscal 2006 (ended Sept. 30), compared with 43,131 the year before. NRMLA attributed the dramatic growth to several factors, including high home appreciation rates that allow senior citizens to access greater amounts of equity; a growing number of lenders offering the product; and greater acceptance of reverse mortgages as a wealth management tool. "More seniors are recognizing that traditional retirements tools, such as IRAs, pensions, and 401(k)s, are not providing sufficient income to help fund everyday living expenses and health care," said Peter Bell, president of NRMLA. The Santa Ana, Calif., metropolitan area displaced Los Angeles as the top reverse mortgage market in the country, with 5,825 loans funded versus 3,067 in 2005, NRMLA reported. A reverse mortgage is a loan that enables homeowners 62 or older to borrow against the equity in their home without having to sell it or give up title. NRMLA can be found online at http://www.nrmlaonline.org.

Housing Market index -- One Year Lag-- Get your Reverse Mortgage Now!

Real Estate

Can the Economy Survive the Housing Bust?

Fortune on CNNMoney.com
By Jon Birger

Real estate downturns have a way of leading to recessions and stock market slumps. So far the damage has been limited, but the numbers keep getting worse, says Fortune's Jon Birger.

Tucked away in the briefcase of Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab & Co., is a chart so scary she's hesitant to show it to investors. It plots the National Association of Home Builders' Housing Market index - a monthly measure of builder confidence - against the Standard & Poor's 500 stock market index, with a one-year lag.

It turns out that the mood of builders is a terrific stock market bellwether: The correlation between current builder confidence and future stock market returns over the past ten years is downright unnerving.

Not only did the NAHB index presage the start of the post-1994 bull market in stocks, but its decline starting in 1999 foreshadowed the equity market collapse that came the following year. Builder confidence rebounded in November 2001 - a year ahead of the stock market upswing that began in October 2002.

Why is Sonders worried now? Just look at the chart. Over the past year, the NAHB housing index plummeted 54 percent. Were stocks to follow suit, the S&P - 1400 in late October - would be trading below 700 this time next year.

WSFS Financial Elects New VP PatrIcia Kauker

WSFS Financial Elects Patricia Kauker VP, Reverse Mortgage ...
Trading Markets - Los Angeles,CA,USA
(WSFS | charts | news | PowerRating) said that it has appointed Patricia Kauker as Vice President of newly created reverse mortgage business unit. ...

KANSAS: Medicaid planning in competition with Long Term Care.

Plain(s) Talk on Medicaid and Long-Term Care
The Heartland Institute - Chicago,IL,USA
... Conclusion 5 Home equity conversion is an enormous but largely ... except that Medicaid exempts the home and all ... A reverse mortgage specialist said, "We're ...

Cited research by Merrill Lynch's David Rosenberg

No Bottom Seen in Housing Market
Seeking Alpha - New York,NY,USA
... 10 million households that bought an existing home since June ... comes down, they may not have sufficient equity in the ... to do a refinance or a conversion from I/O ...

Canada- SASKATCHEWAN Reverse Mortgages

Reverse mortgages right for some, not for others
StarPhoenix - Saskatoon,Saskatchewan,Canada
If you are 60 years old or older, a reverse mortgage is a way to convert home equity into cash. It is a loan with no monthly repayments required. ...

Browyn Belling, AARP Foundation's Reverse Mortgage Specialist.

Risk To Heirs Gone With Reverse Mortgages
KCRA.com - Sacramento,CA,USA
... Browyn Belling, the AARP Foundation's reverse mortgage specialist, said the loans are a relatively new way to tap into home equity for those who are 62 and ...