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March 29, 2018 at 01:22 PM
While use of reverse mortgages isn’t widespread, advisors should nonetheless brush up on the products, as they could become the next “hot topic,” according to Wade Pfau, professor of Retirement Income in the Ph.D. in Financial and Retirement Planning program at The American College of Financial Services.
Pfau, along with other retirement planning experts and advisors, weighed in on the topic of reverse mortgages for seniors during a joint meeting March 23 in Washington by The American College of Financial Services and the Bipartisan Policy Institute.
Jocelyn Wright, director of The American College State Farm Center for Women in Financial Services, said during a panel at the event, titled the 2018 Housing Wealth in Retirement Symposium, that she sees a lack of education about reverse mortgages among advisors’ clients as well as advisors themselves.
There are “a lot of misconceptions about reverse mortgages,” Wright said, with clients often “very reluctant to go into the conversation because their home is the largest asset and they don’t want to risk” losing it.
“There’s also more education needed among the advisor population,” Wright added. Advisors are often reluctant “to bring up the conversation with clients because they are not aware fully of all of the aspects of a reverse mortgage, which in many cases might be to their [clients’] detriment.”
Providing “comprehensive financial planning to clients” should include having a conversation about a reverse mortgage to determine “if it should be pursued.”
Wright said she’d encourage advisors to work with a reverse mortgage specialist to get a better handle on their benefits and drawbacks.
Pfau told ThinkAdvisor in separate comments that while reverse mortgages “are still not used prevalently,” with less than 2% of qualifying households using them, they should still be on advisors’ radar.
Why? “Home equity is such an important asset and interest is growing as the media now reports much more positively about reverse mortgages,” Pfau said. “More clients will have questions, and this could evolve into the next hot topic as Social Security claiming was several years ago.”
