Reverse Mortgage Loan Blog

Tomball resident Buford Thomason is a man who lives within his means.

But even that isn’t enough to keep his financial situation stable.

His wife of 52 years passed away in March of 2007, and the home they shared for the last 14 years is need of repairs.

Thomason is retired and in his 70s. He used to supplement his income by consulting for oil fields, but that work has recently dried up.

“Which leaves me trying to get by with Social Security and doing this with the house notes and living expenses you have, I’m in a position where I didn’t want to get behind on my house payments,” Thomason said.

That’s why he’s opted for something called a reverse mortgage. It’s a government-insured program for people over 62 that allows lenders to offer anywhere from 40 to 75 percent of a home’s appraised value tax free, using the home itself as collateral.

“The money you receive through that, they do not have to pay back as long as they live in their home. It stays their home. It doesn’t become somebody else’s. When they pass away, the home passes to whomever they want to leave it to. That person has the choice to keep or sell,” Larry Olez of Reverse Mortgage of Texas said.

The beneficiary can either pay off the loan or pocket the difference after the house is sold.

The FHA said the number of reverse mortgages has more than doubled in the last three years in the Houston area, from 762 in 2005 to 1,800 in 2008.

But it’s necessary for people like Thomason, who never imagined they’d have to shift things into reverse to keep moving forward.

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