Reverse mortgage professionals attending the industry’s annual meeting in New Orleans this week will hear pre-planned discussions of new regulations, new products and new counseling protocols, among other topics. They also will be mingling with one another – catching up on industry occurrences, looking for answers and sharing ideas at a time of considerable change.
“By far the most important topic is the TPO [third-party originator] issue,” maintains Dennis Haber, executive vice-president, Agency for Consumer Equity. “Sadly, to date, there has been total silence on this important issue,” according to Haber, who wants to hear about the “practical considerations that correspondents need to be aware of. Hopefully much light will be shed on this topic” at the meeting, he says. Haber also hopes wants more discussion of federal regulatory reforms, “such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will really impact the future federal regulatory environment.”
Joshua Shein, managing partner, Great Oak Lending Partners, says “many of us are interested in understanding more about the current uncertainty and fluctuations in the market with regards to the pricing of the loans. The big question,” he believes, “is how much more movement will there be and where will it end up?”
Jeffrey S. Taylor, chairman, RMI-Reverse Market Insight, Inc., tells RMD that he expects “a major topic” for the meeting to be the new HECM counseling protocol. “What will the impacts be to the new HECM counseling wait times and potential rise in cost?” he wonders. And, “with the T&I [tax and insurance] defaults becoming more of a default counseling resource issue,” Taylor asks: “Will the existing counseling resources be compromised from new origination counseling towards default counseling?”
Meeting in a city drenched in culture and history, reverse mortgage professionals will hope to come away with a stronger idea of whether and when their sector will live up to the considerable potential they regularly hear so much about.
Written by Neil Morse
