Ken Keranen's (kennyarnold) Blog

While attending RainCamp yesterday in San Diego, I received a call from a woman who wanted information on how a Reverse Mortgage for Home Purchase would work for her mom.  Her dad had died within the past year and now the daughter wanted mom to live closer to her in North San Diego County.  The l...

A Reverse Mortgage for home purchase presentation that I made yesterday to a group of Prudential RE agents really got their attention.  I showed them examples of how much a senior buyer could put down on a specific property and then make no payments.  These Realtors recognized that they may be ab...

More potential clients have contacted me recently who are in their 60's.  17 years ago, when I first began originating Reverse Mortgages, almost every client was in his or her 70's or early 80's.  In a recent article in "Reverse Market Insight", my personal observations were verified.  According ...

I was surprised but not shocked when I read an article in the July 6th edition of Time by Stephen Gandel.  One of the "Six Problems the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Should Tackle First" that he cited is Reverse Mortgages.  He got it all wrong!  He implied that the bank essentially buys th...

I received a call yesterday from a prospective purchaser of a  home who was going to sign an application for a HECM (FHA Reverse Mortgage) loan through another lender.  He had found my name and some of the articles I had written and called me up to see if there might be a "better deal" than the o...

The HUD/FHA Reverse Mortgage for Home Purchase Program has been slow to take off.  The program was formalized by HUD to begin taking place around the first of January 2009.  After a quick initial jump in number of fundings, the rate hovered around 130 units per month nationally for the last 6 mon...

Wednesday the House of Representatives passed the so-called Wall Street Reform Bill by a vote of 237 to 192.  Now it moves onto the Senate where it is probably going to be looked at beginning July 12th and probably passed.  Buried in it's 2000 pages, is the outline of a new Federal Bureaucracy ca...

If your client is thinking about using the FHA Reverse Mortgage for Home Purchase Program to buy their retirement home, I think that you could begin by estimating the approximate down payment needed.  You can do this by going to a reverse mortgage calculator like the one we have at HomeServices L...

Sometimes a Realtor should say YES! to paying for a repair on behalf of a buyer.  FHA does not permit the senior buyer to pay for any costs of repairs for a home purchase when using their Reverse Mortgage for Home Purchase Program. I ran into a situation today where neither the seller (a major ba...