Putting Your Home Equity To Work
Paying off your mortgage is a major accomplishment AND an opportunity to leverage hard-earned equity to your advantage. In this video, Open Mortgage CEO and founder, Scott Gordon, discusses putting your equity to work. Some of the topics he covers:
- Reverse mortgages could provide you with access to funds for important daily expenses
- Downsizing might allow you to use equity to buy a more affordable home
- Traditional home equity loans could fund aging-in-place or other home improvements
- Some use a line of credit based on equity as an emergency source of funds
Things to know about Reverse Mortgages:
- At the conclusion of a reverse mortgage, the borrower must repay the loan and may have to sell the home or repay the loan from other proceeds
- Charges will be assessed with the loan, including an origination fee, closing costs, mortgage insurance premiums and servicing fees
- The loan balance grows over time and interest is charged on the outstanding balance
- The borrower remains responsible for property taxes, hazard insurance, and home maintenance, and failure to pay these amounts may result in the loss of the home
- Interest on a reverse mortgage is not tax-deductible until the borrower makes partial or full re-payment