Households can borrow against equity through different channels, including home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), second liens, cash-out refinancing, and for senior homeowners, reverse mortgages. We use data from the New York Federal Reserve/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, the U.S. Department of...

Households borrow against home equity through different types of mortgages: closed end home equity loans or revolving lines of credit, cash-out refinancing, and—for senior homeowners—reverse mortgages. The objective of this study is to identify how borrowing constraints and the lending...

This paper examines how the extraction of home equity, including but not limited to equity extracted through reverse mortgages, affects credit outcomes of senior households. We use data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, supplemented with our unique credit...

Using a unique dataset of more than 14,000 senior homeowners in the U.S., this study compares self-assessed home values to arm's length contemporaneous appraisals. In a sample of seniors who received counseling for a reverse mortgage, the absolute value of the assessment error averages 18.9...

While reverse mortgages are intended as a tool to enable financial security for older homeowners, in 2014, nearly 12 percent of reverse mortgage borrowers in the federally insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program were in default on their property taxes or homeowners insurance....

Equity in a home can serve as an important source of supplemental income in retirement. Reverse mortgages allow seniors to draw down equity without selling their home, and without a monthly mortgage payment. The most widely used reverse mortgage product is offered by Federal Housing...

With the shifting of responsibility for retirement planning and risk from employers to employees, as well as the increasing complexity of household finances, researchers, policy makers and practitioners have become increasingly concerned with the financial literacy of the U.S. population....

This paper links the literatures on the life cycle hypothesis, homeownership, home equity, and pensions. Empirically, the focus is on the E.U. and U.S. It explores the extent that seniors extract their home equity and discusses the financial instruments available for equity extraction. We use...

Objectives: Reverse mortgages allow adults aged 62 and older to borrow against the equity in their homes without incurring monthly loan repayments. This study examines the relationship of reverse mortgage borrowing with older adults' satisfaction with their financial situation, housing, health,...