Reverse mortgages have been obtained by nearly one million senior households. In the future, the number of eligible households will grow substantially, about 80 percent are homeowners, and many of them have substantial equity in their home. We study state-level variations in rate of originations...

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....