Reverse Mortgage Alabama: Scott Underwood's Guide to Unlocking Home Equity for a Secure Retirement
Jun 05, 2024
Patricia
Learn about the potential of using your home to support your retirement on the Good Neighbor Podcast. In this episode, we talk with Scott Underwood, the owner of Reverse Mortgage Alabama. Scott explains how reverse mortgages can help homeowners aged 62 and above access their home's equity without selling it. He clarifies common misconceptions, highlighting that reverse mortgages are FHA-insured and homeowners retain their deed and title. Scott also discusses the benefits of reverse mortgages for managing living expenses and funding in-home care. For more information, visit reversemortgagealabama.com or call 205-908-2993. Don't miss this valuable episode that could change your retirement planning approach. Also, nominate your favorite local businesses at gnpbirmingham.com for a chance to be featured on the show! #GNPBirmingham #Birmingham #FinancialPlanning #ReverseMortgageAlabama #ReverseMortgage #Retirement #Equity #DebtConsolidation #TaxFree #LivingExpenses"
Learn about the potential of using your home to support your retirement on the Good Neighbor Podcast. In this episode, we talk with Scott Underwood, the owner of Reverse Mortgage Alabama. Scott explains how reverse mortgages can help homeowners aged 62 and above access their home's equity without selling it. He clarifies common misconceptions, highlighting that reverse mortgages are FHA-insured and homeowners retain their deed and title. Scott also discusses the benefits of reverse mortgages for managing living expenses and funding in-home care. For more information, visit reversemortgagealabama.com or call 205-908-2993. Don't miss this valuable episode that could change your retirement planning approach. Also, nominate your favorite local businesses at gnpbirmingham.com for a chance to be featured on the show! #GNPBirmingham #Birmingham #FinancialPlanning #ReverseMortgageAlabama #ReverseMortgage #Retirement #Equity #DebtConsolidation #TaxFree #LivingExpenses"
Speaker 1:
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Patricia Blondheim.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, patricia Blondheim, and today we have good neighbor Scott Underwood, and Scott is the owner of Reverse Mortgage Alabama in Birmingham. Scott, how are you today?
Speaker 3:
Doing great today, can't complain.
Speaker 2:
Well, I am really interested in knowing more about what you do. Can you kind of tell me a little bit about your business and about reverse mortgages and what they are and why they're needed?
Speaker 3:
Absolutely Reverse mortgages. They've been around for about 40 years but a lot of people have misconceptions. But they're for people age 62 and above to use the equity in their house for living expenses. They can get the equity out where they couldn't get it unless they sold the house and it's just like a backwards loan. It pays them the money in their house their equity and comes in real handy in this day and time for people who currently in this economy are putting stuff on their credit cards and they're getting out of control. A lot of people use these to help with in-home care, paying for caregivers, and then a lot of people, let's say, their house is halfway paid for. They'll use this product to get all that equity out to eliminate their house payment, which they didn't really think about it when they did it. They were going to carry it into their retirement years and it's huge.
Speaker 2:
Well, how does the current economic climate and housing market affect the viability in terms of reverse mortgages?
Speaker 3:
affect the viability in terms of reverse mortgages. Well, it's been horrible, but the mortgage market has been horrible. There's so many mortgage companies that have closed and people that have lost their jobs, and I feel like just recently, in the last few months, people have realized that we're not going to see the 299 and 399 rates anymore, so we might as well just do something, and I feel like a lot of people have just waited until the very last second, people with perfect credit calling me and saying it's perfect now, but it may not be in a month and it's perfect now, but it may not be in a month, so I've seen what they're predicting the mortgage rates to be and they're not expecting a whole lot of dropping in the next two years.
Speaker 2:
Scott, tell us a little bit about how you ended up here and how you ended up with reverse mortgages, and how you ended up with reverse mortgages.
Speaker 3:
Well, it's a very unique story. I was in the insurance business with my dad and he got a lot of calls for unique business ideas and one of them was in 2005 when they came out with Medicare Part D prescription drug plans. Somebody called and offered him a lot of Wal-Mart booths in the state doing human and Medicare and he didn't want it. So I took it over and nobody knew a thing about it and I thoroughly enjoyed it and I had so many people were really happy that I took the time with them. So the next phone call he got was somebody that was looking for insurance agents to become reverse mortgage originators.
Speaker 3:
But most of these insurance agents were old enough. They just said it's too complicated. So I said, well, I'm going to do this as a side gig and within six months it was all I wanted to do. So I just kind of left the insurance business behind me and I've been about 18 and a half years. I've been doing this and it's very satisfying and I can't say that I ever have an unsatisfied client. I'm just very, very honest with them from the start and we get along fine.
Speaker 2:
Scott, can you tell us about any misconceptions that people have about reverse mortgages? I mean, I'll bet there are a lot of them.
Speaker 3:
Sure, there's one huge one and it's been alive for a long time and it never gets squished, because this is an FHA-insured loan. The FHA insures it. For instance, if the house becomes upside down, the heirs can just give it to the FHA and you can't leave a debt to your heirs. Well, because the FHA insures it, even though it's written to a mortgage company like every other loan. People think it's a government loan and people think they take my house. Well, the fact of the matter is they design these to where there'll be equity left over and they won't have to use the FHA insurance. But they definitely don't want the house back and in most, almost all cases they don't get it back. But that is the most popular misconception.
Speaker 2:
So what you're saying is this is not. I guess. It could be looked at, I guess, as selling your home in advance, but that's not what this is. This is removing part of your equity and retaining the asset of your house.
Speaker 3:
You always retain your house. You never lose the deed or the title, so basically they're just they're giving you the equity in your house. So it's basically like a loan in reverse you can have it pay payments or give you just lump sums, but the house is still yours. The only difference is this is what people get confused with this protection it keeps you from it's kind of like PMI insurance on a regular loan, except it covers if the house is not worth enough because your neighborhoods went down a little bit and 20 or 30 years you've had it or you've lived too long and didn't keep up with it, the FHA will let you walk away from it without owing a dime or your heirs.
Speaker 2:
So, scott, it seems like this might be a tool that families can use. It's become more and more complicated, the business of aging, and people are not sure what they need to do to protect the assets of their aging relatives, to protect their own assets. This might be a good way to be able to afford the care that's necessary later in life without risking you know, the deed to your home, is that? Is that true?
Speaker 3:
Absolutely. Really. I have a hard time fathoming how the people who aren't calling me are making it these days with the inflation, and if they're on a fixed income, you know it's not going up but everything else is and, of course, more and more people. There's more people out there in the age bracket where they're going to get dementia and things like that.
Speaker 2:
They're going to need some kind of care or have to go to a nursing home. So I'm aware that a lot of people are going through a lot of machinations to make sure that, when they are of the age when they might need some extra care through a nursing home, that they put their home. You know, they have to go through the machinations of putting their home in a trust for a certain number of years before that inevitability happens um finding, you know, putting together a new revocable family trust.
Speaker 3:
Um, you're saying there's another way to do this you're saying there's another way to do this Exactly, and we we, my family, we worked with a elder care attorney and some believe and some don't, but he actually did the trust. This takes about 10 years, but he also recommended reverse mortgages as well, because you know it's very possible to get into a situation where the person spends $500,000.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's astounding, right? It's just it's an impossible situation for a lot of people. But if you have equity in a home, that makes everything a whole lot better and you retain the asset of your home for your heirs and for your estate, which I think is kind of outstanding. Scott, what do you do that lights you up?
Speaker 3:
What do you do for fun? Well, I've gotten. I guess I would have to say that it doesn't take a whole lot to keep me happy these days, but it doesn't matter unless it's raining hard. I take my dog for a walk every morning and I'm a car guy. I watch car shows, go to car shows. I still haven't lost that teenage love of cars, car shows.
Speaker 2:
I still haven't lost that teenage love of cars, and I'm sure you have encountered more than one hurdle in your life and, really honestly, that's what makes us right is how we deal with challenges and what the challenges are that we've had to surmount to get where we are. Do you have any sort of defining challenge that has happened to you that you can recall?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I've been drug into a lot of different family discrepancies, but I'm going to tell you the funny one. I was working with a lady and her sounding board was her granddaughter, who was 30. And we were close, we were involved in this. We were going through the steps and the lady drove to the doctor in her Volkswagen Bug convertible at 4 o'clock in the morning and so the granddaughter must have gotten really upset, told her she was taking the keys away and I got dragged into the middle of it. I got a call from my customer first, and then the granddaughter and then back and forth and I got drug into the middle of the conversation. Nobody ever wants to get involved in taking the keys away. So that was just one of my lessons. The other ones are more, um, trying to get family members with different opinions to agree, and occasionally I get drugged places like into a nursing home.
Speaker 3:
I guess your lesson is or mom can talk to all three brothers at the same time, Yep.
Speaker 2:
I do get drugged in. Well, that's what comes with becoming involved, you know, emotionally involved with the family. And how can you do this without being emotionally involved? The home is a very emotional place. That's also very emotional, and the protectiveness of their loving family. You end up in a place where you end up being more of a friend than a negotiator, right?
Speaker 3:
Someone who truly wants them to be able to get to the place that they want to get the way they want to get there. Yeah, truthfully, it's really easy to do this, because it's not like selling somebody a car whether they drive over the curb, it's done. This is a 30-day process, and so you can't shove it down their throat. So you just got to be the kind of person who's going to be honest and transparent. I know questions that the underwriter would ask somebody in two weeks and I go ahead and ask them up front and basically tell them this is what I think is going to happen, this is what you're going to get, and you know. If everything works out the way you told them and you're transparent, everybody's happy.
Speaker 3:
If not, most people are going to shut down. So it's really not that you have to worry about playing any games or practicing and overcoming an objection, because most people figure things out for themselves if you just put them in the right direction. Because most people figure things out for themselves if you just put them in the right direction. And generally the adult children want to be involved in it, which we always appreciate, because they're hearing the same things and they're either saying it's a good idea. It's a bad idea.
Speaker 2:
Well, Scott, what is something that you want our listeners to take away about Alabama reverse mortgage?
Speaker 3:
Well, if you have any questions about a reverse mortgage, you can go to my website and it has tremendous amounts of information on it. It's reversemortgagealabamacom. You can call me and just ask me questions, and we're in more states than just Alabama all the surrounding states and I make personal house calls from the mid to the top of the state. So if you're not comfortable doing a webcam or just over the phone, then I can come to you and we can discuss everything in person.
Speaker 2:
Wonderful. How can our listeners learn more? Tell us how to contact you.
Speaker 3:
My website, as I mentioned earlier, is reversemortgagealabamacom. It's reversemortgagealabamacom.
Speaker 2:
And I have several phone numbers, but the most direct one is 205-908-2993. And I'll link to all this in the description. Scott, thank you so much for coming by and sharing this important topic with us and your business.
Speaker 1:
Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbirminghamcom. That's gnpbirminghamcom, or call 205-952-0148.
