Even if it’s not, houses appreciate 5% a year on average. Assuming average appreciation over 10 years that house is now worth ~163% of its original value. That means that the mortgage was taken out for ~61% of what a comparable house would go for today which assuming the same interest rate would be a fairly significant reduction in the monthly payment. You also have the potential to refinance to further reduce that monthly payment.
Or you could sell it and get that 10 years of equity + appreciation out in cash and that might be enough for a sizable down payment elsewhere.
TL;DR unless your parent’s place is a dump in a low demand area it’s an asset even if it isn’t paid off.
That’s valid, but if it’s a dump I would have a hard time describing it as an asset, at least in the financial sense. But I suppose it could be if you’re willing to put in the work to fix it up.
This is what the capitalist’s reverse mortgage scams they advertise 24/7 on Fox News are for.
And what a quintessentially stereotypical boomer thing to do too, basically leaving their paid off home to a bank for a pittance instead of their kid because fuck everything and everyone once they’re dead.
“Burn my trees upon death so no one can sit under them, and salt the Earth so no others can grow. Everything was mine and it’s no fair I can’t take it with me to supply side heaven.”
Regardless of the clear predation of the reverse mortgage industry, you realize they have to get the equity out of their house or they’ll starve to death, right?
The problem is the system itself, not elderly people who need to make ends meet.
You realize that predatory crutches become systemic necessities precisely because they band aid such systemic issues from being addressed properly right?
Social security exists because seniors were dying in the streets.
Predatory reverse mortgages shouldn’t exist to exploit desperate people who would otherwise die, anymore than payday loan traps shouldn’t exist getting people trapped in impossible interest traps over a one time shortfall.
Instead of going through the pain and having society respond through governmental policy change, you now have predators making things far worse long term installing themselves as the “free market solution” that needs to be protected by government while bleeding already struggling populations to new depths.
A pay day loan /reverse mortgage may save a person here or there, but their existence at large hurts so many more. I will say it point blank: it was worth a lot of people dying to get social security enacted, because it was a real solution to a real problem, not yet another level of con game drawing out the pain.
And no, social security would not have been enacted when it was without those deaths. It would have been a far worse outcome for society if some predatory workhouse industry moved in and “saved” them in some cruel for profit scheme and declaring the problem “solved.”
Oh ok, so you agree those seniors shouldn’t have eaten because reverse mortgage scams shouldn’t exist and your initial reply had no point, got it. How Seinfeldian.
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