Reverse Mortgage Guide

The FHA has just come out with still-another notice regarding payments to mortgage counselors.

The notice states that:

“On September 28, 2007, a Final Rule was published in the Federal Register at 72 FR 55638 and codified at 24 CFR Part 214 establishing new regulations for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Housing Counseling Program. Included in the final rule is a provision authorizing housing counseling agencies to charge fees for counseling and education.

“HUD is in the process of finalizing a mortgagee letter to clarify HUD policy regarding reverse mortgage counseling fees in light of these regulations. Until the mortgagee letter is published, agencies must not charge fees for reverse mortgage counseling.

“Agencies may charge fees for pre-purchase, non-delinquency post-purchase, and rental counseling and education, provided they conform to the criteria in the final rule.

“However, no fees may be charged for clients needing homeless counseling or default counseling.”

The view here remains that while counselors can be paid for their efforts they cannot be paid by lenders.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 7:38 am and is filed under Reverse Mortgage . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.