Shaking Some TALC on Reverse Mortgages

I saw something online and thought, gee a straight answer about reverse mortgages.

Financial Freedom, a reverse mortgage lender, has an interesting set of questions and answers regarding such loans.

One point they bring up is the importance of knowing how much a reverse mortgage actually costs.

The relevant question and answer looks like this:

“Q. What is “TALC” and why should I know about it?”

“A. TALC is short for “Total Annual Loan Cost.” It combines all of the costs of a reverse mortgage into a single annual average rate and can be very useful when comparing one type of reverse mortgage to another.

“Reverse mortgages vary considerably in features, benefits, and costs. It’s not always easy to compare “apples to apples.” If you are considering a reverse mortgage, be sure to ask the lender or counselor to explain the TALC rates for the various reverse mortgage products.”

I actually wish the TALC itself were better. The ones I have seen show cost disclosures at years two, nine, 17 and 24. How about after one year?

As always with reverse mortgages, speak with an attorney who specializes in elder law before selecting a reverse mortgage product.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 4:05 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.