[Speaker 5] (0:07 - 1:35)
I'm Bob Powell. I'll be tonight's moderator. Among other things, I'm the chair of the Swampscot Senior Center and the co-chair of the Swampscot for All Ages Committee.

So a couple of housekeeping notes. This is the fourth and final of our housing series. And how many of you have been here for all four of these so far?

Thank you all for coming to all of them. Hopefully they've been worthwhile for you. Two other housekeeping notes.

One is, if you do have questions, each presenter is going to talk for about 15 minutes. We have, in some cases, a slide presentation. In other cases, just a discussion.

And then we'll save about five minutes for questions for the speaker. And then, time permitting, we'll have you all ask other questions if we didn't get to them. And then, if you do have a question, we have a microphone.

And we'll run it over to you. Heidi will run it over to you. Before you ask your question, just raise your hand.

And she'll run the microphone over to you. And we do that because we're taping these. And so, for the benefit of the folks who might be watching these later on on demand, it's just better that we have your voice recorded, even though we know we can hear you in the room.

So let's get to it. We have four speakers tonight. And our first is Matt Blanchard.

He's with Leader Bank. And he is a mortgage expert. He studies real estate economics here in Essex County.

And he has a short presentation. And let's get to it, Matt.

[Speaker 2] (1:35 - 20:54)
So my name's Matt Blanchard, Leader Bank. I'm going to hold this and kind of move a little bit, if that still works for everybody. So I am a real estate economics geek, as well as a mortgage guy.

I present to Jody's office and about 16 other offices throughout Essex County every month on real estate economics. And so I combine real estate economics as part of my day-to-day, and then move in the wonderful world of financing. And this conversation that's up here, I come across pretty much every day, more so in my day-to-day life walking into Crosby's or going someplace a family friend will say, I'd love to move, but, or I'd love to downsize, but.

And so this is my conversation. I'd love to sell. Why don't you?

Well, rates are too high. Well, if you're downsizing, do you really need a mortgage? And if you do, does that change in rate, like does it matter as much as you think it does?

Okay, we'll get to that. The market's too competitive. Okay, that's fair, but you're a seller first, right?

You want a competitive market. And if you're downsizing in theory, that first property that you're selling is probably a little bit more expensive than the next property. And that should be to your advantage in this market.

I'd love to sell my house first, but I don't want to be homeless. And this one is probably the most prevalent and the most popular. But what if we could figure out a way to buy the next house before you sold now?

And that's the goal of all of this. There's no place to go. That one I get a lot.

There's not a ton of inventory. There's not a lot of options. But what if that perfect house does come on?

What are you going to do? But you're not set up. You haven't talked to your financial advisor.

You haven't talked to a mortgage person. You're stuck and you watch it go. Because they sell quick.

Ask Jody. They go fast. But if you're queued up and ready to go, you've got your game plan, then at least we have a plan in play.

You may not get the house, but at least you're in the game. And so this is my typical conversation. And as a result of this conversation, I built out a whole dog and pony show that I call the art of downsizing.

And so we're truncating all of this. And I promise I'm going to go as fast as I can to get it in 15 minutes. It's normally about a half an hour.

So I've cut it and we're going to keep moving. And I hope this may or may not work. No.

There we go. So the demographics. This group right here, just to summarize, this bright marigold color, these are millennials.

The average age of a first time homebuyer is 34 years old. We are coming into or right now are living in the time with the most 34 year olds in history. Right here, stacked up, ready to go, ready to buy houses.

And so as a, you know, as a generation looking to downsize. This is the best data and demographics we've seen in history with this huge group. The boomers were the biggest group in history until they had kids, right?

And they had more kids. And so that's why that marigold, that wave that's coming in behind you is huge. And they really, really, really want to buy your house.

And a lot of them have been struggling to do so. So the demand is there. We know that.

And your group, your demographic owns the majority, the lion's share of real estate. This is fresh, up to date. 54.2% of U.S. homes, you know, are now owned as of September. So you're in the driver's seat, folks. And you want to be, you're going to be a seller first in theory if you're looking to downsize if you're a homeowner today. So utilize that.

Take, play that to your advantage. Part of the reason we have such low inventory is because after the bubble burst, this right here is really hard to see. But 2000, 2005, we were building a boatload of houses.

This is all new construction building. And then in 2008, new construction stopped. It fell off a cliff.

Why? They had too much inventory. They couldn't sell their houses.

Toll Brothers, Lenar, all these big builders said, uh-oh, we got caught. We have too much inventory and we can't sell for a profit. And there's a fantastic press conference, the CFO of Toll Brothers back then that said they're going to change their model.

They're no longer going to build on spec. They're going to build fewer, larger houses. And they did.

And so we've been undersupplying the market since that day. We're building right now the same number of houses that we built in 1972. There's a heck of a lot more humans than there were in 1972.

And there's a heck of a lot more millennials looking to buy. So there's a lot of things that add to this inventory shortage. This is another one.

Ever since Chip and Joanna came on the scene and started telling us all how to redecorate our houses and HGTV, everybody wants to put up shiplap and stay in their house forever. That's my favorite argument. But there's more to it.

People are staying in their houses a lot longer. So this green bar are how long people stayed in their houses until 2009. You know, five or six, seven years.

And then we jump up and now people are staying in their houses longer. People are living longer. They're aging in place.

So that sucks up inventory. We're not turning over houses as fast as we used to. So there's a lot of things at play here.

And then this last couple years, the move up, move sideways, even move down buyer are all stuck with these super wonderful low rates. And they're paying the buck for this cycling of inventory that we usually see. I'm a mortgage guy.

But trust me, I loved the 2.875 interest rates. It was fun. But now we've got people stuck.

Seventy percent of people have mortgage rates less than 4%. And they're not in a hurry to trade those in for a six, you know, today's average rate is about six and a half. So all three of those things compounded together put us in the position where we are today with a lot less inventory than we typically would have and home values skyrocketing.

You don't need to know all these little numbers and data points. But this is 1991 and the average house in the United States was $100,000 then. And today we're running at 434, I think is the number.

That's a lot of appreciation in a very quick amount of time. But if you've been a homeowner since 1991, you've done all right. And so my goal now as we get into some of these levers you can pull is to teach you how to leverage that without really, without too much extra stress.

Some things that you may not have considered. I'm going to show you three more data economic slides and then we're going to move forward. This is a snapshot from the National Association of Realtors.

They put this out every month. And the one thing I want you to focus on here is 4.2 months supply of inventory. When you run a business or you're a manufacturer, you think you've got a certain number of widgets and based on how fast you sell the widgets, that's how many months supply of widgets you have.

Our world in real estate, we've got houses. We have 4.2 months supply of houses. It would take us 4.2 months to sell all the houses in the United States at the current speed in which we're selling them, 4.2 months. Six months is considered a balanced market. That means there's one buyer for every seller. So right now nationally, there's like one and a half buyers for every house, still a seller's market.

Fifty-three percent of all inventory that's on the market today is in Florida or in Texas. What I'm going to tell you and show you, it's not the same here. And I just did Essex County.

I didn't know if everybody was from Swampscot, but there's 1.9 months supply in Swampscot as well. So we have less than half the inventory in terms of how quickly we're moving through it. 1.9 months supply, that means that we've got just about three buyers for every house in Essex County, and that is similarly true in Swampscot. So those two data points, that's it. Things are moving a heck of a lot faster, and it's more competitive here. We have less inventory.

Moving a lot faster, 22, 23 days on market here versus about 60 days is the average length of time a house stays on the market in the U.S. All right. It's not just me who's telling you this. This was February of this year, Housing Wire Magazine.

It's a rag for mortgage geeks and real estate nerds. Top front page, Boston, the nation's hottest market. And it wasn't Boston itself, the city.

It was actually northeastern Massachusetts. That's us. So running, and Jody knows this because I do this presentation, this dog and pony show all the time, separately for them about economics, we've been consistently one of the hottest counties in the United States since February of this year.

We've like top 10, Austin, California. So clearly the data, the demographics, it's a seller's market, and hopefully many of you are sellers. So how do I suggest you avoid being homeless in this market?

There's a couple different things. You have a lot, many of you, as I sit down and talk to, have a lot more moving pieces and things set aside that you don't consider as part of your real estate transaction. The first being a IRA rollover, and so we see this a lot.

In the spring, about 40% of all transactions are cash. Well, let me assure you that most of those are not, that's not money in a checking account. It's other funds that are moved from, you know, one account to the next, and it appears as cash at closing.

The sellers don't know any different, but it's money that moves around. A 60-day rollover on your IRA is something that every IRA typically has available to it, where you could write a check. Say your IRA has a million dollars in it, and you want to go buy a $500,000 house.

You could write a check for that house out of your IRA, and within 60 days, you have to put that money back in with no tax obligation. There's a wire fee, maybe 40 bucks to do that. Why you would do this?

Why would you take the risk and move money out of your IRA and write a check? That's a crazy tax hit that no one ever wants to deal with. You would do this if you were selling your house and had a contract to sign and then a preapproval letter and a full commitment from someone who was walking in to buy your house.

You would leverage this three days before closing. You would have all the assurances in the world from the current buyer of your house that they were about to close. Maybe you needed a little bit of extra time to bridge the gap.

Cash offer, knowing that you're going to sell your house before this ever happens. This is probably the most common way that we see cash offers actually transacted, other than just someone who has a lot of money writing a big check. Non-qualified account or a margin loan, if you have a money market, if you have a taxable investment account, you can typically borrow against it.

It's not something that we talked about a lot in the old days because mortgage interest rates were so much better than the Fed Fund's overnight rate. Well, right now, if you borrowed money from me, might get a six and a half, maybe a six percent if you got great credit. You go here, and you can take money against your own money, and it's maybe eight percent.

This is something you would do short-term while your house is on the market, while you're staging your house, while you're selling your existing house. It's a short-term loan. You're bridging yourself the money from you to you at eight percent.

Why would you do this and not a mortgage? Well, there's no transaction costs. There's no underwriting.

There's no appraisal. You're going to save $3,500 to $4,000 by doing this yourself. You've already got the money, but not a lot of people have taxable accounts.

But just one other tool to have out there, a 401k loan. If you're actively still working, and you have an existing 401k, you can typically borrow 25, sometimes up to $50,000 from your 401k. If there are two of you in a household, you can both do that, and now you're talking down payment money on your next house if you were going to go in and sell.

A home equity line of credit. So this one, if you're thinking about taking out a home equity line on your existing house to go by your next house, please call me first. Because a home equity line is paid back much faster than a 30-year mortgage.

So the typical term on a home equity line is 20 years. That's more money than if you borrowed it on a 30-year that you'd have to spend every month. This is a fantastic tool to have set up on your house.

It's even more fun and better to set it up while you're still working. If any of you are still working, go get a HELOC today. Put it on your house.

I have one on my house. It's like my rainy day fund. If anything ever, if crap hit the proverbial fan, I'm going to my HELOC first.

I don't keep as much money in my savings account. So a HELOC is a wonderful way to bridge most home equity lines and just cap out at about $500,000. So know that if you want to borrow more than 500, this can be a tricky way to get in and access.

Even if you have a million dollars in equity available, the HELOC can be tough to get all that you need. What I'm trying to give you are lots of different tools in your tool belt to maybe layer a few of these things on together. And then ideally, you don't need a mortgage or a cash buyer.

So cashing out completely on your house, Jody and I talked about this one today. Let's say you have a $600,000 house. You can do a cash out refinance today where you take out 80% of the home value, $540,000, and just drop it in your account.

And you have to cash. It's yours. But you're immediately going to start paying back a very large monthly payment on this for the entirety of that mortgage.

If you go back, the HELOC is nice because you don't start paying it back until you use it. With this one, a full cash out, you have all of your money, but you're paying all of it back immediately. I have a guy who did this out in Boxford.

I thought he was crazy. He leveraged as much as he could, took out an $800,000 mortgage, and he had it all sitting there. And I kept thinking to myself, this is a big monthly payment.

Right? He's going to have to pay this. If he doesn't find a house, he's in trouble.

But he was a cash buyer. He found a house in like 45 days, and he just walked in and wrote a big check, and he was done. So he carried that only for a month or so.

And from his perspective, he got a better deal on his house that he was about to buy because he was a cash buyer. No contingencies, no appraisal. He got to negotiate.

And yeah, he spent $7,000 or $8,000 on the carry costs for the month. But his argument was, I saved that in my negotiation on my next property. So everyone's got their own, you know, approach on the risk and what they're willing to do.

A delayed closing, you could sell your house, call Jody, sell your house today, get it under agreement, and say it's subject to me finding suitable housing. I almost assure you, if you price that house right, there is a millennial in their parents' basement or in their in-laws' basement who is dying to buy your house and will say, I will buy your house today. Stay as long as you want.

If you let me in this house and I can get out from under my in-laws, I'll let you stay as long as you want. So this one's really popular. We didn't used to do this a lot.

Attorneys would say, this is kind of too risky. We don't want this going on forever. But the reality is your interests are aligned.

The buyers want to move in and you want to move out, right? With a delayed closing, this gives you time to get out there and shop. You've got a commitment on your end.

You're less concerned about being homeless. A lease back is very interesting. And the attorneys really didn't used to like this one.

And since COVID happened, they're everywhere. You sell your house, sell your house December 1st and say, I'd like to stay in my house for another 60 days. That buyer of that house does not need to move in by rights for 60 days.

They could let you stay there for 60 days and rent back or not even rent back, just work out a deal together where now you're living in your own house. You have all your own cash to go be a cash buyer in the next, on the next property. So what's really interesting is if you didn't have a way to put this all together with financing, ask for a delayed closing and then maybe some kind of lease back combo and next thing you know, you're in play.

And, you know, and you're moving in. Assets as income, this is probably the most missed part of life as a retiree. All of your money in your world is set aside.

It's in a 401k. It's in an IRA. We have what's called an asset depletion program and we look at your assets and if you have a million dollars in the bank, it's the equivalent of having $50,000 a year of additional income on top of what you already have for income.

So there's this calculation that we plug in and say, all right, you've got an IRA and it kicks out and gives you income. You might be way more qualified for a mortgage than you realize if you've got some investment accounts. This is how I do most of my retiree income calculations, honestly.

I don't get into how many, what you're getting in distributions. I just take this total number and throw it through the calculator. So a few different options.

It's not a one-size-fits-all. Not one of these is going to work for all of you. One of these may not work specifically, but two or three of these things layered on top of each other may give you a little bit more hope in figuring out how to get there.

It's a seller's market. It's not going to be a seller's market forever. I would encourage you to, you know, consider now.

One of the hardest things that I have in terms of my conversations to talk about is your assets appreciating. We know that. But it's only appreciating if you're still maintaining the property.

If you're not maintaining the property, it starts to actually depreciate. So there's this fine line of playing this game and there's, you know, 9.2 million boomers expected to be selling over the next 10 years. So have a conversation with your realtor.

Find out what it costs. And that's my spiel.

[Speaker 5] (20:55 - 21:08)
How did I do on time? Thank you, Matt. You did great on time.

I'll take one or two questions if any have in the audience. Oh, hold on, don't, don't. Heidi needs her steps.

[Speaker 6] (21:08 - 21:09)
Hello? Are we on?

[Speaker 5] (21:09 - 21:10)
Yeah. Yes.

[Speaker 7] (21:12 - 21:23)
Thank you. I'll probably come here for that because I just wonder if this is all written down someplace. This is all new to me and I'm going to forget three-quarters of it by the time I go home.

[Speaker 2] (21:24 - 21:36)
Sure. Oh, this one's a lot louder. I'll give you my business card and shoot me an email and I'll happily reply and send you the PDF.

For anybody, anybody who wants it.

[Speaker 5] (21:39 - 21:40)
Any other questions?

[Speaker 2] (21:43 - 22:04)
Similarly, if you had a question, finance stuff is always very strange to ask in front of a whole room. Grab my card. I just do cocktail napkin pre-approval letters where I just, we just sit together for 20 minutes and talk about what I would do if you were my, you know, my sister, my friend, my, you know, colleague.

How I would approach your scenario and just rip through it in 20 minutes. I can give you enough to go be dangerous.

[Speaker 5] (22:08 - 22:30)
All right. So our next speaker is joining us remotely. His name is Don Graves.

He is the President of the Housing Wealth Institute. He's a instructor in the American College of Financial Services. He's the author of several books, including the Retiree's Guide to Housing Wealth.

He's an expert in reverse mortgages. And Don, welcome. Thank you, Bob.

[Speaker 1] (22:30 - 22:31)
Can you hear me?

[Speaker 5] (22:31 - 22:32)
We can, yes.

[Speaker 1] (22:34 - 39:08)
Good evening, everyone. Great. Perfect.

Got it? Yep. Awesome.

Thank you. I want to talk about using your home to dramatically improve retirement outcomes without losing ownership or giving away your children's inheritance. Bob asked me to come to talk about reverse mortgages.

And I want to tell you, you ever mention reverse mortgage at the barbecue? What happens? Three people left the table, and three people dove under the table, and your Aunt Jane made a shake out of a plastic knife and fork and came at you.

Mentioning reverse mortgages can be dangerous, but I want to take the spooky out of it as best I can today. Twenty-five years I've been doing this. I've had about 16,000 consumer-facing conversations, and around 3,000 people went forward to become clients.

Now, today it's about education. I've got some credentials. I teach for a college.

I've written some books, blah, blah, blah, all of that. And so you can have access to that. But really, when we talk about reverse mortgages, we're talking about retirement.

The face of retirement is changing. I like to ask young people, young advisors. I speak a lot to financial advisors.

I say, who's that? One kid raised his hand and said, I think that's Jeremy. And his other buddy said, no, that's Aerosmith.

I said, wrong, boys. These are the strolling bones. They've gotten really old in our lifetime.

With the face of the baby boomers, living longer, haven't saved enough, I reindented it. But retirement is different. For most people, retirement was about climbing the mountain, managing your money, taking account to risk, accumulating until you get to the top of the mountain, plant your flat, take your stance, and that was retirement planning.

But coming down the mountain is entirely different, folks. It's retirement income planning. It means how do I come down the mountain?

How do I manage the challenges? And how do I make sure the money that I've saved lasts as long as I do, maintains its purchasing power? So the landscape is different, but the risks are real.

Today's retirement is going to last longer, be more expensive, and less predictable. Oftentimes, I ask people, do you remember the price of gasoline the first time you had a conscious memory of gasoline, and I remember my dad screaming, $29.99? Who would pay that?

Who would pay that? And he was going to drive from Sonoco 30 miles to Clarks because they were cheaper. So yes, it's going to last longer, be more expensive, and less predictable.

Did anyone predict a pandemic? Did anyone predict that interest rates could get up 8, 9, 10% practically, or much more? No.

No, most of us didn't predict that. Yahoo Finance wrote an article that said, 14 key signs you'll run out of money in retirement. See, coming down the mountain is dangerous.

So we talked about getting up the mountain, coming down the mountain, the risk, but the resources are limited. To those in the room, I ask this question. As you're in retirement planning for retirement, is it important that you use all of your available assets when planning for retirement?

Your income bucket, social security, employment, pension, your investments, IRAs, 401k, brokerage accounts, your insurance, is fixed and variable annuities, life insurance, and I ask folks, is that everything that you have to plan for retirement? Is there anything else? Well, the truth is there's a fourth bucket, and that fourth bucket is called housing wealth, and we're incorporating reverse mortgages as an age-appropriate equity release strategy.

See, we've already used our home and retirement act, 30-year mortgages, the fellow just spoke, home equity loans, lines of credit, downsizing, moving, but what about if I want to stay in my home? Can I leverage it to accomplish a retirement that I envision, or at least to make things a little bit easier? The U.S. Census Bureau said this, that the average retiree has less than $100,000 saved, but they have a home that's almost $200,000. What does that mean? The majority of their wealth is in their housing bond. Senior home equity has now reached $14 trillion.

That just changed last Tuesday. $14 trillion in unmonetized senior home equity. So what does that mean?

How do we use it? What's the elephant in the room? Don, reverse mortgages are terrible, right?

I hurt someone, and that's just not for me. I've got a lot of money. Absolutely.

Listen, I've discovered out of the people I've talked to that most folks don't need a reverse mortgage, right? That, yeah, most folks don't need a reverse mortgage. I lived for three months in Africa.

I didn't, I learned I didn't need ice. I didn't need air conditioning. I didn't need a mattress.

I didn't need to hold people. There were a few things I didn't need, but guess what? I got back to the states.

I got all those things back in action. So some people say, Don, I'm offended, or I'm opposed. I know someone who had a reverse mortgage, or had a cousin and had one, and their mother grew a beard, and their dog died, and I'm opposed, but there's some folks who, so maybe I don't know what I don't know.

So I'm open to it. I'm open. And like I said earlier, we've already used the home.

This is nothing new. Let me give you a few questions to consider. If you've got your pen and paper, I'm going to ask you ten questions, and your answer's going to either be yes or no, or if it doesn't apply to you, it's not applicable, that's a no.

Let me ask you ten questions, and I'll always answer you ready. If you could use your home, if your home could be used to increase your cash flow in retirement, would you want to see how it works? If you said yes, just put a checkmark on your paper.

We'll count up the checkmarks. If eliminating a monthly loan payment meant your savings could last significantly longer, would you want to see how it works? If you don't have a mortgage, put X.

That's a no. If you could turn your monthly mortgage payment into a voluntary one, a mandatory one, would you want to see how it works? One of my favorites is, if we could use your home to create a backup plan for market risk and volatility, would you want to know how that works?

If your home could be turned into a reserve fund that was growing 6 to 8% tax-free and could potentially surpass a million dollars, would you want to know how it works? Now, these next five, I'll just say them all in one fell swoop. So, if you could use your home to minimize income taxes you pay in retirement, to leave a large inheritance to your heirs, to defer Social Security for a higher benefit payout later, to replace income in case of loss or emergency, or to create a long-term care health plan, those five.

If you could use your home to do any of those things, would you want to see how it works? So, those are 10 questions I ask all over the country every day. And if you have more than two checkboxes or three checkboxes, you're in the right place, you're in the right place.

Now, I can't cover it all today, so if you've got your phone, I want you to write this down. I teach for the American College and I've created a course, education course, just to give you all the things I can't give you now, reversemortgagemasterclass.com. And if you scan the QR code to take a picture, there's some other resources that you can have.

But reversemortgagemasterclass.com, you want to get a hold of that. That's going to cover 47 minutes. I'm only going to do a few minutes here today.

Three discoveries, we're going to do one discovery today. What is a reverse mortgage, folks? What is a reverse mortgage?

I-J-A-L, I-J, it's just a mortgage. It's not spooky or dangerous, it's just a mortgage. It's a non-recourse loan for those aged 62 or better that allows them to convert a portion of their home's value, turn it into tax-free dollars.

It's just a mortgage, it's a home equity loan. You do not give up home ownership, you don't come off title, and listen, you're not required to make any monthly loan payments. The program began in 1961 in the United States.

In 1988, it became part of the federal government, the Home Equity Conversion Law. So it's not new, it's not dangerous. In 2000, when I started, we began doing reverse mortgages for homes up to $10 million, and then the heck of a purchase.

How to buy your next, last, and best home for about 60% down and have no monthly mortgage payment, nor spend money from your accumulated savings. So when we talk about a reverse mortgage, one of the questions is, without how much money can I get? Well, at traditional level, like I talked about earlier, the bank or the lender's going to look at your income, your assets, your credit score, your debt ratio, and they're going to determine how much we get, how much you get, and what interest rate.

A reverse mortgage looks at three things. You may want to draw this triangle on your piece of paper. And here are the three things we look at.

Number one, the age of the youngest borrower, the youngest spouse. Now, one person has to be 62. Other person has to be above the age of 18.

Except for Texas, you got to both be 62. We look at the value of the home, and we look at the future projected industry, which is called the expected industry. Now, based off of those three things, there's a certain amount of money made available in the middle of the triangle.

From there, any outstanding loan balances you have, mortgages, home equity, loans, get paid off. What would life be like if you didn't have to make a monthly mortgage payment in retirement? Oh, my gosh, I can't wait four more years.

And what's left over is called the line of credit. The line of credit. So here are some numbers up here on the screen, across the top is some ballpark numbers.

A 75-year-old and $600,000 home can receive a line of credit of $239,000. A 70-year-old and an $800,000 home, $297,000. Now, when you go to the master class, you'll be able to see some of these.

But the point is, you're sitting on something that can be quite substantial. So, Tom, what does the loan do to people? When it's no longer your primary residence, when you've died or you've been out of the home for 365 consecutive days because of physical or mental incapacity, at that time, whatever money was loaned to you, you took it, interest accrued, that gets repaid and 100% of the remaining gap, 100%, passes on to you if you move, your heirs or your steed, if you deceased.

Your responsibility is you're going to get a reverse mortgage or live in the property. That's the merit of one of these that's got to stay there. Take care of it, pay your taxes and keep insurance, and force on the property.

That's not too hard, is it? I bet most people in the room are already doing that. Now, for an average, for an average, when you think of a reverse mortgage, very important, you never give up ownership or come off title.

You never owe more than the home's value at the end. You never have to leave the home if you spend all the money. And you never have to make loan repayments in advance of leaving the home.

Folks, what is a reverse mortgage? It's just a mortgage. But one of the most fascinating aspects of it is this line of credit.

Remember the triangle I drew? You have some money, you pay off your existing mortgage, and you have a line of credit. Now, look here.

Across the top is a person in a 400, 600, 800, or a million dollar home. So let's look at age 65 and a person in a $600,000 home. You see, they're eligible to receive $199,000.

You see that? But 20 years later, what's happened? That line of credit has grown from $199,000 to $746,000.

That means you can set up a home equity line of credit, a reverse mortgage line of credit, and if you don't use it, or to the extent that you don't use it, it's actually growing. Well, this is what caused the regulators and people to almost have their hair cut on first. I mean, you mean to tell me I could be sitting on one or $2 million, potentially?

Yes, you could, absolutely. So the reverse mortgage line of credit is a growing line of credit, a G-L-O-C, a growing line of credit. And I tell folks, in retirement, what would you rather have, a reverse mortgage line of credit, or we lock, or he lock?

Well, the question I ask is, would you rather have your home's equity liquid or locked? Don, I'd rather have it liquid. Growing or stagnant?

I'd rather have it growing. Cancellable or non-cancellable? Some people discovered in 2008 or not that if you have a traditional home equity line of credit, the bank would cap it, reduce it, freeze it, call it, cancel it?

Not so with the government-insured reverse mortgage. If you took money out, you don't have to make a mandatory payment. You don't have to make a payment at all.

And it's insured by the bank. You see, this line of credit, it's growing, non-cancellable, bi-directional, non-impactful to your cash flow, insured, doesn't impact provisional income. It's not tied to the home's bank.

Now finally, now remember, reverse-mortgage-masterclass.com. Please write that down, www.reverse-mortgage-masterclass.com. You can stop and rewind and pause and go forward and all of that.

But strategic uses that I talk about, optimize social security conversations, manage mortgage payments, reduce common retirement risks, preserve assets from premature erosion, create a long-term care plan, add new dollars by right-sizing, move in. Many people don't know you can buy your next house. Using a reverse mortgage.

Let me give you one example, because I'm coming up on my time. But you're going to get a lot of questions answered in your reverse-mortgage-masterclass.com. I'll leave it up for five more seconds.

www.reverse-mortgage-masterclass. Write your questions there. And I'm going to be accessible to you.

This fellow won the Nobel Prize in economics. Dr. Robert T. Murphy teaches at MIT.

He said this, reverse mortgages are a potential solution to the global retirement funding crisis. He's a pretty smart guy. He's a pretty smart guy.

Now, adding new dollars. I added this example here. Mark and Barbara are going to use something that was approved by Congress in 2009.

They're going to buy their next home using a reverse mortgage. Let me show you how this works. Because remember, reverse mortgages are about retirement.

It's going to last longer, be less predictable, and more expensive. So they had a home that was $600,000, and they sold it and paid the realtor costs and all that. They had $600,000 left over, and they paid off their existing mortgage, letter B.

Now they've got $500,000 in proceeds left over. They wanted to buy a more expensive house or a less expensive house or a same-size house. This example, and I teach a whole course on using the reversal purchase to strengthen retirement.

But here they're going to downsize to a house that's $400,000. Well, Don, this is easy, right? You've got $500,000.

Pay cash. And I said, do you really want to lock up your money in brick and mortar in retirement? What if there's an option?

So they did a reverse mortgage on this house. The reverse mortgage made $160,000 available. Now, folks, they did this while they were in the process of moving.

They got a contract. They started a reverse mortgage application. We got it approved, and they sold the house and moved to the new one using a reversal purchase.

So they approved for $160,000. So they needed to bring $240,000 of the down payment. Easy peasy.

How much money did they have left over, letter C? They had $500,000 left over. They had to bring $240,000.

So at the end of the day, watch this. They moved into their new home, their last and best home. They had no monthly mortgage payments, and they added $260,000 back to their retirement savings.

Isn't that amazing? We do a lot of these. I happen to be the National Business Development Manager for Mutual of Omaha Reverse Mortgage.

Let me show you my pretty shirt right here. Mutual of Omaha Reverse Mortgage. Has anybody seen Wild Keenan when you were growing up?

I did, I did. And so you've got a reputable 120-year organization, and this is what we do. This is what we do.

The reverse mortgage, for the right person, their applications, it's a powerful tool. It's a powerful tool. And I hope you take advantage of the education by going to ReverseMortgageMasterClass.com.

ReverseMortgageMasterClass.com.

[Speaker 5] (39:11 - 39:28)
All right, Don, thank you very much for that. If you'd stick around for about two or three minutes, if there are any questions from the audience by chance. Matt, you must have a question.

[Speaker 2] (39:29 - 39:31)
Yeah, it's a lot. I don't know much about them.

[Speaker 5] (39:31 - 39:33)
It was interesting. Jody?

[Speaker 4] (39:34 - 39:35)
Oh, good, it was interesting.

[Speaker 5] (39:38 - 39:44)
Don, I think that was a master class in 15 minutes.

[Speaker 1] (39:45 - 39:48)
In 15 and three-quarters minutes.

[Speaker 5] (39:50 - 40:06)
Actually, Don, I do have one question for you. You and I have talked a lot, and you mentioned that there are cases where someone ought not use a reverse mortgage. Can you mind mentioning maybe sort of the top two or three cases where that, it might not be appropriate?

[Speaker 1] (40:07 - 41:50)
Sure, and listen, folks, jot this down. Bob, I wrote an article for you, but www.16considerations.com. www.16, the numeral, one six, considerations.com.

And there I talk about, over my 25 years, when may it not be a good idea. Well, number one, you're not planning to stay in your particular homes or traditional mortgage. If you're not planning to stay, Don, I'm moving in two or three years, I would recommend, I'd recommend a reversal purchase, but not a traditional reversal mortgage.

Number two, you don't have a strategy. There are 52 strategies that we cover. You say, Don, that was 52.

I don't have any. All right, Oprah, Gates, Bezos, Elon, you just got, you've got a ton of money. And most of my clients, see, what most people don't know about is the average.

They have discovered that the average retiree who did a reverse mortgage had $100,000 in liquid assets prior to doing a reverse mortgage. It's not something you need to do, but once you discover what it can do, it becomes very powerful. And you've got a special needs situation, a child, a brother that's living with you, and you're saying, you know, if I need to leave the house with 100% of its equity to my child or something like that, Don, I may not want to consider that.

So those are some of the big ones, but primarily I'm gonna tell folks, if you're not planning on staying in that home, then you may not want to do a reverse mortgage or consider the reverse purchase as a more appropriate way. But 16considerations.com will unpack all of those. I put it out there for you to receive.

[Speaker 5] (41:51 - 41:59)
All right, Don, one other question. A lot of times people look at the equity in their home as the break glass option to pay for long-term care expenses.

[Speaker 1] (42:02 - 43:40)
My daughter, I mentioned my 30-year-old daughter, she's like, Daddy, I've got a job now. If I can save $5,000 a year for retirement now at 30, or wait till I'm 50 or 55 and save $10,000 a year, which one would you recommend? Everybody move and say, no, start now, start now, because of compounding interest.

The power of the reverse mortgage line of credit is that, and this is what was discovered at MIT, at Boston College, I was there, Texas Tech, that if you're planning to stay in your home at the onset of retirement, it's better to set up a reverse mortgage line of credit and allow it to grow. You saw some of the numbers there. These are not my numbers.

These are the government's numbers. That's something that grows a million, million and a half, two or three million dollars. So now, at age 85, when my mom began needing dementia care and was spending $7,000 a month part-time, she didn't have a home.

She couldn't use that strategy. But I tell you, the last two and a half years just made me very aware, and I talk about it a lot. And, Bob, I think we just did an article about that, using a reverse mortgage for long-term care.

So absolutely, folks, and I covered that in the master class, but if you have a home and you're planning to stay there, looking at how to unpack your housing loan to meet your retirement income goals is something I think that's worth 47 minutes. It's worth the conversation, whether you do it or not. And most people, up to 13,000 folks, I wouldn't do it, but 3,000 folks, I've said, you know what?

It could be a great idea.

[Speaker 5] (43:43 - 43:54)
All right, Don, I think that exhausts us. If you want, you can stick around and listen to the other two presentations, or we can give you the rest of your evening back, and thank you for joining us.

[Speaker 1] (43:55 - 44:01)
I've got to be out of my house at 4.30 in the morning Eastern, so I'm going to go and pack and say hello to my wife and grandchildren.

[Speaker 5] (44:01 - 44:03)
All right, thank you, Don, for joining us.

[Speaker 1] (44:03 - 44:04)
Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, everybody.

[Speaker 5] (44:05 - 44:17)
Thank you. All right, next up, we have Jody Watts, our very own Jody Watts, who's going to share information about how to apply for the senior tax work-off program. Jody?

[Speaker 4] (44:19 - 51:34)
Okay, we're switching gears a little bit here. I am a real estate agent, that's how I know that. But I also wear another hat, which is an orchid tampon.

And I write the newsletter, if you guys can forget that. And I also, one of my responsibilities is the senior and veteran tax work-off. Can you hear me okay?

Senior and veteran tax work-off program. So that program, I was just going to spend a minute or two talking about the program. That's my email address, okay?

So if, as you hear what you hear, if you're interested, we have an application, I can email you. And the program has been going for a while, but it's really grown a lot with the support of people like Heidi and the senior center. The town administrator is a big fan of it.

So we've gone from six people to over 50. So it's been really a great success story. There's people here that are in it.

And I'll explain what it is in a second, but there's benefits beyond the financial that people talk about a lot. And that is the money's great, because you do get a tax credit on your property tax bill, but they also really enjoy being involved in something, have seen something to participate in. A reason to get out of the house as winter's coming.

And just things like that. So there's benefits to this program. And I'll just talk it for a second.

The way the program works is you have to be a homeowner. So if you rent, it's not gonna help you, because you don't have a tax bill to pay, and the credit goes to the tax bill. There's one credit per household.

So some people in here are a husband and wife team, and they just split the credit. They work together, and there's a maximum number of hours, and we just keep track of that. So there's one per household.

You have to be 60 or older. Or if you're a veteran, you can be any age. And there's an application that you would complete annually.

They do a CORI study, is that what it is? CORI? Background check.

Background check, right. It's basically a background check. Because sometimes you're dealing with students or whatever.

It's just a good idea. We review it annually, and we make an effort to get everybody as many hours as we can. The credit is up to $2,000 per household on your property tax bill.

That can come in pretty handy. You get paid $15 an hour, basically, is how you accrue your credit. So it's 133 and a half hours this year that you would work to get the $2,000 credit.

If you can't get that all in, some people go away. Some people just don't have the ability to do it. They might have surgery or whatever.

We prorate. Timesheets go to me on a monthly basis. There is a, it's tax-free in terms of the state, but not, of course, the federal government.

But you just would have to report that you're getting that credit. We're not gonna go through this too much, other than you can tell in here that from last year, the senior center, the town clerk, who's just a lot of people, and the recreation department. But there are a lot of schools are starting to get into it, too.

So that's where most hours, most people working. And for Heidi's organization, she won the prize last year. I don't know about this year.

The information, I just thought you might get a kick out of hearing some of the things people are doing in the program. We have people that cook lunches for the seniors at the senior center. There's the newest thing, the new elementary school that's in town.

They need help. There's a rolling drop-off there. So everybody has done that.

You kind of, it's a little bit of a nightmare, but. So, but they have, so they've asked, you know, could we get somebody to come in in the morning, come in at lunchtime, help out during the lunch break, or after school, helping the kids go in and out. And that, to me, is a win-win.

You know, it's, the kids get exposed to a grandparent-type figure that's around the school, and you get exposed to the kids, and it's really kind of fun. The utility boxes, I don't know if you've seen some of the big utility boxes have been painted lately. There's a person in the program who's an artist.

We have nurses, we have people that work for Harvard, for MIT, CPAs. It's incredible, the amount of talent in the town. There's library positions.

They run blood pressure clinics, the farmer's market, beach stickers. Election support is the big one that's coming up. There's early voting going on now, and there's people working at town hall every day on that.

There's somebody helping me with a newsletter, town meeting check-in. There are book clubs, van drivers, exercise classes, help with the DPW. They do, and John McLaughlin who does a lot of the planting around town.

There's even, pick this thing, I swear, it's a real thing. Pick up litter while walking, okay? It's like a Scandinavian thing.

And you can, there's people that visit, that will walk down Humphrey Street, and they just pick up litter, and it makes the street better, and they're out for a walk anyway, so flocking is what it's called. So those are the kind of things that the senior work program has got. It does benefit you by getting you a property tax credit of $2,000 a year.

That went up last year from 1,500 to 2,000. And it's a great way to also be involved and to benefit our senior population, because as we all know, our taxes go up, insurance goes up, utilities are going up, food is going up, everything goes up, and your budget is fixed. So it's really a terrific program.

So I'm the contact, my email you had in the beginning, and feel free to email me if you're interested in getting involved in it. Do you have any questions?

[Speaker 9] (51:39 - 51:49)
Are there any limitations on qualifications based on your assets and income and all, whether you're eligible?

[Speaker 4] (51:49 - 52:08)
That's a great question. We don't do that. There are towns, it's a state program, and each town either does it or don't.

We get calls, because our program is pretty successful, and other towns want to do it, but no, we don't have any income limits on it.

[Speaker 8] (52:10 - 52:15)
How long do you have to work before you see the credit? Is it a full year?

[Speaker 4] (52:15 - 52:58)
It's an annual, right. It's an annual, it ends, this year we're gonna end at the end of November. We still have to make the stop in order to give the information to the accounting department for them to get it into the tax bill.

And it goes on two tax bills. The first one is the one, I think I have this somewhere here, that's going out in January, due February 1st, and the second one is the one that's going out April, due May 1st. So those are the two tax bills.

You'd see the credit split in half, whatever the amount is that you had earned. If you're in the 2,000, you'd see 1,000 and 1,000.

[Speaker 8] (52:59 - 53:02)
So is there a line item on the bill that shows? Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 4] (53:06 - 53:07)
Good?

[Speaker 6] (53:08 - 53:19)
Good. I have to say that there has to be a need as well, right? So as a senior, if I don't have someone eating the food, I can't bring someone in to cook it, right?

[Speaker 4] (53:19 - 53:25)
Oh, true. Oh, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm sorry, I thought you meant a need on their end. Right, right.

[Speaker 6] (53:25 - 53:25)
So.

[Speaker 4] (53:26 - 53:26)
Qualify.

[Speaker 6] (53:27 - 53:33)
Yeah, so if someone comes to the senior center and say, hey, I wanna be a tax work-off, well, we'll have to find something where your skills match our needs.

[Speaker 4] (53:33 - 54:20)
Right, there's people running, or you have to be a little bit creative if you have a special thing to say, hey, you know, I'm a great knitter, and I would love to teach people how to do that. Can we do something with that? And we really try to accommodate.

It's a much easier, there are people doing like scanning and filing at town hall, like there's years and years worth of information and paper in town hall. So we're trying to scan all that. It's that, it's a little bit easier to find positions for people who are a little bit more recently retired, because they're very comfortable with a computer.

So it just depends, but you know, there's van drivers, there's a whole mix of things. Walkers.

[Speaker 6] (54:20 - 54:40)
Can I share a silly one? Yeah. So my husband decided he wanted to teach improv at the senior center, and so he actually doesn't get paid anything because he has a tax work off, and the money that people pay for the improv class goes to the senior center budget, which is wonderful.

So come learn improv.

[Speaker 10] (54:44 - 54:47)
When do you have to apply for like next year's program?

[Speaker 4] (54:47 - 55:42)
Do you have it cut off? Getting the application ready, it'll be going out in November. We'll start, we end in November, late October, November, but then we allow those months, November, December, to count for the next year's program.

So it's kind of a rolling 12 months. It's just not January to December. Do you have to reapply every year?

Yeah. Okay. I don't want to do that, because when there was six people, it was no big deal.

But I think it's important. We do have some people that either don't qualify anymore, maybe they've sold the house and rent, and they didn't reapply. You know, we just want people to know, and people move, whatever.

So it's nice to know who's still on board. The application is not very long, so it's pretty easy. Okay, great.

[Speaker 6] (55:43 - 55:44)
Thank you, Jody.

[Speaker 5] (55:44 - 56:11)
Thank you, Jody. You're welcome. Thank you.

So our next speaker is joining us remotely. It's Kathy Tammany, and she'll be discussing the Home Modification Program, which is probably one of the best, but least known programs available to older adults in the state. So, Kathy?

Welcome.

[Speaker 3] (56:13 - 1:04:57)
Okay. So I am the Home Modification Loan Coordinator at Community Teamwork, and we do this in conjunction with CDAC. CDAC is kind of the investor.

It is a state agency, and they are the, and I always forget how to say it, but it's the Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation. So what I'm gonna do is just go through a quick PowerPoint on the program and the benefits of it. It can get in-depth, so if anyone has any questions, I'm giving some information to Heidi for handouts and things like that, and then I'll go over some of the, it is a very, it is not a known program, and it is a great program for not only older adults, but for people who have disabilities.

I cover North Middlesex and all of Essex County, so that is my territory, so I'll share my screen. Let's hope I do this right, and hopefully, let's see. Can you see that?

Yes. Oh, perfect, all right. So the Home Modification Loan Program, it is a state-funded loan program providing financing to homeowners for accessibility or modification renovations to keep a household member with a disability or an older adult in their home.

And a little bit of information on this, we will give you a $1,000 to $15,000 loan on your home for those modifications. These loans are 0% interest, and there are no monthly payments. The only time repayment is required on the loan is when the property is sold or your deed is transferred.

So if you transfer it to a child and you remove both applicants off the deed, that would be considered basically a transfer of deed. Or if you decided to change it to a trust, then that also would be considered a transfer of deed. He is now joining me.

So we also do manufactured homes in addition to single-family, and we also do multifamily homes as well. The modification limits for the manufactured mobile homes is $1,000 to $30,000. And so I actually just did one recently, and it went very well for them.

If we do landlord loans, I have not done one yet. I find that landlords aren't as excited about this, but if they do own fewer than 10 units, they do qualify for that loan. It is 3%, and it is a monthly payment.

The one thing about the program, and I like to be transparent as possible, you do have a mortgage lien attached to the property. But again, at 0% interest with no payments, the day you sell your house, if it's 20 years from now, we'll deduct exactly what that loan amount is from that with no accruing interest at all. So it is a wonderful program.

Always eligibility. The home has to be located in Massachusetts. We have organizations throughout the state that do this.

The member of a household must be an older adult person or with a disability or somebody older adult or somebody with a disability. If you have a child that has autism and you need a fence to keep them in the yard so that they don't run into the street, the program will cover that. You must be current on your mortgage and you must be current under real estate taxes.

Generous income requirements. Family of two is $261,200. That's a lot.

Family of four is $326,400. So they're very generous income requirements. You can have no more than $175,000 in liquid assets.

That would be a checking savings, a money market account, maybe some stocks. Another home that you may own, for example, a vacation home, we'll deduct the mortgage from that value and we will count that difference as assets. Retirement accounts do not count.

Because we know that retirement account is income in the future, especially for older adults, then we do not count retirement accounts against you. You do not have to list those on the applications. We don't consider those assets.

And if you file your taxes to the state of Massachusetts, if you owe them any money, you'd have to make sure that you had paid them for the prior tax year. Documentation required. Generally, it's 60 days of income.

Pay stubs, social security award letters, pension income, VA income, any of that. Just two months, showing two months receipt of that income. A most recent mortgage statement, showing your payment is current and a recent tax bill.

Most people that do escrow, it's gonna be included and we're gonna see that right away. Copy of your deed. I always tell everyone, I'll get it.

I'll get it online, super easy to get. But if you do own your home in a trust, we will need a copy of those trust documents. Three months checking and savings only if your project exceeds the $50,000 that we're giving you.

So we don't need those statements unless, let's say you're putting, you're adding an accessory dwelling unit for, maybe for parents or for a child who needs to stay close to home but wants some independence. If that exceeded the $50,000, we would need to see bank statements showing that we can cover the difference. A copy of your most recent state tax return, a driver's license and we do not pull a credit report.

So a lot of people like that. So no credit report is needed. Types of modifications.

Handicap accessible bathrooms and kitchens, accessory dwelling units, ramps, lifts, stair lifts, ADA appliances and lighting. And the reason we include that is somebody is legally blind. We will help convert their appliances to something that would be more beneficial and safe for them as well as different types of lighting to help them see better.

Non-slip flooring, sensory integration spaces and this really pertains to children with autism. We're doing a lot of sensory rooms in basements, things like that. Paved driveways and walkways for mobility.

So if somebody uses a wheelchair or a walker and they're, welcome to New England, there are cross-keys everywhere, having a nice flat paved driveway or walkway would be a benefit and it's also for safety and they're really big on making sure that everything is safe. Fencing, I had mentioned that earlier. And if you don't see a modification that's listed, please call me.

I actually sent Heidi a list of eligible modifications which exceeds what you see here on the slide. I sent her kind of an eligibility, reduced digest version on one page for the program and I sent her a flyer from CDAC that has the income guidelines and context other than myself within Massachusetts. So if you know somebody or you know a family that would benefit from the program, by all means, spread the word.

I'm truly amazed at how little people know about this program. This is my contact information. So if you need to get in touch with me, it is here.

It's also on the handouts that Heidi has and I would welcome all phone calls. Sometimes you'd be amazed at what we're gonna cover or what is covered as far as a benefit for a modification loan. And that's kind of it.

So I did it real good. I did it in less than 15 minutes.

[Speaker 5] (1:05:00 - 1:05:07)
So Kathy, a couple questions come to mind. Do you need a doctor's note in order to qualify for the modification loan?

[Speaker 3] (1:05:08 - 1:05:41)
Yes, you do. You need, it is part of the application. There is an application that needs to be completed.

Page 12 of the application, it might be page 13 now because we modify the application every year. That's called the documentation of need form. It's very short and very sweet.

It just lists, you list the person's name, you know, what the disability or the medical need would be because a lot of times it's mobility, whether it's arthritis, they just put a brief description of what they would benefit from as a modification and sign the bottom line.

[Speaker 5] (1:05:41 - 1:05:46)
All right, any questions from folks in the audience?

[Speaker 6] (1:05:47 - 1:06:00)
Kathy, I have a question. Do you have a list of contractors that would work with you or that you recommend for someone who needs to modify their house, like a handicapped accessible bathroom or something?

[Speaker 3] (1:06:01 - 1:06:56)
Yes, so each area, we all kind of comprise our own and there are contractors that work for all ages. It is a very short and sweet list and what we're actually doing, or CDAC is doing, they are going to send out informational packets to contractors in the area to see if they'd like to get involved in the program. I know myself, I probably have a list of maybe 10, but I trust them, they know the paperwork and, you know, those are the ones that I want to continue to refer business to.

But yes, I mean, each of us, like each person that does, is a coordinator. We all have our own kind of our lists and then we have our like four or five that kind of overlap within each of the counties. But yeah, I will always send that to a potential client who's looking to do a project.

[Speaker 6] (1:06:57 - 1:07:05)
So if my washing machine and dryer are in the basement and I can't get up and down the stairs anymore, can I move that upstairs?

[Speaker 3] (1:07:06 - 1:07:07)
Absolutely.

[Speaker 5] (1:07:07 - 1:07:11)
Yes, you can. This is great. All right.

[Speaker 11] (1:07:16 - 1:07:18)
I got a question, how about permits?

[Speaker 3] (1:07:19 - 1:08:15)
So the one thing this does not cover are repairs of like something now, and I say repairs, so I'm gonna preface this. I just had a client who bought a new home and their storm door didn't work when they bought the home because their child has autism. That's something we would do for safety reasons.

But as far as repairs or replacements of like a roof or a boiler or a furnace, we do not do that. However, we just got a five page list of organizations and I'll send that to Heidi as well, of organizations that work and do those types of repairs, replacements, weatherizations, things like that. There's a list of organizations on there and it's a great tool to go to as far as maybe other work outside of the home modification law.

[Speaker 11] (1:08:16 - 1:08:19)
Actually, my question was about permits.

[Speaker 3] (1:08:20 - 1:08:23)
Oh, permits. I thought you said furnace. My apologies.

[Speaker 11] (1:08:23 - 1:08:23)
Oh, no, no.

[Speaker 3] (1:08:23 - 1:08:50)
So permits would always, the contractor will always have to provide us with permits before a project is starting. And so we generally will allow the first disbursement to be for materials so that they can go and purchase the materials to begin the project, but we do not want them starting the work until we have a permit in hand and we have their liability insurance.

[Speaker 8] (1:08:52 - 1:09:00)
Okay, my question was about stair glides, you know, to allow somebody to stay, okay.

[Speaker 3] (1:09:01 - 1:09:29)
Go up and down with like stair lifts in their homes. Yeah, sure, absolutely. That we, I've done probably a dozen stair lifts and we have multiple contractors that do that.

101 Mobility is great for those. Stata Stairlifts, Acorn Stairlifts, they're all, and they're all about the same, very reliable and, you know, that would be 100% covered.

[Speaker 5] (1:09:34 - 1:09:40)
Cathy, how often do you see modification loans in excess of 50,000?

[Speaker 3] (1:09:41 - 1:10:45)
So the most modification loans that are in excess is if people want to do multiple projects. Let's say somebody wants their driveway done, a ramp, and then their bathroom modified. That's when we see the project succeed that $50,000.

I would say, honestly, a bathroom project in itself is, it can be quite costly. I'm amazed at how much those can cost because I know Deb at Accessible Solutions and does a great job. She actually knows our paperwork.

She acts as a middle person. She's on the contractor list as well. I would say most bathrooms probably run anywhere between $40,000 and $50,000.

And accessory dwelling units or in addition to the home. So right now, currently, I have a customer. They're putting addition on the home for the parents to move in because they cannot live by themselves anymore.

And that can cost probably somewhere around $100,000, $120,000.

[Speaker 5] (1:10:49 - 1:10:53)
Do you see some homeowners paying back the loan before they sell their house?

[Speaker 3] (1:10:53 - 1:11:14)
Yes, all the time. There are a lot of people that are just more comfortable making a payment against what's been dispersed. Everything's applied directly to principal because there is no interest on the loan.

And then if and when they need a payoff, it'll be, obviously, we'll take the total loan amount minus any payments, and that would be the bottom line.

[Speaker 5] (1:11:16 - 1:11:24)
So in cases when the loan is more than $50,000, are they using a HELOC or some other form of financing?

[Speaker 3] (1:11:24 - 1:11:50)
There are some people that may have the funds available. So when I say that $175,000 limit, somebody may have $250,000 in the bank, but if $100,000 of that is being used toward the project itself, then we would deduct that, and they would only have $50,000 or $100,000 in the bank. In assets.

But I would say the majority of them do take out all my underlying credit.

[Speaker 2] (1:11:57 - 1:12:03)
I feel like you're gonna run out of money. This is a great program. No, that's the problem.

[Speaker 3] (1:12:03 - 1:12:39)
It's a great program and no one knows about it. I've been doing it for two years. Prior to that, I did mortgages.

I was a mortgage underwriter for 27 years. So when I walked into this, I was shocked. I'm like, this is a phenomenal program.

Why doesn't anybody know about it? So this is part of my job now, is to market this and get it out there. But believe it or not, the state has quite a bit of money.

And the two years I've done it, there's a substantial cashflow, so.

[Speaker 6] (1:12:40 - 1:13:07)
It's interesting because I think four years ago when Swampscot for All Ages was just starting, we were in COVID and we did a program with Susan who Catherine works with. And we had it on the YouTube forever. And I think we've only in Swampscot had one person take out one of these loans, which amazes me so far.

Best kept secret.

[Speaker 3] (1:13:08 - 1:13:43)
It is. I've got 40 plus accounts that I work with. And I feel like I'm beating down the door and I'm like, look what you can do.

Look what this offers you. And the beauty of it is, you modify your bathroom, you've already increased the value of your home. It's not substantial, but somebody walks in and they have a beautiful walk-in shower with a seat and a beautiful, the vanity's just right.

I mean, honestly, all it's going to do is increase the value of your home.

[Speaker 7] (1:13:46 - 1:14:04)
I would like to get my, I know I need to get, if I want to stay in my house, I need to get my washer and dryer out of the cellar. And the only place I really have would be on the second floor. And it would really need a bump out to my second floor.

Would that be like way over the top?

[Speaker 3] (1:14:06 - 1:14:45)
Not at all. We have people who actually will add like a mudroom or a small extension off of their kitchen so that they can place the washer and dryer and bring them upstairs. Or they've increased the size of maybe a bathroom that they have on the first floor to add.

And trust me, bump, it happens a lot. People will actually extend like a small bathroom downstairs and part of their kitchen or turn, you know, where they may have a deck, they actually enclose it, make it, and make it something, modify it so that they can have the washer and dryer.

[Speaker 12] (1:14:46 - 1:14:47)
Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (1:14:48 - 1:14:56)
Good question for you. Have you looked at the stackables that might fit into a closet? They're pretty small.

[Speaker 7] (1:14:57 - 1:15:15)
Okay. On the first floor, then it would be a bigger closet and it would have a washer and a dryer. I've just seen them tucked into closets and it works pretty well.

[Speaker 4] (1:15:16 - 1:15:16)
Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 10] (1:15:24 - 1:15:30)
I just wanted to clarify, did you say your house couldn't be in a trust or it could be in a trust?

[Speaker 3] (1:15:30 - 1:15:44)
It can, it 100% can be in a trust. All we do is we require the documents so our legal team can review them. So when we record the mortgage, we are recording it with the correct name of the trust on it.

[Speaker 5] (1:15:52 - 1:16:41)
All right, I think that might be the end of our questions, Kathy. Thank you so much for that. It's really, like you said, the best kept secret.

So this concludes our four-part housing series. If we have, if we didn't cover some topics that you want covered, let us know. We can sort of add them to maybe a future series on housing.

I want to thank at least our speakers tonight, Matt and Jody, Kathy and Don. Thank all of you for attending. And I want to give special thanks to Nathan and Daniel from Swampscot TV for being here.

They were here and it's because of them that you can all go back and watch this again if you didn't take notes. And.

[Speaker 6] (1:16:42 - 1:16:52)
Yeah, I just want to say the first two should be up on our website and on town website. They're on YouTube. And they're on YouTube now.

And we'll get the other two up as soon as possible.

[Speaker 5] (1:16:52 - 1:17:01)
Yeah, so on behalf of Heidi and the Swampscot Senior Center and Swampscot for All Ages, Seaglass Village, thank you all for attending. Appreciate it.