The Federal Housing Administration has set new standards for housing counselors who want to work with seniors taking out FHA-insured reverse mortgages. To provide these services, counselors have to pass an AARP-approved examination and apply to be on FHA’s new roster for Home Equity Conversion Mortgage counselors. “Only those counselors on the HECM roster can provide HECM counseling to potential HECM borrowers,” according to FHA mortgagee letter 2009-47. FHA created the HECM roster in response to criticism that some counseling sessions are pro forma – conducted by counselors that are not knowledgeable about the product. The Government Accountability Office identified problems and Congress directed FHA to take corrective action. Darryl Hicks, a spokesman for the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association, noted that the new standards and roster have been a work in progress for the past two years. “We think it is great for the industry because it will establish a higher bar for counseling,” Mr. Hicks said.
This is good news because reverse mortgages were getting a bad reputation due to the lack of good counseling. Reverse mortgages are not for everyone, but I have clients who have done them and are extremely happy. If you would like a referral to a trustworthy reverse mortgage consultant, just let me know. I’m always delighted to help.
For those of us who participated in the Charrette process to envision and plan the future of the downtown area, this is exciting news. See: http://www.hallalminana.com/projects/downtown-ukiah/downtown-ukiah.html The updated draft of the Downtown Zoning Code (form based code) will be reviewed by Planning Commission in a series of public workshops that will be held at the regularly scheduled Planning Commission meetings. At each workshop, specific sections of the draft Downtown Zoning Code (DZC) will be reviewed. The notice for the first workshop which will be held on July 8th is attached. The notice includes the draft schedule that identifies the sections to be reviewed at each workshop. workshop-notice-with-boundary-map-7-8-2009
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me or you can go to http://www.cityofukiah.com/pageserver/?page=hot_topics
Many people do not realize that when there is a conflict between your Deed of Trust and your will, the Deed of Trust will supersede the instructions of the Will.
An example would be the title to a property owned by two friends in a 50/50 joint tenancy. They each have children and their individual Wills state that upon the death of either, their interest in the property is to transfer to their respective children. However, because title is held in Joint Tenancy (with right of survivorship) rather than Tenants in Common, the interest in the property would transfer to the surviving titleholder rather than the children of the deceased owner.
When doing your estate planning be sure to find out the best way to hold title in order to accomplish your goals. This will save your heirs from a lot of unexpected, and unnecessary, headache and expense.
For information regarding estate planning visit http://money.cnn.com/retirement/guide/EstatePlanning/.
