Valiant Attempt to Rebut Recent Attack on Reverse Mortgages

In the linked article, one industry reporter/editor presents her view on an op ed rebuttal to an article appearing in a major newspaper attacking reverse mortgages. Her summation adequately covers the situation so I will turn from any discussion of her positions and conclusions to looking at what the op ed author could not and did not provide.

While wholeheartedly congratulating the op ed author on his response, the op ed could not and did not adequately address specific data used by the authors of the attack to hammer home some of their points. The newspaper stated it took six months for the authors to gather their data, analyze it, and then write their series of articles. To believe that the reverse mortgage lenders industry association and its CEO could adequately address the data in a rapid manner is an unrealistic stretch of the imagination.

Specifically, the most difficult points to refute are those supported by the data used by the attackers in establishing their argument that lenders have nefariously targeted black neighborhoods. Their argument is the high concentration of reverse mortgage foreclosures in the lower income, black neighborhoods of Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, and Philadelphia along with two cities in Florida, Jacksonville, and Miami.

It was also interesting how one very detailed example used in the presentation showed various numbers that when put together made little to no sense. There was little question that the gentleman was having difficulty with his reverse mortgage.

So without a team who can rapidly check the alleged facts the researchers used, the op ed author was forced to ignore those numbers to argue principles and logic rather than addressing the numbers the researchers so highly depended upon in making their conclusions. Yet the op ed author is right to discuss the protections HUD has brought to bear on the industry in fixing many of the problems addressed in the original article.

At some point the industry will need a team of rapid response fact and data checkers to help in creating better rebuttals and responses to attacks on not just lenders and reverse mortgages, but also originators, counseling, and even HUD itself.