You will find that there are many news reporters out there who are putting a negative slant on their coverage of reverse home mortgage loans. These news reporters usually have a storyline which revolves around an elderly person who didn't understand the terms of their reverse mortgage loan and ended up losing, or almost losing, their homes. However, this is not as common as news reports make it out to be.
The Business and Media Institute recently pointed to one case of news reporting that relied wholly on anecdotal evidence to draw wide-reaching conclusions about reverse mortgage loans. In other words, the report took one story of one woman who was "scammed" by a reverse mortgage lender and came to the conclusion that reverse mortgages are scams. (Incidentally, it doesn't sound like she was scammed so much as that she didn't take any responsibility for learning about the details of her reverse mortgage loan).
There are certainly bad lenders out there. And there are certainly people out there who don't understand their loans and get themselves into financial trouble because of it. But when the news takes stories like these and uses them to act as if they are providing factual information about the statistical benefits or drawbacks of reverse mortgages, they're doing a disservice to their readers.
Question of the Day: Do you think your local news slants its coverage of reverse mortgage loans?
