Most people in America tend to assume that the housing and mortgage crisis is of great importance to seniors today. That's because it's obviously a problem, particularly for elderly people who have some interest in selling their homes (something you clearly don't want to do in a bad housing market). We also make this assumption because the politicians that are all over the news these days frequently discuss this issue as being of utmost impotance.
However, new research indicates that seniors do have some concern about the mortgage but it doesn't top the list in terms of their biggest issues of importance. They're more concerned about what they've always been concerned about - social security and the rising cost of health care. They want the presidential candidates to start talking about how they're going to fix those problems, not to concern themselves so much with the mortgage issue.
Perhaps the fact that seniors aren't as concerned about mortgages as we thought is also related to the fact that they're resolving the problem on their own. Seniors who had originally planned to move from their homes after retirement are instead taking out reverse mortgage loans that allow them to cover the costs of staying in their homes. Additionally, it's possible that seniors believe that they wouldn't need to worry about mortgage costs if other issues, such as health care expenses, weren't eating up their bank accounts.
Question of the Day: What do you think should be the social issue of primary concern to seniors?
