For seniors who have retired, taking on additional debt that requires a monthly payment while being on a fixed income could have ramifications on quality of retirement, and it should be considered in concert with all the facts about how it will impact a senior’s financial situation.
This is according to experts who spoke to personal finance website Bankrate about the concept of taking on a new mortgage in retirement. Certain things beyond current cash flow should also be taken into consideration, including data that suggests seniors face higher rejection rates on traditional mortgage applications, as well as alternative products such as reverse mortgages.
Age information is collected at the time of origination, but only for Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) purposes. Seniors, even those of advanced age, are legally required to face the same qualification requirements as any other mortgage applicants.
“I once did a 30-year mortgage for a 97-year-old woman,” Michael Becker, branch manager at Sierra Pacific Mortgage in Lutherville, Maryland, told Bankrate. “She was lucid, understood what she was doing and just wanted to help out a family member [by taking] some cash out of her home, and had the income to qualify and the equity in the home — she owned it free and clear. So she was approved.”
An analyst for Bankrate describes some challenges that could be unique to older mortgage borrowers if they take on a new, debt-based financial instrument.
“Even if one owns a property with no further mortgage payments due, property taxes and upkeep will be a consideration,” Bankrate senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick said. “As with people of all ages, having a budget, limiting expenses and accurately accounting for income expectations are key.”
Using retirement savings to pay down mortgage debt could have a notable impact on a senior’s retirement resources, Bankrate noted, but there are options specifically designed for seniors seeking mortgage financing.
These include a reverse mortgage, which also requires the borrower to pay property taxes and insurance, but which — based on the home’s value, interest rates and other factors — offers payment options to the borrower instead of the other way around. Reverse mortgage industry advocates say that this helps insulate retirement resources from traditional mortgage payments.
Unlike a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM), forward mortgages were not designed with seniors in mind, according to Martin Andelman, reverse mortgage trainer and speaker with HighTechLending in Orange, California.
“It’s also worth mentioning that [in terms of] 30-year mortgages, I promise you, no one ever sat around and talked about 30-year mortgages thinking they’d be perfect for 70- and 80-year-olds,” Andelman said in a 2019 episode of The RMD Podcast.
“30-year mortgages were never meant to be for them. And now, I bump into people all the time who could be 72 years old, just refinanced two years ago, and now have only 28 years to go. What could go wrong?”
For seniors who have retired, taking on additional debt that requires a monthly payment while being on a fixed income could have ramifications on quality of retirement, and it should be considered in concert with all the facts about how it will impact a senior’s financial situation.
This is according to experts who spoke to personal finance website Bankrate about the concept of taking on a new mortgage in retirement. Certain things beyond current cash flow should also be taken into consideration, including data that suggests seniors face higher rejection rates on traditional mortgage applications, as well as alternative products such as reverse mortgages.
Age information is collected at the time of origination, but only for Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) purposes. Seniors, even those of advanced age, are legally required to face the same qualification requirements as any other mortgage applicants.
“I once did a 30-year mortgage for a 97-year-old woman,” Michael Becker, branch manager at Sierra Pacific Mortgage in Lutherville, Maryland, told Bankrate. “She was lucid, understood what she was doing and just wanted to help out a family member [by taking] some cash out of her home, and had the income to qualify and the equity in the home — she owned it free and clear. So she was approved.”
An analyst for Bankrate describes some challenges that could be unique to older mortgage borrowers if they take on a new, debt-based financial instrument.
“Even if one owns a property with no further mortgage payments due, property taxes and upkeep will be a consideration,” Bankrate senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick said. “As with people of all ages, having a budget, limiting expenses and accurately accounting for income expectations are key.”
Using retirement savings to pay down mortgage debt could have a notable impact on a senior’s retirement resources, Bankrate noted, but there are options specifically designed for seniors seeking mortgage financing.
These include a reverse mortgage, which also requires the borrower to pay property taxes and insurance, but which — based on the home’s value, interest rates and other factors — offers payment options to the borrower instead of the other way around. Reverse mortgage industry advocates say that this helps insulate retirement resources from traditional mortgage payments.
Unlike a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM), forward mortgages were not designed with seniors in mind, according to Martin Andelman, reverse mortgage trainer and speaker with HighTechLending in Orange, California.
“It’s also worth mentioning that [in terms of] 30-year mortgages, I promise you, no one ever sat around and talked about 30-year mortgages thinking they’d be perfect for 70- and 80-year-olds,” Andelman said in a 2019 episode of The RMD Podcast.
“30-year mortgages were never meant to be for them. And now, I bump into people all the time who could be 72 years old, just refinanced two years ago, and now have only 28 years to go. What could go wrong?”
Chase is offering to give customers 1% of their scheduled monthly principal and interest mortgage payments back if they meet certain requirements via its new “1% Mortgage Cash Back” program.
How to Qualify for 1% Cash Back
Your home loan must be from Chase
It can be a home purchase loan or a refinance
And you must have your mortgage payment automatically deducted
From an eligible Chase checking account
The bank will pay customers 1% of their total annual mortgage payments on each anniversary of the loan’s origination date so long as payments are made automatically and in full from a qualifying Chase checking account.
The annual reward payment can be applied to your home loan to pay down mortgage principal or customers may elect to receive a simple cash payment deposited into their checking account instead.
“We talked to many customers and prospects, and they really liked the idea of having their bank help them pay down their mortgage,” said David Lowman, Chief Executive Officer of Chase Home Lending, in a press release.
“They also liked the option of getting the reward in cash.”
The Savings Can Be Substantial Over the Long Term
If you get the annual reward and apply it to your home loan each year
You could save thousands of dollars over the full loan term
And pay off your mortgage slightly ahead of schedule
But be sure to consider other lenders that may offer lower mortgage rates and save you even more!
On a 30-year fixed mortgage with a $210,000 loan amount and a 6% interest rate, a homeowner would save nearly $12,000 (in cash back and interest payment reduction) and pay their mortgage off nine months early.
While that sounds like a pretty good deal, other banks typically offer customers an interest rate discount upon loan origination if the borrower is an existing customer using automatic billpay.
For instance, another leading bank may reduce the actual mortgage rate you receive by a full .25%, so the actual savings would likely be much greater than the 1% cash back offered by Chase. Not to mention the lower monthly payment.
It’s unclear if existing Chase mortgage holders and checking account customers can take advantage of this offer, but it never hurts to ask.
Update: This program launched back in summer 2009 and is no longer being offered as far as I know. Instead, Chase is now offering Ultimate Rewards points if you’re a credit card customer who takes out a mortgage with them.
Case in point: Today we have 69,000 new homes completed and ready to sell, as shown below. The builders have managed their backlog nicely to ensure this data line doesn’t explode higher on them like we saw in 2008. An average number would be around 80,000 homes for sale, so we are returning to normal.
But a bigger story here is that the builders’ biggest competition isn’t other builders — it’s the number of existing homes on the market. Existing homes are cheaper and have a geographical advantage because they’re all over the map. In 2007, we had more than 4 million total active listings, which was too much supply for the builders to compete effectively. Today, the total number of active listings according to NAR is 1.080 million, and that number is down year over year.
NAR total active listings data going back to 1982:
This explains why the builders and new homes are doing better than the existing home sales market, which deals with higher mortgage rates and low active listings. Some people prefer something other than the current active existing inventory. This means new homes — with all the bells and whistles — can peel some buyers from the existing home sales market, especially if they pay down mortgage rates.
Now on to the report.
From Census:
New Home Sales: Sales of new single‐family houses in May 2023 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 763,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 12.2 percent (±12.8 percent)* above the revised April rate of 680,000 and is 20.0 percent (±15.5 percent) above the May 2022 estimate of 636,000.
As we can see in the chart below, new home sales aren’t booming like what we saw at the peak of 2005 but are getting back to trend sales growth from the bottom we saw when rates got 5% in 2018. New home sales can be wild monthly, so if we see some negative revisions to this report, just remember: it’s the trend that matters, and it’s gotten much better here.
Also, in the chart below, we can all agree it isn’t housing 2005 or housing 2008 with new home sales.
For Sale Inventory and Months’ Supply: The seasonally‐adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of May was 428,000. This represents a supply of 6.7 months at the current sales rate.
As home sales improve, the builders are winding down their monthly supply, which is good for the economy. I have a straightforward model for when the homebuilders will start issuing new permits with some kick. My rule of thumb for anticipating builder behavior is based on the three-month supply average. This has nothing to do with the existing home sales market — this monthly supply data only applies to the new home sales market and the current level of 6.7 months.
Housing permits will follow since this data line improves as new home sales keep growing. The model below has been my bread and butter for years:
When supply is 4.3 months and below, this is an excellent market for builders.
When supply is 4.4-6.4months, this is just an OK market for builders. They will build as long as new home sales are growing.
When supply is 6.5 months and above, the builders will pull back on construction
The current data has seen significant improvement, as the chart below shows. Also, the only bubble crash this year has been in cancellation rates, not existing home sales prices.
Also, it’s vital to break down the monthly supply data into different supply categories.
1.1 months of the supply are homes completed and ready for sale, about 69,000 homes
4.1 months of the supply are homes that are still under construction, about 259,000 homes
1.6 months of the supply are homes that haven’t started yet, about 100,000 homes
This is a solid report today as the builders are moving products and making deals to get buyers in. I love it.
Housing has always been used as an indicator of the economy. As the builder confidence data rose, many pessimists ignored it because they assumed it was a dead-cat bounce. Now that we are almost to July 4, 2023, it’s a wake-up call. I ask my bearish friends who use housing as a leading indicator going into recession and out what they believe the data is telling them now. So far, I haven’t heard back.
Home Builder Confidence Index
The builder’s confidence index is gold because the builders are thinking about making money, whereas some indexes might have a political or ideological twist. I track the builders’ confidence and the 10-year yield because these two are essential for housing. This report is a plus for the economy because construction worker employment risk will decrease if sales continue to higher and mortgage rates can fall.
This article aims to show how much progress we have made in this sector and why it’s happening. The report today is a positive story for the U.S. Hopefully, this trend continues to go higher because the best way to deal with inflation is always with supply, not demand destruction. Demand destruction is a short-term fix, but supply needs to grow over time to beat inflation.
Save more, spend smarter, and make your money go further
Let’s do a little investment simulation. Don’t worry—I’ll do the math.
Jane has a $5000 consumer loan and a $20,000 stock portfolio. Her net worth is $15,000. (Ah, the simple life of a person in a word problem.)
If the stock market goes up 10%, Jane makes $2,000 and her net worth goes up to $17,000 ($22,000 in the portfolio, minus the $5000 loan).
If the market goes down 10%, Jane loses $2000. Are you with me so far?
Jane decides to pay off the loan. Her net worth is still $15,000, but now it’s $15,000 in stocks and no debt. Then the stock market goes down 10%, and Jane only loses $1500. By paying off the loan (a financial nerd would call it “deleveraging”), Jane’s portfolio got less risky: The same change in the market caused a smaller change in her portfolio, even though her net worth stayed the same.
It doesn’t matter that Jane borrowed the money for a dining room set. As long as she owes the money, she’s taking on more investment risk than if she didn’t owe it. Her net worth fluctuates more with each day’s stock returns because of the debt. That’s not necessarily good or bad (maybe Jane wants to take on more risk in the hope of getting a bigger return) but it’s a mathematical fact.
This is all grade school math, right? But if we replace “consumer loan” with “mortgage,” somehow it makes otherwise intelligent people, investors and financial planners alike, forget basic arithmetic.
“Investing on mortgage”
I’ll include myself among the mathematical amnesiacs, because I only came to understand this principle because of a recent blog post by Michael Kitces, director of research for Pinnacle Advisory Group, who writes the Nerd’s Eye View blog.
The post is written with financial planners in mind, not consumers, so I’m going to summarize it as follows: If you have both a mortgage and an investment portfolio, you’re probably making a big mistake. A big, fat, Greek default-style mistake.
Let’s go back to Jane. Now she has a $100,000 mortgage, a $100,000 house, and a $200,000 stock portfolio. Her net worth is $200,000 (the portfolio plus the house, minus the mortgage). When the stock market goes up 10%, Jane makes $20,000. When it goes down 10%, she loses $20,000.
Say Jane takes $100,000 from her portfolio and pays off the house. Her net worth is still $200,000, but her portfolio has dropped to $100,000. Now when the stock market goes down 10%, Jane only loses $10,000. Her portfolio got less risky, but her net worth stayed the same. (Yes, we’re assuming remarkable stability in the real estate market.)
Jane would tell you that she wasn’t borrowing money to invest in stocks, she was borrowing money to buy a house. Well, her portfolio and her bank don’t give a hoot. As long as she owes money, her investment performance has a bigger effect on her bottom line than if she didn’t owe.
After paying off her mortgage, Jane comes to you for financial advice. She’s thinking of taking out a new fixed-rate home equity loan to plump her portfolio back up to $200,000. What is she, insane? If she’d decided not pay off her mortgage in the first place, she’d be in exactly the same position, with the blessing of most financial planners and, until recently, me.
Whether Jane knows it or not, she is borrowing against her house to invest in the stock market, and she should understand the risks.
So what?
That sounded like a lot of academic drivel, I know. But if you’re a homeowner with a mortgage, it has real implications for your financial health. Assuming you’re in a position to save money beyond your mortgage payment, you are making a scaled down version of Jane’s decision every month: Pay down the mortgage, invest for retirement, or both?
“Each and every year I get to make a conscious decision about whether I want to implicitly buy stocks on mortgage by keeping the mortgage and buying stocks,” says Kitces. Or bonds, for that matter. Look at what you’re really doing:
Using borrowed money to buy bonds is stupid. Sure, mortgage rates are low. Bond rates are lower. Would you take out a 4% mortgage to buy bonds paying 2%? Me neither.
Using borrowed money to buy stocks is dangerous. Stocks are risky. Stocks bought with borrowed money are more risky. If you walk into a reputable financial planner’s office and tell them your financial plan is to borrow a bunch of money to invest in stocks, they will sit you down and give you a parental lecture about imprudent risk-taking. But if you’re using mortgage money to juice up your portfolio, somehow that’s okay?
Implicit in the idea that it’s okay to buy stocks “on mortgage,” as Kitces puts it, is the belief that stocks will definitely outperform in the long run. Jorie Johnson, a certified financial planner in Manasquan, New Jersey, doesn’t take a client’s mortgage into account when setting up their investment portfolio for this reason. “As long as you have a reasonable expectation of doing better in the market than your mortgage interest rate, you should be putting the money in the market,” she says.
However, this a point both technical and practical. If your goal is to shoot for the moon in your retirement portfolio by ratcheting up the risk with borrowed money, there’s a cheaper way to do the same thing by maintaining a smaller, but riskier, portfolio: Pay down the mortgage, but own more stocks and fewer bonds. You’ll lower your risk of ending up with negative home equity, save on mortgage interest, and achieve the same level of portfolio risk, with the same expected returns.
“Taking on more portfolio risk is the equivalent of having less portfolio risk but more leverage,” says Don St. Clair, a certified financial planner in Roseville, California. “If you’re not willing to take some of your portfolio and pay off your debt and jack the risk of your portfolio back up, then you shouldn’t be willing to keep the same portfolio and not pay off your debt.”
The good old days
So, if you shouldn’t use borrowed money to buy stocks or bonds, what should you use it for?
Kitces just bought a house, and here’s his answer. “I’m really going to spend the bulk of the next ten years knocking this mortgage down to zero,” he says. “We are radically ratcheting down savings into investment accounts and really ratcheting up payments toward the mortgage.”
This feels intuitively wrong, doesn’t it? Everybody knows you should make retirement saving a habit and do it faithfully, month after month. Accelerating mortgage payments so you end up with a paid-off house and very little in other assets beyond an emergency fund and your 401(k) match can’t be a good idea, can it?
Just a couple of decades ago, it wasn’t just a good idea; it was conventional wisdom. “It was really straightforward: You built a giant down payment, you took on as little debt as possible, and whatever you did take on in debt, you knocked it out as quickly as possible,” says Kitces. “And when you actually got it done, you literally held a party and burned the mortgage note in your fireplace.”
Can anyone really say that isn’t still good advice? Oh, don’t explain it to me. Explain it to the Las Vegas homeowner who is $100,000 underwater. Nobody needs to be told how toxic negative equity is in 2011, right? If anything, positive home equity offers more flexibility than a 401(k) balance. “They have home equity line of credit options, the ability to move, the ability to relocate, and the financial freedom to make decisions,” says Kitces.
My money is trapped!
Now, wait a minute. Presumably, your investment portfolio is inside a 401(k) or IRA or some other box with “do not open until retirement” stamped on it. It would be crazy to pay the 10% penalty and a huge wad of taxes just to knock off a chunk of your mortgage.
I agree. So while you have a mortgage, what do you do with this money? You invest it in a way that reflects the fact that you’re playing with borrowed money. In other words, Johnny Mortgage’s portfolio should be invested heavily in bonds and cash. Remember that they’re not really bonds and cash. They’re stocks wearing disguises, because a portfolio of low-risk assets bought on leverage is still high-risk.
Even though it doesn’t often feel like it, a mortgage has an end. Later, when the mortgage is nothing but fireplace ashes, you can direct 100% of your former mortgage payment into your retirement savings.
But mortgages are special
Mortgages are weird. Nowhere else in the world of finance can you get a 30-year fixed-rate loan with tax-deductible interest and the option to refinance if rates drop. Of all the kinds of debt, I’d probably agree that this is the best one to use to invest on leverage.
That still doesn’t make mortgage debt cute and cuddly. As the 23% of homeowners who are underwater know, mortgage debt can still bite you right where it hurts. Nearly all of those homeowners would have been better off paying down the mortgage rather than investing, or just keeping their investments in cash. (Yes, I know plenty of them did neither, which compounds the injury.)
Oh, there is one last wrinkle. In most states, you can walk away from a mortgage. The bank will take your house but can’t come after your other assets. As a forward-looking strategy, however, strategic default sucks. (Sorry for the parent lecture.) “Is your strategy for wealth creation really that you should buy real estate with as much debt as you can, because if it goes badly you can stick it to the bank?” says Kitces. “I don’t think that’s really how we’re telling people to build wealth.”
What do you think? Is there any defensible reason to buy stocks or bonds “on mortgage”? Or has everyone already forgotten 2008?
Save more, spend smarter, and make your money go further
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