Reverse mortgage brokers may soon have a new friend in the Bay State.
A group led by George Downey, founder of Harbor Mortgage Solutions in Braintree, is in the process of negotiating a legal agreement with the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association to launch a New England chapter of the organization. The new association would be the first local branch of the national trade group.
Downey, a former board chairman of the Massachusetts Mortgage Association, says a separate trade group for reverse mortgages is needed because the products are so different from typical mortgages.
“We need to have folks in place who understand all of these to provide education and counsel to the senior community,” Downey told Banker & Tradesman. “It’s critically important that they understand what they’re doing and make the right choice.”
While the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association has been successful at representing the interests of brokers at the federal level, as the industry has grown many in Massachusetts felt a local voice was needed to speak out on state and local regulations, Downey said. At a meeting last May attended by 60 local reverse mortgage professionals, the idea of a local chapter of NRMLA was proposed.
Downey currently leads an eight-member steering committee preparing for the launch of the new organization, which he hopes to officially launch in the spring.
Once the legal agreement is reached with the parent organization, the steering committee will begin filling slots on five standing committees: governmental relations and policy; strategic relations; ethics and compliance; communications and public relations; and education and training.
At present, all participants are volunteers, but down the road the group may seek to hire an administrative staff person, Downey said. “This will be a crawl, walk, run development,” he added.
One important role for the group would be establishing working relationships with government and industry officials in order to influence legislation.
“Legislators have no idea what [reverse mortgages] are about,” said Downey. “We certainly want to be organized so that we’re in a position to either propose legislation that we may feel is appropriate, or so that we can argue against legislation that we may feel would harm.”
Among potential legislative initiatives, Downey said, would be the creation of a separate license for reverse mortgage professionals, due to the unique training involved to properly educate seniors about their options.
