Foreclosures of Reverse Mortgages Are Different

The headline on Bloomberg News as reported by National Mortgage News caught my eye. It read "Mnuchin's Reverse Mortgage Woes Blemish Record of Treasury Pick." As I read on, I realized that reverse mortgage-bashing by the media, which had almost disappeared in recent years, was now being revived to tarnish a Trump appointee. The article reports that reverse mortgages are an "icky" business in which celebrity spokespersons "set the stage for a potential foreclosure on an elderly widow or widower..."

What is the connection to Mnuchin? With several other investors, he had acquired the insolvent IndyMac in 2009 from FDIC, and with it Financial Freedom, a reverse mortgage lender owned by Indy Mac. Financial Freedom, according to Bloomberg, "has carried out 16,220 foreclosures since 2009, or about 39% of the country's reverse-mortgage foreclosures..." The "blemish" on Mnuchin seems to be his association with the heavy foreclosure volume by Financial Freedom.

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