Our next scheduled program-Stuck in the Middle: How Adults Can Assist Parents With Caregiving and Long-Term Financial Planning-is scheduled for Tuesday, December 9, at 12 noon Pacific Time (3 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Central, 1 p.m. Mountain).

National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) formally adopted a new single national loan limit of $417,000 for federally insured reverse mortgages and lowered the fees that lenders can charge yesterday.

This afternoon, HUD published Mortgagee Letters implementing the new HECM loan limit and fee structure.

HUD distributed the following email thru its counseling network.

In this section, you will find information on HECM claims activity.

Total October endorsements of 10,121 were up 6.6% from September, and at their highest level in the past six months.

Following is a more detailed analysis of the monthly HECM data published by HUD prepared by Reverse Market Insight.

Yesterday, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued Mortgagee Letter 2008-33: Home Equity Conversion Mortgage Home Purchase Program. We appreciate the fact that HUD incorporated NRMLA member questions and concerns and applaud HUD for bringing this new feature to market.

The following memo provides updates based on discussions at yesterday’s meeting of our NRMLA/HUD Work Group and a committee that is developing recommendations for implementation of the McCaskill amendments on cross selling of financial products with reverse mortgages.

NRMLA announced today that the industry closed 112,154 Home Equity Conversion Mortgages in Fiscal Year (FY) 2008, which ended September 30, 2008, surpassing the record loan volume for FY 2007.

In response to the email we sent out the other day regarding the forthcoming implementation of the new HECM loan limits, we received a number of questions and forwarded them to HUD.

As NRMLA has previously reported, last week FHA Commissioner Brian Montgomery announced the new single national loan limit for HECMs will be $417,000. We are continually getting more insight into implementation of this change and will report to you as information becomes available.

Below is data provided by HUD that includes loan endorsements by state from 1990 to the present, interest rate and borrower statistics.

NRMLA has developed several information booklets for consumers that members can purchase at a discount to distribute to prospective clients. We recently reduced the pricing for our consumer booklet series for orders under 1000.