American Advisors Group (AAG)

I told her that I got to go to the doctor and that she should send me an email with her number on it, then I'll pick up the conversation when I’m free to talk. She followed up and gave us 7 to 10 days to discuss it. So, between those days, ‘cause we had quite a few things going on, she gave a time for me and my wife to walk through the advantages and disadvantages of doing it and whether it was a good fit for us. I didn't get the impression she was trying to meet a quota. I felt like that she was adequately explaining the product so that meant something as well.

We're not completely through with the process. We paid cash for our house. Since we moved in, we’ve only been in here for months, we spent $50,000, so we got our fingers crossed that we will get an appraiser that is knowledgeable and understanding of the market that Bonnie and myself are in. The only thing that would blow it up is if a person would under appraise the house. I'm holding documentation that the house should appraise at around 400, 402, but appraising is subjective and everybody doesn't say everything the same way. If it did not come in around that figure, give or take a few 1,000, then that would make us rethink if we wanted to do this or not ‘cause we might lock in more money into the house. If we do that, then we would have too much value locked in for what could be loaned on the house. In other words, we wouldn’t wanna tap our money.

About two years ago, I had a gentleman come up on the house that we lived in for 28 years and he tried to appraise it for $375,000. I told him he was crazy. I knew that he was faulty. I was trying to refinance to do another project on that home because it was a river home and it was capital intensive. Finally, I sold that for $790,000. If I would’ve bought in on that guy's appraisal that didn't know what he was doing, I would have potentially screwed myself out of $400,000. I told Bonnie I'm not gonna get negative on it because I can't control the appraiser. So, let's just see how everything shakes out and then we'll take it from there. I wouldn't consider it if I had children. But since we don't have, it gives us a little different angle on what we need.

So we had a few phone calls and we got to the point where he shared a report with the various options that they would offer. We went over that and discussed that, then we set up the counseling session where they went over a very similar kind of report about the options for getting an HECM. The FHA counseling session more or less confirmed what we were hearing, so we were feeling good about going with the reverse mortgage at that point. Also, since we had consulted the attorney ahead of time, she talked to us about different options that we had. So that helped also to understand the report that we got from AAG.

We contacted Joseph again and we talked about how to move forward with the formal application process, etcetera. He said, until the counseling was done, we couldn't really move forward. So, the counseling company that we talked to sent Joseph an AAG certificate that we had taken the counseling, then we've spoken on the phone a couple of times since then to move forward. But there was a slight hiccup after getting the counseling certificate until we were able to connect up with AAG again. It was not anybody's fault in particular, but Joseph took a couple of days off and we didn't hear back from him right after we had the counseling session to confirm that they received the certificate. We ended up calling him a few times and calling his supervisor to understand what was happening. I got the message that he was out of the office, but I didn't know for how long.

He was only gone a couple days, but it was over a weekend too. So we didn't really hear back until the Monday after and we had gotten the certificate on Wednesday. So that made me feel very uncomfortable that I hadn't heard back from anybody in that amount of time. The communication back from the company could have been a little better to let us know what was going on and if the certificate had been received or not.

All in all, I liked dealing with Joseph and he was very helpful. When I needed questions answered that he might not answer, he was able to get someone else on the line to talk to me about those particular items. For instance, on the report that I looked at, some of the numbers needed clarification and he helped me with that. So, I felt pretty comfortable with AAG in general, and Joseph in particular, except for that one glitch.

I had mentioned to my husband years ago, “If we stay in our house, this is what we want to look at doing eventually.” But I was thinking when we get in our 70s. He started seeing these commercials and then, he was like, “Why don't we do this now? We’re 62-plus.” I was like, “’Cause, I don’t know, I just thought we’d wait.” He said, “Why wait?" Finally, one day, he said, “Would you please call and find out what it's about?” I got online to compare AAG. It popped up first. We kinda started comparing. I opened up the document, and it was easy to fill out. So, I filled it out, and I put my husband's name, which I never do. But I did it because he wanted me to do it.

I got a call the very next morning. The guy was super polite. I started doing some background checks on other companies and read from other comments from customers. Closing costs are a lot more than what you normally would pay for a home loan or a refi. We paid about 7,000, and this is gonna be about 11,000. I was going over some figures, and I called Alyssa. I said, “It’s gonna be $20,000?” She said, “Well, yeah.” Although nobody likes to pay that kind of money, I understand. I was telling my husband, it makes me feel really comfortable knowing that it’s insured by HUD.

We can stay in our house as long as we want regardless of what happens to the market as long as one of us is living in the house and we’re still alive. If we both pass away, our son will get everything we have. I feel very comfortable with the insurance guarantee backed by FHA. That helped me kind of swallow the $11,000 that they will receive. I feel like we're relatively young in getting into a reverse mortgage. Yet, we still see all the benefits of it.

He paused after certain things to see if I had a question. If I didn’t, he kept going. Then, if I did have a question, he answered it right away. He didn't have to put me on hold. He didn't have to go check with someone else. He just kept saying, “I know the experience that you had before was totally different. But this is all we do.” He also said, "We take this very seriously.” So he made me feel comfortable from the very first phone call.

We had the big freeze in Texas and Jason called and informed me that he would let me know as soon as AAG will move forward for all of their clients. But lo and behold, I get a call from him and he told me that my house has been appraised. Even he was shocked it's gone so quickly. But at one point my disability was not approved. So I had to go through that. I called Jason and left him a message. “Okay, Jason. I know you're not the one that’s going to make the decision. But basically, I'm $150 difference from what is going in the bank right now, and what would be going in the back from Disability.” I told him that I wanted my $585 back for the appraisal that hadn't happened yet. He called me back and he was so kind. Both of us would start laughing because I'm the kind of person that laughs anyways. Then he called me a day later and he said he already got the email and that we were moving forward.

Jason called me every time something happened or sent me an email. He gave me the number on the appraisal and it was 275. So he went through the process saying, “If HUD chooses to get a second appraisal, then that's what we'll have to do. And that usually takes three or four more days.” Lo and behold, the next day, he called and said that HUD has already made a decision and there was no second appraisal. He told me that I have one person that's going to be calling me. Now, I'm waiting for that person. Jason already gave me his name and what he does. From my experience a year ago, to working with AAG is night and day. I haven't had one bad experience. I have dealt with another company before and it was a nightmare. Everything had to be mailed to me. But with Jason, I could do the DocuSign.

When I talked to the counselor, she told me to go to a certain page and look for the number. She didn't tell me the ups and downs of a reverse mortgage. She just read from a script and that was it. She ran out the clock. Also, when she called, I told her that my girlfriend was on the phone with me. She said, "Well, that's a problem." I asked her how was that a problem? She then spent 10 minutes collecting all my girlfriend's information, including her Social Security.

I read the original document thoroughly. In that document, it makes it perfectly clear that the one thing you cannot do is allow your homeowners insurance or your taxes to be delinquent. When I got on the phone with the counselor, she told me that part six times. Then, she reworded the questions to test me to see if I remembered. I said that she was like giving me a second-grade test but it's not a very complicated concept. I told her that I got it and to tell me something I didn't know. So I basically wasted $175 on the counseling process.

The girl who came for the notary was also a joke. She was two hours late from my original appointment, and she walked in telling me she was running late because her schedule is overbooked. She gave me this big stack of paper. Somewhere in that stack, there were five pages that I had to sign. It wasn't organized. There were two stacks, one for her and one for me. As we go through them, I'll read them. But she's said, "Don't worry, just sign here." I told her, "No, I'm not gonna just sign. Let me read the damn thing." The question on that one document is asking me, "Do I want to waive my three-day right?" I don't want to waive. There were two boxes you can possibly check, one says you're waiving your rights and one says you don't. So if I didn't read the document, then how would I know what I was checking?