American Advisors Group (AAG)

But even with all the papers that I received, Carol, the counselor, gave me numbers for this and that. I had a moment over the holiday weekend to be quiet and go over everything. And I decided that the interest rate on the monies that I would get at the beginning of the 12-month period for so much money and the closing cost that I could pay at the end whenever I decided to close out the loan or sell my house, the benefits for me didn't outweigh me to just stay where I am.

At this moment, nobody receives what my condo association is talking about very well. So I don't know what's going to come of that, and I'll just have to play it ear by ear to see, but to pay interest on monies I'm borrowing and monies that are owed for a closing costs, and the loan itself at the end of whatever, or I could just not do anything and pay at the release of my home if I decided to sell it, or to be able to say, “Okay. I've got this to take care so I'm not going to pay anything on the AAG loan this month,” the interest is still piling up. And that bothered me because at the end of the day, they could have quite a bit of equity in my house.

I even spoke to somebody that does a bit of work with HUD. And she said, “It's a good program, but I don't know if this is for you. You need to stop and really look at that.” But AAG kept telling me, “Take your time and go over everything. And it's your decision to make.” They did explain it to me. I got a great education. I understand it completely now. I told Tyler that I'm holding on to all of the papers. And if there comes a point where I need this more than I don't, I will call him back again.

The big thing though is on the appraisal on the house. I pretty much know the market value already but the rep had set up for an appraiser to come out. My son wanted to be there when that happens so if the guy has any questions, it’s easier for him to answer for me on my house. And I wouldn’t be comfortable anyway. But we went round and round, because my son works and he was to request time off. There was one reason after another why the appraiser couldn’t come. The dates didn’t work out. We called about five times but they didn't return my calls. Finally, the apparaiser's wife called me and said, “Okay, are we still on for Friday?” And that was Thursday. I said, “No. I’ve been trying to call you, you’re not returning our calls.” And she said, “Well, I didn’t get any message."

I complained to my loan officer and he said he'd talk to the appraiser. He was upset to what they did. He got this second guy right away, who called me Monday, last week. That was another week we had to wait. So, June 1st, they have agreed that my son will be available. He’s gonna take off half a day, and the appraiser is gonna be there. We’ll see how that works out.

Another upsetting thing is it was $600. My loan officer said that they’re totally separate. It was ridiculous, to come and check out the house for 30 minutes. My son was tremendously upset, not at just the first appraiser, but the second appraiser too, because he had put him off too. I asked the second person if I had to pay him again. He said no, that American Advisors Group would. I thought that was extremely overpriced.

So I called our advisor and told him about it. He said that he was sorry and that he couldn’t control what the office did. He had them send me another one, but I haven’t got the other one. Other than that, I've been to the counseling session and it was worth every penny of my $125. The fellow that did it for us was very slow and deliberate, answered every question that we had, and made sure that in every step of the line, we understood what he was saying. So after the call, both my wife and I felt like we had a much better understanding on what a reverse mortgage is as well as the strengths or weaknesses of it, and it was an excellent review.

We’ve also learned some information in this process that was new to us. I researched reverse mortgages, even before I made the call to AAG, to review them and try to understand as much as I could about them. I still have more questions to ask, but that won't happen until I'm given an actual contract at some point down the road and I will be reviewing that. But I would make sure that people understood what this is and see if it's right for you. I would also tell people that some of the horror stories that they've heard about it, at least so far as I've learned, are just bad horror stories.

I'm waiting for AAG to set an appointment for house inspection. They have the pictures when I first had the first reverse mortgage, but it has been four years so they can't use those pictures. There’s not much change, but the house has a new roof. I understand they need to see the house, but I'm very concerned about COVID. So, I need to talk to whoever the inspector will be to see how we can manage that, whether we can do it through Zoom or how we can do it. I can take his or her camera myself. They can be here outside. And I take the pictures on their camera and give them the camera. Or I could do FaceTime with my own phone.

I've had no one come in the house except once this summer to have the carpets cleaned. And that's how we all are. Everybody is so concerned about having anybody come in to our bubbles. I've talked to AAG. I've expressed that to Joe. He said, “Yes. We've noted that.” And he said, “Now, sometimes what they're doing is just in the driveway.” They're doing them outside like that or on the porches instead of coming into the house. I thought, “Let's figure out something about this inspection of the house.” That's where I am. But so far, I'm satisfied.

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.

Everything has taken way too long. I did all the stuff I was supposed to do. They gave me the approval and everything was fine. We get everything that we need to have done. Aside from Jay, there's this other person named Jack and he had to go away for a while. We waited until he came back. In fact, we did the credit thing this morning. The guy was great.

I work for a very large company, I'm Canadian and they took me from Canada and brought me to the US. I get income in both countries and this makes things more complicated. As an expat, both countries make agreements to make sure they keep the person whole. For me financially, this made me look really good because I am paid way more money to come to the US. I showed AAG bank statements as far back as I can go. I copied everything. The notary came, they took pages, and they took copies of all the stuff.

Today, just when we're just about finished, they called and and asked if they could get all these stuff. I went, "That's not how it works in Canada. You can't just call up somebody and say, 'Hey, I need you to do it like the US. Do you mind? Do you mind just changing everything right now? Could you just do that for me?'" The guy at the head office in Ottawa said, "We could probably do that. It'll take us about two years." That is even though it clearly shows that the income comes every month and all that other kinds of stuff. Now, some underwriter somewhere said he's never seen that before and wanted to get a totally different document. That's why I am pissed beyond worse. They shouldn't have told me it was approved if it wasn't.

I talked to them today and as far as my side of the spreadsheet, there's nothing left for me to do or that they need at this time. I assume they are just working on things and we will close when they get done. They pretty much said that the income is good, the credit is good, and the home is free of any issues. Everything looks fine. But until it's done, it's not done.