Liberty Reverse Mortgage

This house was mine forever. I grew up in this house. It was given to me by my mother after my father passed, and I have had it for eight years. I had some medical issues and I didn't get any support from my wife at the time. She wasn't wifely. The end result was I got the annulment, but I owed her 200 grand, so I needed to find somebody that would go ahead and drop coinage to get the lien off the house. I'm a 74 years old Vietnam vet who got exposed to Agent Orange. I was K-9 in Nam and for Strategic Air Command, walking around fence lines all night long, and my knees have been replaced because I had arthritic knees. I'm on borrowed time, and I have no family. My mother and father died, and I have no children. I got some cousins, but they don't give a crap.

So here I am, and I'm happy. I got my reverse mortgage, and I got $6,000 above that so I could go ahead and do whatever I wanted around the house. I just went and put it right back into the house. I have no intention of leaving. I don't know when the next time I'll leave, forever, will happen, but I got into this and my mindset is, it's a one way street and it could end today. I'm not thinking about wall street or the federal interest rate. Everything was explained to me. If I drop today, Liberty Reverse gets the house or they're in the mix. I don't have a will. So good luck to them.

Liberty's application process was organized and not as bad as it could have been. It took about a week for everything to get completed from beginning to end. They didn’t have to drag their feet. With the current conditions, the rate I got was reasonable. My house is paid for and I only withdrew $5,000 in funding on a line of credit.

There was only one thing about the process. Since I had a reverse mortgage before, I knew about the onerous upfront fees. I also thought I knew about the number of documents that it took to close. I've been a real estate broker for 50 years, so I know closings and signings. But I had to sign 55 times and that was ridiculous. I have written over 200 pages of paper. Not a single person who has ever lived can understand those documents. If they had maybe a year to go over them, they might have some understanding but never a full understanding. And there’s no way that that’s helping the consumer on what it's supposed to be all about.

I would like to speak to Congress about this. It’s not just for Liberty. The world is getting this way to where the company thinks they’re protected. The fun thing is the guy gets there. I told him before he came, “I guess it’s about a ream of paper." But it turned out to be 220 pages. That included the appraisal. The thing is the things I wanted to see before closing, I really didn’t get ahold of like the title commitment.

The bottom line is the process of actually closing is something that I shouldn't have done. Nobody should sign that many papers. I counseled some of my friends about being able to do a reverse mortgage. I believe in the concept of it for some of us who've lived our lives the way we've had and ended up with nothing. Only desperate people would do it. Liberty did their job but it’s absolutely ridiculous to have the customer sign that many times. It was redundant but it was just protecting the different aspects of the transaction. It just really made me very angry. But I was very nice to the closer. He didn't know any better.

That aside, everybody in the process did their job well but the company itself needs to take another look at what they're asking people to do. It puts the company in the position of clearly not being willing to take a risk anywhere and that should be clear to people. If you listened to and read everything they gave you upfront, you would have no excuse. But nobody in this world is going to read all that stuff. Liberty can also actually give people the information they need without covering their own ** every word. But they do it because it is the process and it’s risky. It’s just actually being able to foreclose ultimately. It's one of those things that goes against the grain and people that are survivors and inheritors don't understand it.

I also did not care for the people that came to my house representing Washington. They had to have a printed Social Security card and I, to this day, don't understand that. I sent them my tax papers with my and my wife's Social Security on them. And that wasn't good enough. My driver's license wasn't good enough either. But those are government-ran programs and they were not good enough for them, what is? It was very disturbing to me. We started in October and that was the main ingredient that slowed everything down. We then went to the Social Security office and took out new cards. That really threw me into a tizzy. They told me my mother wasn't my mother and they told me that she had a different name. I told them that I didn't want to argue with anybody because I needed that program but they shouldn't tell me what my mother's name was. Then he came back with the card and printed on it was another's name.

They also told me that I was born in 1943 but I told them that I know for a fact that I was born in 1944. It's on a passport I used to have as well as on my driver's license and my birth certificate. It opened my eyes up to some of those things. It was nothing really big but it was just an accumulation of a bunch of little stuff like that. Aside from that, I've had local people tell me my house is worth $320,000. But Liberty's guy came out and said it was worth 265,000. I would have been happy with that had the other people not told me it was worth more. They went on the calculations of the 265,000, which was all right with me. But I didn't get near as much money as I thought I should have. We wound up getting what we’d get next year if we decided to take that out. I got 162,000 this time and next year, I get 22,000. That's $184,000 on a house that's worth $265,000. I have no idea where $80,000 will be and that's a lot of money to me.

Then, in getting the money, Liberty's rep said asked if both my and wife's names were my checking and savings account. I told her that I didn't have a savings account, only checking account. However, the checks should be in her and my name only. When we went to the bank, we had all that switched around. So, now, both of us have it and we still don't have a check that has both our names on it. So, they mailed the check to me and when took it to the bank, it was going to be eight days before I could get the money for it. Which made me question if I have done somewhere online I didn't know about because I called the bank and then I called the number they gave me to something federal and asked if they could relax the rules so I could get the money the next day. They said no.

So, I called the number again the next day and I asked why I had the check, it was in my bank, and yet I couldn't get the money. They they checked and California hadn't released it yet. California said their bank was holding it up. On the second day, we talked to a guy and he was very considerate. He said he would do some more checking. I told him that they did check the day before but there was a time difference. They were checking out there at 5 o'clock in the morning and I seriously doubt if anybody was there to okay it. So, he did it in the afternoon and 20 minutes later, the bank called me and said I had my money.

We were supposed to get an $85,000 line of credit as opposed to the 70,000 that we already had originally on a previous reverse mortgage with Liberty. Other than that, everything was good, the house appraisal was nice, and by the time all's said and done, we ended up with barely 80,000. So, it was still 10,000 more than we originally had, but one goes through all that hassle. So, we decided to go ahead and go with it. The Liberty reps were pretty good. They worked with us hand in hand. If they didn't have an answer, they got somebody that did and they got back to us. I was satisfied. They were very professional and they were very nice to us. They understood our needs and what was going on and how we felt about certain things.

Working with Liberty helped us have a little security. We're both on fixed incomes and it's nice we have our house equity. That’s what we’d like to tap into in case of emergencies. Their process moved quickly. It's just a matter of getting the proper stuff the way it needed to be and what we were trying to accomplish. That was a little bit nerve-wracking because, after all that, we're just about ready to drop it all. There were a few things I got wrong. The deal was for them to pay the appraisal. We had the appraisal with another company before them and they paid for it, but they were willing to pay them. But they also put that in the closing cost. It was like $625.

Part of the deal, which we have in writing, was that they pay the closing cost. And they didn't take it out of. When the whole loan was finally done, they didn't take it out. So, it gave us $625 less in our line of credit. Because of that, they fixed it up. We also got free counseling services. With the interest rates being as high as they are, the line of credit is pretty good. It may not sound like a lot, but when you take $625 away from the initial line of credit, it’s all compounded on top of each other. So, that's the only thing we regretted.

I didn't understand reverse mortgage but I'm glad that I did it because it definitely bailed us out. In the very beginning, it seemed a little sketchy. I was a little curious. But all in all, they stayed on top of things. Now, we just have to figure out if we wanna stay in this home because we paid cash for it, so there's no mortgage. We're here at least for another year or two and after that, we're gonna have to make a decision. There's only one thing that I need to deal with the lender on. Our taxes and insurance are supposed to be taken out of their funds that they held back and the homeowners’ insurance policy was paid in full except for $80. I don't know why they didn't pay the $80 but I paid it and let the lender know. He said they would talk about it and see if they can get me reimbursed. But it's no big deal.

I sold real estate back in the ‘80s and back then, my broker encouraged me to never ever talk about reverse mortgages to people. They were not good back in those days, which was why I was a little bit leery of it. But in the same token, everything seemed to be so honest and upfront. So, we did it. It's been a great experience. They were very good. When I needed a response, I would email and Sabrina, the rep, would get right back to me. Or if I called on the phone, the manager would call me back. Everything seemed to be smooth.

The people have to talk to you and ask you that you understand everything about a reverse mortgage, etcetera, etcetera, you know, and they tell you all about it and stuff to make sure that you know what's going on with it, and everybody has to do that. my husband passed away like six months ago and I needed some money to do a roof, you know, put a new roof on and stuff. So that's why I did it on the house and they helped me get it.

He would put the paper in front of me and say, "Sign. Sign here. Name and date, name and date." He would then talk to his son. I figured, “How long can I be signing my name and a date?” What I made him do was write the number of the month, the day and the year because he was getting me confused. At 82, it doesn't take much to confuse an old person. When his son wasn't going to call back anymore, he wanted to talk about his family, his mother, the trips that they took, and the boats that they were on.

I signed the papers in May. He then said "You can't make another call until next year." I was only going to take $1,000 a month. Once he left, my granddaughter expressed her dislike and I didn't like it either. But we signed it and the next morning, I went to the post office and I did what the man said. The lady that was there was very sweet. I told her the documents had to go right then. It did and it got to Liberty.

I got a call from another rep and I had to sign again. The rep I had the second time was a beautiful young little girl from Wilmington. She was absolutely fabulous and I was hoping that she would be my go-to girl. She does just that particular thing. She was very sweet. I was told that if I wanted to draw, I was to call her and she would see to it that it got here. But that wasn't true. A man said there was supposed to be a form in my packet. We looked through the three packets and we couldn't find the form. Liberty said they were going to send it. My friend said that something came in the mail so we looked. We had papers everywhere. We had separated stuff and marks of certain things that help us understand what it was. It was rude to send a packet to an 82 year old and expect any of us to understand what the heck it was. It's too much.

In the end, we found the form and I informed the woman who called. She asked what it said and I started reading it. I said, "Well, there's a part down the bottom that says name." And she said there was not supposed to be anything on there but a place for you to do this and this and this. What I don't understand was the people that were doing the investigation. My made good money. The people only went back three months or three years, whcich was when everything broke loose. They should have gone back 20 years. We have two homes both paid for. The first time we applied, Liberty never even bothered with the Baltimore home, which was my mother's home. But when I applied the second time, they started asking me all these questions about it. From application to finish, it took a long time. They stuck my mother's house in there. All in all, I wouldn't recommend Liberty.