• Your home generally must be your "principal residence" - which means you must live in it more than half the year.

• For the federally-insured "Home Equity Conversion Mortgage" (HECM), your home must be a single-family property, a 2-4 unit building, or a federally-approved condominium or planned unit development (PUD). For Fannie Mae's "HomeKeeper" mortgage, it must be a single family home, PUD, or condominium.

• Reverse mortgage programs generally do not lend on cooperative apartments or mobile homes, although some "manufactured" homes may qualify if they are built on a permanent foundation, classed and taxed as real estate, and meet other requirements.

• The borrower must receive counseling and receive a counseling certificate to document such counseling was obtained.

• The property need not be debt free. If you have any debt against your home, you must either pay it off before getting a reverse mortgage or - this is what most borrowers do - use an immediate cash advance from the reverse mortgage to pay it off. If you don't pay off the debt beforehand, or do not qualify for a large enough immediate cash advance to do so, you cannot get a reverse mortgage.

 

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