July-Aug 2020

RM Exclusive continued on page 10 RM Exclusive BM: This is a unique situation on many levels. We find ourselves working remotely, not just government, but all our stakeholders. That had challenges early on, but I think we’ve overcome most of those. It quickly became apparent that appraisers were not going to be allowed into residences and, on the forward mortgage side, Realtors were not going to be permitted inside homes for sale that were occupied, and things of that nature. First and foremost, we wanted to calm the waters and put the foreclosure moratorium into place. This is something we typically do after a natural disas- ter, which we did after the president issued his emergency declaration. We felt strongly that we didn’t want anybody to lose their home unnecessarily as a result of this crisis. The reverse mortgage book presents some unique challenges given its structure. [Deputy Assistant Secretary for Single Family Housing] Joe [Gormley] and his team worked hard going down the laundry list of actions we could take. Because of social distancing, we knew we had to immediately make a change with appraisals, which led to a mortgagee letter that temporarily permits exte- rior-only and desk-top appraisals. We waived in-person occupancy inspections. We also waived a requirement for wet signatures on mortgage notes for HECMs. Our goal was to minimize in-person contact as much as possible because of the vulnerable population that we’re dealing with. Given that everybody is working remotely, we were fortunate in a couple of respects. The FHA technology platform we’ve been working on for over a year was ready with several online improvements—the timing of which happened to coincide with a lot of our actions related to COVID-19. We rolled out the backbone of the new IT system, which we refer to as FHA Catalyst. We created the new case binder module, so that case binders for forward mortgages and HECMs could be submitted electronically. Other actions we took include allowing HECM servicers to use the Social Security Master Death File instead of having to get hard copies of death certificates, which may be difficult to obtain at this time. We also extended some debenture interest curtailment deadlines. We moved quickly to get these policies out and folks in the industry have been supportive. Again, Joe Gormley and his team did an outstanding job working long hours and continue to do so. RM: How will HUD monitor and measure the impact of these emergency actions? BM: We have an informal working group that works with folks out in the industry, for both our forward and reverse mortgage programs. We also continue to look inwardly at our own systems and processes. We don’t want to be the weakest link in the chain in a largely remote work environment. These considerations are ongoing and across all of HUD, not just the Office of Housing and FHA. RM Exclusive continued on page 10 REVERSE MORTGAGE / JULY-AUGUST 2020 9