Reverse Mortgage magazine Nov-Dec 2020

In Reverse Goodbye, 2020 Here’s to a Prosperous 2021 By Thomas A. Barstow LAST YEARAT this time, I eagerly awaited 2020.Without burdening you with the details, 2019 was tough. But like 328 million other Americans, the whiplash of the past ten months has me yearning for stability, really anything that can make this year seem remote and a distant footnote. It also has me counting the blessings that were there last year but that became even more vivid since then. Throughout this edition of Reverse Mortgage , nearly every article has someone demonstrating their resiliency but also the adaptability and toughness of the industry. “They didn’t shuffle the cards. They handed us a new deck, and we have no idea what the cards are,” George Downey, CRMP, founder of Harbor Mortgage Solutions Inc., says in 2021 Offers Potential (p. 18). Downey is among the industry leaders whose perseverance through this pan- demic is leading to beefed-up initiatives. For example, he tells Reverse Mortgage that he plans to further reach out to financial advisers, lawyers and other professionals in 2021. Meanwhile, Kristen Sieffert, president of Finance of America Reverse LLC, says FAR will unveil new private- sector products, while improving the consumer experi- ence. Efforts also will include marketing plans that started in 2019 that focus on borrowers. Rick Sweeney, a senior branch manager for Open Mortgage LLC in Incline Village, NV, tells one of our writers, Joel Berg, that the pandemic is changing the mar- ket in ways that he is noticing, so he is adapting to those trends. Before, people were using proceeds from a reverse mortgage to make purchases. “That same person this year is saying ‘I want to have some money for when this thing is over,’” Sweeney tells Berg in the article Closing Time: Deals Increase as Borrowers Seek Security in theWest (p. 28). In our recurring feature Talking Heads (p. 12), Beth Paterson of Reverse Mortgages SIDAC in St. Paul, MN, tells Darryl Hicks, NRMLA vice president of In Reverse continued on page 4 REVERSE MORTGAGE / NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2020 3