Early Stage of Researching Reverse Mortgages

[Anonymous]

My situation:

I'm 61 years old this month, single with no children, and I live in a home built in 1908 that I inherited from my mom after she passed about five years ago. It's mortgage free. It will go to either my sister or her daughter when I pass.

At this point, it is in need of some repairs and updates. One of my most pressing concerns is the black mold in my unfinished basement. Discovered it about 18 months ago and naively thought my insurance company would cover it. Nope. Then I missed a letter from them giving me one year to fix the problem or they would non renew me. This past August, I got the non-renewal letter. My agent bought me another year to get the mold fixed. So now I'm frantically trying to pay down debt to raise my credit score so that I can qualify for a decent APR on some type of loan next year to get the work done. Problem is that puts me right back into debt and any payment will eat heavily into my income short circuiting my ability to accelerate builiding up my savings. Hence the reason for a reverse mortgage. Once I turn 62 next year, I can get the reverse mortgage, pay off whatever type of loan I get in the interim and enjoy not having to pay back my reverse mortgage. With my current income, and getting so close to retirement, I definitely need to NOT have to pay a mortgage or any loan whatsoever.

This is my plan. If you're knowledgeable about reverse mortgages, lenders or have any additional information or suggestions that can help me out, that would be great.

[Anonymous]

Before anything you would have to be the sole owner of the home, you mention that you have sister so my guess would be that it was left to the both of you? If so then you would need the permission of anyone one that's on the deed for either a mortgage or reverse mortgage. And I believe that both would require you to fix the mold issue to keep the property from depreciating or ultimately being condemned/non livable. 

I personally don't recommend reverse mortgage unless you have absolutely no other recourse, and are old enough that it won't impact the rest of your time in the home. Because once those reverse payments stop it's now up to you to start paying them to reside there, and those payments can be considerabley more than what they were paying you. 

If your house qualifies for a mortgage I would go that route to pay for said repairs on the home rather than a high interest personal loan.