Reverse mortgage your house for regular income in retirement

Owing to various reasons, you might have failed to build an adequate corpus to meet your expenses when you are no longer earning. Or, there might be some unforeseen expenses for which you need money. You need not sell your home to raise the money. In your sunset years, a reverse mortgage loan can convert your existing house into an alternative retirement corpus, even as you continue to live in it during your lifetime.

Earning Member
A home owner above 60 can reverse mortgage a self-occupied house and get a one-time payment or a regular income from lenders. In case of couples as co-borrowers, the younger borrower cannot be less than 55. Unlike a conventional home loan, a reverse mortgage borrower starts with high equity in the house. With every payment by the lender, the borrower’s equity in the house keeps declining over the tenure of the loan.

EXPERT TIP: Mutual Funds best to build retirement kitty

Though one may opt to repay the loan at the end of the tenure, it is not required to be serviced during the lifetime of the borrowers as long as they continue to live in the mortgaged house. After the death of the borrowers, their heirs have the option to repay all dues to the lender and get the ownership of the property.

If the heirs refuse to repay the loan, the lender recovers its money by selling the property. Any money left after the settlement of the loan amount is returned to the legal heirs. If the proceeds of the sale are less than the accrued principal plus interest, the bank takes the loss.

How reverse mortgage annuity plan works?

Lenders offer loans up to 40-90% of the market value of the property under this scheme. There is a cap of Rs 1 crore on the loan amount. At present, reverse mortgage loans are available at 10-13% rate of interest. You can repay the loan prematurely without any pre-payment penalty if the loan is not being taken over by another lender. The loan tenure, which can be between 10 and 20 years, depends on the age of the borrowers. For example, if the age of the younger borrower in case of a joint loan, is between 60 and 68, State Bank of India (SBI) offers a SBI home loan for 15 years. If the younger borrower is older than 68, the tenure is limited to 10 years.

Lifetime Annuity
Thanks to the tie-ups between lenders and insurers, the loan tenure should not be a cause for concern. Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance offers reverse mortgage-enabled lifetime annuity plans. The scheme has three options: life annuity without return of purchase price or the amount spent to buy the annuity plan; life annuity with return of purchase price, which will be used to buy annuity for the spouse on death of the primary borrower; and life annuity with increase at a simple rate of 5% per annum and return of purchase price. The lifetime monthly annuity payable under the scheme for Rs 10 lakh is Rs 6,256, Rs 4,631 and Rs 3,149, respectively.

Processing your request, Please wait....