Plain words · nothing left out
What a reverse mortgage really is
This is the whole thing, written the way we would explain it sitting across from you. Read it at your own speed. Read it twice. Hand it to your children. Nothing on this page asks you for anything.
The short version
The most common reverse mortgage in America has a long name: a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage. Everyone in the business shortens it to HECM, and says it “heck-um”. It is the one we specialize in, and it is the one this page is about.
- It is a loan. You borrow against the value you already own in your home. You stay the owner. Your name stays on the deed.
- You have to be 62 or older. Every borrower on the loan does.
- No monthly mortgage payment is required. That is the part most people come here to find out, so we are not going to bury it further down.
- What you owe grows instead of shrinking. Interest and insurance are added to the balance every month. That is the trade, and it is the honest half of the sentence above.
- It is insured by the Federal Housing Administration — the FHA. That insurance is what makes the promise near the bottom of this page possible.
- You must sit down with an independent counselor first. Federal rules require it before we can even take your application, and the counselor does not work for us.
- You still pay the property taxes and the homeowners insurance, keep the home in good repair, and live in it as your main home. Those three do not go away.
- You can never owe more than the home is worth. Neither can your children. This is the single most important sentence on the page and it has a section of its own.
One thing we want to be clear about
The FHA insures this kind of loan. That does not mean the government sent you here, and it does not mean any agency recommends us. Royal Mortgage is a private company. Nothing on this page comes from HUD, from the FHA, or from any part of the government. Where a fact on this page comes from a government source, we say so and tell you where to go and read it yourself.
The part everyone asks about first
With a normal mortgage you send the lender a payment every month. With a reverse mortgage you do not. No monthly mortgage payment is required for as long as you live in the home and keep up the three obligations further down this page.
If you have a mortgage on the house right now, it gets paid off out of the reverse mortgage at closing. That is often the whole reason a person calls us: the payment stops.
You may make payments if you want to. Some people do, to keep the balance down. Nobody makes you.
And the part nobody should skip
Because you are not making payments, the interest does not get paid off each month. It gets added to what you owe. So does the mortgage insurance premium.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau puts it in one sentence: with a reverse mortgage loan, the amount you owe the lender goes up, not down, over time.
That means there is usually less equity in the house later than there is today, and that can mean less to leave behind. This is the real trade at the center of a reverse mortgage, and anyone who describes one to you without saying it out loud has not described it.
Whether that trade is a good one depends entirely on your life — how long you plan to stay, what the house is for after you, and what the alternative is. That is the conversation, and it is yours to have at your own table.
How much can you actually get?
Three things decide it, and only three:
- The age of the youngest borrower. Older generally means more.
- The interest rate. It moves, so the answer moves with it.
- What the home is worth. Up to a ceiling HUD sets each year.
For 2026 that ceiling — the maximum claim amount — is $1,249,125, and it is the same figure everywhere in the country, including Alaska, Hawaii, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was $1,209,750 in 2025. HUD set it in Mortgagee Letter 2025-22 on December 11, 2025, at 150 percent of the national conforming loan limit of $832,750, for case numbers assigned during 2026.
That ceiling is not an amount anybody receives. It is the most home value the FHA insurance will count. What you could actually draw is a good deal less than the home is worth, and the only way to know your own number is to have someone run it for you. We will do that and put it in writing, with no obligation attached to it.
There is one more rule worth knowing before anybody quotes you anything. In the first twelve months you cannot take everything. You may take the greater of 60 percent of the initial amount available, or whatever must be paid off at closing plus another 10 percent of that same initial amount. That rule is there to stop a person emptying the loan on day one.
How the money reaches you
You choose. There are four shapes and you can combine them:
- A line of credit. It sits there. You draw on it when you want it and leave it alone when you do not.
- A monthly payment to you. For as long as you live in the home.
- A monthly payment for a set number of years. Larger while it lasts, and it stops at the end of the term.
- One lump sum. Taken at closing.
Which shapes are open to you depends on the kind of interest rate you choose, and this is the point where reverse mortgages are most often explained badly:
An adjustable rate
- The rate can move over time.
- This is the one that allows a line of credit, monthly payments, or a combination.
- The unused part of the line grows over time, which can make more money available to you later than was available at the start.
A fixed rate
- The rate does not move.
- It comes as one lump sum at closing, and that is the only way it comes.
- There is no line, so nothing grows. Anyone who tells you the available money always grows is describing half of one product.
What you still have to do
Three things. They are not fine print, they are the loan:
- Pay the property charges on time. Property taxes and homeowners insurance, and where they apply, flood insurance, ground rent, condominium fees, planned unit development fees, homeowners association dues and any special assessments.
- Keep the home in good repair.
- Live there as your main home.
Fall behind on those and the loan can become due, which is why we talk about them early and out loud rather than at a signing table.
What “your main home” means if you have to be away
People ask us this one quietly, and it deserves a straight answer. There are two rules and they are not the same:
- Away for more than six months, for reasons that are not medical. If nobody else on the loan is living in the home, it is no longer your main home and the loan must be repaid.
- Away for more than twelve months in a row in a health care facility. A hospital, a rehabilitation center, a nursing home, an assisted living facility. The allowance is longer, for the obvious reason. If nobody else on the loan is living in the home after that, the same thing happens.
If there is a co-borrower still living in the house, they hold the home. Who is on the loan matters enormously here, and it is one of the first things we work through with a married couple.
If your spouse is not on the loan
Sometimes one spouse is under 62, or for another reason only one of you becomes the borrower. The spouse who is not a borrower is called a non-borrowing spouse, and the federal rules give an eligible non-borrowing spouse a protection every married couple should hear out loud before anything is signed.
An eligible non-borrowing spouse can stay in the home after the borrower is gone
On today’s HECMs, when the borrowing spouse passes away — or moves into a health care facility for more than twelve months in a row — the loan does not have to be repaid right away. Repayment is deferred for as long as the eligible non-borrowing spouse keeps meeting the conditions below. They keep the roof.
Eligibility is specific, and it is set at the signing table, not arranged later:
- Married to the borrower when the loan closes, and named in the loan papers as the non-borrowing spouse — and still married through the borrower’s lifetime.
- Living in the home as their main home — on the day of closing and every day the deferral is meant to hold.
- Within ninety days of the borrower’s death, establishing the legal right to stay — title, a lease, or a court order.
- Keeping the same three obligations every borrower carries: property charges paid on time, the home in good repair, the home as their main home.
And two honest things the deferral does not do:
- It does not pay out any more money. Once the deferral begins, monthly payments stop and the line of credit closes. The protection is the roof, not the income — which is why a couple plans for it before signing, not after.
- It does not survive a missed condition. If any requirement above stops being true, the deferral ends and the loan becomes due, the same as it would for a borrower.
A younger spouse also changes the arithmetic at the start: the amount available is figured on the age of the youngest person on the paperwork, borrower or not. Less money now, more protection later — a trade worth making with both eyes open, and one we put plainly on the kitchen table.
Loans from before August 2014 follow older rules, and they are genuinely different — if that is your situation, bring the papers and we will read them with you.
You can never owe more than the home is worth
This is what “non-recourse” means, and it is the whole reason the FHA insurance exists
A HECM is a non-recourse loan. Your liability is limited to what the home sells for.
If the loan balance has grown past the value of the house by the time it is repaid, the sale of the house settles the debt. You do not owe the difference. Your children do not owe the difference. Nobody comes after your savings, your other property, or your family.
That is not our promise. It is written into the loan, and the FHA insurance is what stands behind it.
In our experience this is the fear people are actually carrying when they sit down — usually the adult children more than the parent. It is worth knowing before anything else gets discussed.
Side by side
Three ways to reach the value in your home
People often arrive thinking a reverse mortgage is just a different kind of home equity line. It is not, and the differences are the whole point. Here are the same six questions put to all three.
| The question | HELOCa home equity line of credit | HELOANa home equity loan | HECMa reverse mortgage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do I make a monthly payment? | Yes. While the line is open the minimum is usually the interest; after that period a full payment. | Yes. The same payment every month from the start. | No monthly mortgage payment is required. Taxes, insurance and upkeep are still yours. |
| Does what I owe go up or down? | Up when you draw, down when you pay. You steer it. | Down, every month, on a schedule set at closing. | Up. Interest and mortgage insurance are added to the balance each month, so the balance grows. |
| Can I take money again later? | Yes. Paying it down restores what is available, like a card. | No. You take it all at once, at closing. | Only on an adjustable rate, from a line of credit — and that unused line grows over time. A fixed rate is one lump sum and nothing more. |
| What do I still have to do? | Make the payments, and keep taxes, insurance and upkeep current. | Make the payments, and keep taxes, insurance and upkeep current. | Pay property taxes and homeowners insurance on time, keep the home in good repair, and live there as your main home. |
| When does it get paid back? | On its own schedule, and in full at the end of the term. | On a fixed schedule, to a date you know at closing. | When the last borrower sells, moves out, or passes away. Usually out of the sale of the house. |
| What if the house ends up worth less than I owe? | You generally still owe the balance. The debt is not limited to what the house sells for. | You generally still owe the balance. The debt is not limited to what the house sells for. | It is non-recourse. Liability is limited to what the home sells for. You and your heirs never owe more than the home is worth. |
A reverse mortgage is not a home equity line with the payments switched off. It is a different loan, with a balance that moves the other way and with three obligations attached to it. Anyone who tells you the two are the same thing is leaving out the part that matters.
If the middle column is the one that keeps catching your eye, go and read about it. We do those too.
What happens at the end
The loan becomes due when the last borrower sells the home, moves out for good, or passes away. In most families it is paid out of the sale of the house.
Your family is not cornered at that moment. They can sell the home and keep whatever is left after the loan is repaid. They can keep the home and pay off the loan another way. Or they can hand the home over and walk away owing nothing, because of the non-recourse promise above.
We will put those choices in writing, line by line, before you sign anything — and we will send the same pages to your children, unedited, if you would like us to.
The second opinion nobody can skip
Before we can take your application, federal rules require you to meet with an independent counselor from an agency approved by HUD. That counselor does not work for us. We cannot coach them, we cannot sit in to steer it, and they have no stake in what you decide.
Some companies treat this like a speed bump. We think it is one of the best parts of the process. It means somebody whose only job is your understanding goes through the costs, the responsibilities, the alternatives and what it means for your family — before anyone signs anything.
We will help you find an approved agency and book it at your convenience. If the counselor raises something we have not answered well enough, bring it straight back to our table. That is what the table is for.
A note of respect, and one correction
A great many of the people we sit down with served this country. We are grateful, we say so, and we say it at the table rather than in an advertisement.
There is one thing we want to correct while we have your attention, because it comes up constantly and it costs people time: the Department of Veterans Affairs does not offer a reverse mortgage. There is no VA reverse mortgage, there is no veterans' version of this loan, and no reverse mortgage is endorsed by the VA. If somebody tells you otherwise, they are mistaken, and you should be careful about whatever they say next.
Your VA benefits are real and they are valuable. This is simply not one of them.
Go and check every word of this
We would rather you checked. These are the two places we checked before writing this page, and neither of them is us:
- The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Plain consumer guides on reverse mortgages, including your responsibilities and what happens when you are away from the home — consumerfinance.gov.
- The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It runs the HECM program, sets the yearly ceiling, and keeps the roster of approved counseling agencies — hud.gov.
- Our license. Royal Mortgage LLC, NMLS #2059962. Look it up yourself at nmlsconsumeraccess.org.
Those are government sites and an industry register. They are not affiliated with us, they do not endorse us, and that is exactly why we are sending you to them.
Ask anything at all. One question is a perfectly good reason to be here, and nothing you type starts a process.
Where to go from here
Nowhere, if you would rather sit with it. That is a real answer and we mean it. There is no hurry, and there never was.
When you do want to move, seeing where you stand takes very little of your day. You can see where you stand in as little as 15 minutes, with only a soft credit check that does not affect your score. It is not an application and it does not commit you to anything.