Hello Grant, Everyone is entitled to watch what they want, and we are not here to try to change your mind on that. If you want to turn off the TV when Tom Selleck is on, that is your prerogative. However, since you have asked me to be honest, I will. I know of no one, including my own mother who had a reverse mortgage, who lost their home in 4 months due to the loan or the fees. A reverse mortgage is not an inexpensive loan - on this we can agree. But I have never met anyone in my 45 years of mortgage banking who lost their home in 4 months due to high fees on a loan. Any loan! Especially one with no mortgage payments after the loan closed. I could almost ignore the exaggeration of the timeframe needed to foreclose on a loan if that was just an error. You see, even a forward mortgage with required payments will typically go 60 - 90 days delinquent before a lender will begin a foreclosure process and then another 6 months before the sale date then another 30 days - a total of 9 to 12 months from the start of a default - before anyone is removed from their home for non-payment but there is no payment due on a reverse mortgage. Your statement about people losing their homes within 4 months due to exorbitant fees on a reverse mortgage is false. You say shame on Tom Selleck, but he was truthful about the program in the commercial, you are not being truthful. Since there are no payments due, no one loses their homes within 4 months due to the fees or for any other reason for that matter and therefore I cannot excuse your blatantly false statement that appears to be meant to scare people. And let's talk for a minute about those fees "exorbitant fees" about which you complain. There is just one fee that goes to the lender, the loan origination fee, and it is regulated and capped by HUD. The most expensive cost on any reverse mortgage is typically the HUD mortgage insurance that is necessary to ensure that borrowers always receive their money no matter what happens to the lender, that investors who often wait 10 years or more to receive any return on the bonds they buy backed by reverse mortgages (because borrowers make no monthly payments) and the loan available to borrowers grows over time on the adjustable rate program so HUD ensures that the funds are always available. Any other costs of the loan are to bona fide third party providers and government entities (appraiser, credit report, title company, closing attorney, recording costs, documentary stamps or taxes charged by the state or county if any, etc.). The lender may not add even one cent to the actual cost charged by these entities and are examined yearly by accounting firms and state examiners to verify that the lender's charges match those of the service provider. In fact, other than the mortgage insurance, the costs are the same as they would be for any other closing with a loan involved. And, just in case you didn't know, HUD also charges Mortgage Insurance on their forward loans. This means that those loans are also much more costly than a conventional loan but the borrowers who choose to use them, do so because they are not required to place as much money down as do borrowers who utilize conventional financing. Therefore, the insurance is required because the loan is riskier due to the lower down payment made by borrowers as well as the underwriting criteria. The reverse mortgage also carries a higher risk because borrowers can stay in the home for the rest of their lives without ever having to make a mortgage payment, regardless of what property values do or how much is owed. So when you talk about people who lost their homes within 4 months, I honestly do not know to whom you are referring. Borrowers with reverse mortgages need to pay their taxes and insurance on the property, must live in the home as their primary residence and must maintain the home in a reasonable manner. Reasonable manner just means you can't have the city or county posting notices that the property is substandard and will be a hazard or must be repaired for some reason. If borrowers meet those requirements, they can remain in the home for the rest of their lives without making a payment on the loan - no matter how much they owe on the loan or what property values do during that time. Under the HUD reverse mortgage program, every borrower received 100% of the funds due them under the program even when values fell such as during 2009 to 2012. No reverse mortgage borrowers with lines of credit reverse mortgages were cut off due to falling values as happened with Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) borrowers who suddenly had their lines frozen or eliminated by their banks when values dropped. This was possible by the HUD mortgage insurance protecting those loans and those borrowers were not forced into foreclosure as were many others when they could not make their mortgage payments and could not sell their homes for anywhere near what was owed on them. Tom Selleck is not our spokesman so we have no reason to defend him as an individual and a reverse mortgage is not for every homeowner over the age of 62. We recommend that you educate yourself on the pros and cons and make a sound decision whether the loan is right for your circumstances. However, we have analyzed the comments in the Tom Selleck commercial and his statements are factual regarding the reverse mortgage program itself. We also encourage people to compare because we believe that when they do, they will see that we can save them money over the company that Tom represents but that doesn't make the program itself a sham. Some people pay more for one car than another without shopping around and that doesn't make the higher priced dealer bad if they have a higher overhead and need to charge more. We just don't believe that borrowers should have to pay for it if they don't want to. Think what you may about ol' Tom, and don't get a reverse mortgage if you don't want one, but you should educate yourself about reverse mortgages before you make such factually incorrect statements about the program in general.