How a Reverse Mortgage Can Change Your Life

In this episode, Justin sits down with reverse mortgage expert and bestselling author Kevin Guttman to explore how reverse mortgages are transforming retirement for Baby Boomers—and opening new doors for real estate professionals. 

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Host

Justin Stoddart

What is Think Bigger Real Estate?

The road to success for real estate agents is well-marked. The road to significance is not. Here, we help you to Think Bigger than just your business. We inspire you to seek success AND significance, income AND impact. We do that by interviewing the biggest thinkers and highest achievers in the real estate industry, extracting the secrets to having it all.

Justin Stoddart (00:01.336)
that are between 18 to 19 trillion dollars of real estate held by the baby boomer generation. And yet while many of them are house rich, many are cashflow poor, they don't think that the home that they live in, although it might not be perfect for their circumstances, and not having income anymore, affords them the opportunity to get into a right-sized home.

So that's one of the major dilemmas facing the Baby Boomer generation and it's because many of them don't understand the power of a reverse mortgage, how it can truly change their lives. In today's episode we're gonna talk about this important topic that's very important for real estate agents today because I guarantee there are people right now who are sitting on homes that they don't wanna be in because they don't think that there's an option. And by you understanding what we're gonna share today, it will open up listing and purchase opportunities for you and for your clients changing their life as well as.

boosting your business in a significant way. So with that, I'm excited to introduce today's guest. His name is Kevin Gutman. He's out of the Denver, Colorado market. And he's more than just that. He's a four time bestselling author on this topic. Additionally, he is the top producer at the highest, the largest producing reverse mortgage company in the country. He's one of just 220 certified reverse mortgage.

So I'm really excited to have Kevin here with us today to really go through how a reverse mortgage can change your life. Kevin, such a pleasure to have you here.

Kevin Guttman (01:28.381)
Justin, it's my pleasure, thank you so much.

Justin Stoddart (01:31.17)
It was fun talking with you prior to the show kicking off. Kevin and I are both a little bit of crazy because we both have big families. Kevin's an empty nest, he's got five kids and I went a little bit crazy and went to six. you know, one of the kind of landmarks of this show is successful businesses and significant lives. That's to me and my co-host who unfortunately wasn't able to be here today. That's our mantra, right? Is it's not just about building successful businesses but also having significant lives.

Kevin Guttman (01:38.482)
Yeah.

Justin Stoddart (01:59.606)
and that family's obviously a big part of that. I would love to hear as we kick off, what is your favorite part about being a dad and then a grandpa? And then we'll dive into the reverse mortgages.

Kevin Guttman (02:09.041)
That's a great question. know, as someone who has several children, know, each of them are so different and they're all so fun and just bring different things to the family. I specifically think about our youngest daughter. My wife and I were done after four. We really wanted two and two. Of course, you have no control over that, but we ended up with a boy and three daughters and our son desperately wanted a brother.

And so we went away on a vacation and came back with, my wife became pregnant with Abigail. But the name means father of joy. That's what her name means. And she has brought me so much joy in our whole family. We just can't even imagine having our family without Abigail.

But they're all just great and unique and special. And now like you said, we're starting to have grandkids and boy that's next level joy right there because they're just so innocent and fun and you know, they just want you to.

As the grandparents, you just have this higher status than the parents, because you're not the one disciplining them, or you give them anything they want. You want some ice cream, you some candy, sure. But the parents are the ones saying no. So it's just so fun to now be grandparents, and it's such a joy. We love it so much.

Justin Stoddart (03:26.67)
You know, I have affirmations that I say every day and that one of them is that I live a joy-filled life and I can't help but have the faces of my children run through my head when I say that because I believe that that's part of the plan is that children bring great joy. anyway, thank you for sharing that. We've covered the most important part of the episode which is the significance part. So thank you again. Let's dive into.

Kevin Guttman (03:47.517)
And I'm a big believer in affirmations too. think affirmations just help you remember who you are or who you want to become, right? And those are so powerful.

Justin Stoddart (03:57.486)
You know, I do them while sitting for three minutes in a 39 degree cold plunge. So it's my, my state is very heightened and it's an awesome experience, awesome experience for me every day to conquer something tough and reconnect with kind of my deepest purposes and goals every morning. So yeah. All right, let's dive in. think, you know, this joy of life that we're talking about, maybe there's a handful of people that don't know what you know.

Kevin Guttman (04:16.275)
That's awesome.

Justin Stoddart (04:24.546)
Kevin and as a result, feel unfortunately more of the stresses of the retirement years, right? With obviously massive increases in expenditures here over the past, you four or five years that have just skyrocketed and left so many people on a fixed income with the inability to live the kind of retirement and go visit grandkids and enjoy the life. The golden years are less than golden.

And I think it's because they don't know what you know, are excited to dig into this because they should be enjoying these golden years. So walk us through kind of your, just an overview of a reverse margin, how it can help maybe change that.

Kevin Guttman (05:02.301)
Yeah, great question.

So the very first reverse mortgage was taken out in 1961. A widow had just lost her husband, could no longer afford to make her house payment, knew the local banker because her husband was a football coach, banker played football for the football coach, and they went to the bank and they said, what if we suspend this widow's mortgage payments and we allow her to stay in her home and then we take payments from her equity each month? And so the very first reverse mortgage was born in 1961 in Maine.

And honestly Justin, for 27 years the program was not regulated. And so it was kind of like the Wild West. Lots of companies had a version of a reverse mortgage. Honestly some people got taken advantage of. Some people lost their homes. 1988, President Reagan and Congress passed the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage Bill, HECM. They made it a 10 year trial to see if it would help a senior homeowner remain in their home.

retain ownership on title, gain access to their equity, refrain from having a monthly mortgage payment, gain access to their equity. And after 10 years, they deemed the program was successful, so they made the law permanent. And over the years, to the government's credit, they don't move that fast, but they've tweaked the program, made it safer. It's actually the safest mortgage anybody can get in the country. For example, they have to do mandatory third-party counseling, either in person or by phone.

there's just safeguards throughout the whole loan that really protects seniors because you know they're a vulnerable population. And so what we try to do is we try to, we meet someone, we try to listen, try to understand what their goals are and then see if reverse mortgage is a good option for them or not. And if it is, you know, we'll go forward and explain it. Happy to explain it to family members or advisors as well. But.

Kevin Guttman (06:59.507)
Yeah, that's kind of a little snapshot of how it came to be and how it works.

Justin Stoddart (07:04.876)
I appreciate you sharing that. know, it's interesting. have a friend here in the Portland area who's done a lot of reverse mortgages and he had shared with me that oftentimes, you know, there's been some bad press on reverse mortgages. And it's interesting how many times when you dig into that, it's not that the reverse mortgage backfired, it's that people didn't pay like their property taxes, right? Just nothing to do with the reverse mortgage, right? And it looks like that the reverse mortgage caused somebody to lose their house. And it's like,

they didn't pay their insurance, they didn't pay their property tax. This has nothing to do with the mortgage itself. so think while you said that there have been some continual updates to the program to make it safer and better for seniors, some of the stuff that the media grabs a hold of and kind of waves as a banner of like, this thing isn't good, is bunk, right? So I don't know if there's any insight on that.

Kevin Guttman (07:52.793)
There's a famous rant from Dave Ramsey. I don't know if you know who Dave Ramsey is, but he's on the radio and written books and stuff. And I like Dave Ramsey. I think he's great with helping people get out of debt. But he is very misguided when it comes to reverse mortgages. In this particular rant, he talks about this 92 year old man in Chicago who's going to lose his house because he has a reverse mortgage. And that's exactly what you just said. The gentleman didn't pay his property taxes. So whether you have a regular mortgage, a reverse mortgage or no mortgage, if you don't pay your property taxes,

Justin Stoddart (07:56.546)
I do, yeah.

Kevin Guttman (08:22.677)
taxes, they're going to foreclose and take your home. But the other part of it is too, and these pundits like Susie Orman and Dave Ramsey and such, they're not really up on the updates, the things that have been improved over the years, especially since 2015. So anytime I tell somebody, anytime you find something negative online, it's almost always pre-2015. But since then, the problems that plagued reverse mortgages,

We don't see those anymore. The foreclosure rate's way down because people actually have to qualify now with income to show they have enough income to pay the property taxes and the insurance and maintain the home, et cetera. So that's why I'm saying over time, they've really improved the program and made it safer.

Justin Stoddart (09:06.254)
As we were talking about before, Kevin, we feel so passionate that there is so much wealth in real estate held by baby boomers and many of them don't know how to access it in a way that actually gives them the retirement that they deserve. That's one of the reasons why we built technology because again, most real estate agents are not great referral partners. Now I say that because I am one and although we think about things that have to get done to get a transaction done.

We think about, and home inspectors, we think about what things are on, are called out that need to be fixed. But it comes time to holistically looking at what else the client may need, whether it be a financial advisor, whether it be a tax professional, whether it be a reverse mortgage specialist. It oftentimes, for most real estate agents, fits just outside their periphery to where they don't actually think to engage somebody in a proactive conversation about how their life could be better. And they miss an opportunity to serve that client and to serve their own business because

built into all of these boomers, many of them again are not in ideal homes. They're living far away from family and they think that they're stuck in this home because they don't have the income to qualify for a new mortgage, which is true if you're looking at a forward mortgage, But what our technology, as I was describing to you, does is it searches all the property records, public property records of all their clients and identifies opportunities like that to say, you've got a client here who could qualify for this.

And that gives them the ability then to be really great, strong referral partners for our people. So I feel very passionate about this because it's one of the main things that our technology looks for and identifies because there's so much opportunity there to serve this generation that we owe so much to, as well as an opportunity to really boost free up inventory, which is needed now more than ever, as well as give obviously the opportunity to the real estate agent and all those who follow the opportunity to be serving.

new client they would have missed otherwise.

Kevin Guttman (10:59.827)
So you mentioned at the very beginning, a real estate agent has a huge untapped opportunity that 96 % of agents in their market are not taking advantage of, which is a reverse mortgage for purchase. So what I tell real estate agents, said, look, go through your database. Anybody that's 62 years or older has significant equity, don't feel like they can afford to move.

Or maybe this house doesn't suit them in a stage of life and Justin you've seen it right? They don't want to maintain the big house anymore.

They don't want, maybe the house has multi-levels and one of them can't do the stairs anymore, right? But exactly what you said, they feel stuck. Well, what can I do? I can't afford to, interest rates are so high, property values are so high, I can't afford to move. So this is what I tell real estate agents. What if you were to approach this group of people in your database, 62 years and older, have a ton of equity, need to move but don't know they can move? And you say something like this.

Hey Jim and Mary, what if you could move to a newer home with updated amenities and the part of town you want to live in, make one large down payment, not have a mortgage payment anymore, would that improve your lifestyle? Would that improve this stage of life for you? And they almost always say yes.

And then we run the numbers and make sure, okay, you can sell your house at this much, you're gonna net this much, which means you can go buy a house for this much. Because if they do a reverse mortgage for purchase, it's called H for P, heckum for purchase. If they do an H for P, they can increase their buying power by 35 to 45%. That's huge. Rather than use up all your cash.

Kevin Guttman (12:44.595)
put one large down payment down, keep some money back, use the mortgage to pay the 35 to 45%, live in a better home without deferred maintenance, in a safer part of town. I know you guys can never talk about neighborhoods and stuff, but maybe they don't feel safe anymore in that neighborhood. know, neighborhoods change over.

Maybe they do want to live closer to the family. Maybe they want to live out of state. Maybe they don't live near their family now. So this is a way that a realtor can get both sides and really serve their clients.

Justin Stoddart (13:19.01)
That's the thing. Again, one of the biggest reasons why real estate agents don't reach out and engage their clients is because they want to actually show up with real value. The most important thing about being a relational real estate agent is staying in contact and in relationship with the people. Yet most people, I should say many of them, aren't really good at just calling to chit chat. Some are, but some aren't. They want to call with purpose.

there's very few things to that demographic that I think could be more valuable than having that conversation. And I love the questions that you ask. Would this make your life better, right? Is this something that would make your situation better? And I think that's a great way to engage people. In fact, we may just train our technology to ask that exact question right there because it's, know, again, that concept of, and I don't know exactly how you said it, I've always said, defer payments for the rest of your life. How did you put it?

What was the verbiage that you used? Not have a payment.

Kevin Guttman (14:17.245)
Yeah, they make one large down payment and there's not a mandatory monthly payment required. It's optional, they can make a payment if they choose to. You know, Justin, another opportunity for realtors, because not everybody has older people in their database, right? But what about...

My daughter said this to me the other day, because she's 34, and she said, Dad, all my friends are of age to get a reverse mortgage. Let's do a podcast geared towards children of seniors. I'm like, you're so brilliant. And that's true. So these children are concerned about their parents. Are mom and dad okay? I'm concerned they're going to fall. I'm concerned they can't keep the maintenance up on the house. I'm concerned that the neighborhood maybe isn't safe anymore.

They feel, you know, neighbors just change. It's just a normal thing. It just happens in every city. And so these kids don't know themselves how to help mom and dad. But if, you know, we could have the conversation, or the realtor could have the conversation with the children of seniors, hey, tell me about your parents. Where are they living? Are they okay? You know, yeah, they have this great house. They lived there for 30 years. They have a ton of equity.

they don't really feel safe or you know I'm really concerned that mom can't really do the upkeep on the house anymore and you know it's a big yard and dad can't mow it anymore or whatever.

or they have stairs and I'm concerned they're gonna fall. Well, what if we could move them to a better situation where they wouldn't have a mortgage payment, they could live closer to you in a safer neighborhood, maybe a gated community, et cetera, et It's just, it's a game changer. And if more realtors knew, they would be able to serve their clients and ultimately, they'd make more money because like we said now a couple times, they're getting both sides, the listing and the sale.

Justin Stoddart (16:11.502)
Right. Yeah, that's the beautiful part of it is that those who serve the most make the most. Right. And I think when you can get your arms around the fact that there is this significant generation, I just to put it into context, there's 10,000 baby boomers who are retiring every single day. Right. In other words, they're leaving income and hoping that they have enough cash to get them to the end.

and with increased and improved technology, the reality is people are going to live longer. They're going to need to be able to access some of the equity that they stowed away in their house, which they can't, in many cases, can't do without more income.

Kevin Guttman (16:53.159)
Yeah, there's only a few ways that any of us can access our equity. We sell our house, pay the fees, walk away with money, then we have to live somewhere. Do a cash out refinance or a home equity line of credit have access to cash? And the only one that allows us access to cash without a mortgage payment is a reverse mortgage. So I think we talked earlier before we launched the show, there's three uses of reverse mortgage. We've talked about one.

H for P, finance a home. Another one you've just touched on, access equity. And then the third one is eliminate payment. Sometimes they can cross over. Sometimes you can help somebody eliminate payment and access equity. But most of the time, they're pretty distinct. Eliminate payment, access equity, finance a home.

And you're exactly right, financial planners are telling this generation, look you better plan for 30 years in retirement because we are living longer, we're healthier. And the number one fear senior has is outliving their money.

Justin Stoddart (17:55.32)
Yeah, and for the children, right? They don't wanna have their parents living that way or fearful that way, nor do they have necessarily the means to take full care of them, right? So this is an important, I think, family decision. And I think you've brought up an interesting point is that sometimes it's the seniors are hesitant to make that decision, right? And it really, goes to the kids. And so having this conversation with the kids who have parents who are a little bit older, right? That's probably...

a good place to start if you found that to be fairly effective. If you were a real estate agent, having that conversation, not just with the seniors who were at that point, but the kids who are maybe you're starting to manage the affairs of the parents. And I'm assuming that that's good way to start as well to say, look, there's a really strong opportunity for aging parents.

Kevin Guttman (18:41.947)
It does seem like the older people get, the more help they want from their kids, the more input they want from their kids. And so we welcome children to come into the conversation, make sure all their questions get answered. And I always ask people, say, what are your options? What can't you do? So you can sell. I don't wanna sell. 91 % of people wanna stay in their home, okay? You could take in a border. I don't wanna take in a border. I wanna live by myself, okay?

You could go live with your kids. I don't live with my, I love my kids, I don't live with them. Okay. You could go get a cash out refi or home equity line credit and have a mandatory payment. Well, I can't afford a payment. I can't qualify. Okay. Or you could do a reverse mortgage.

get access to some equity, not have a monthly payment. The term of the loan, you're gonna love this, you probably know this, but the term of the loan is 150 years. In other words, you can't outlive it. They've designed it you can't outlive it. Most people don't live to 100 anymore, or these days, but the term of the loan is 150, you can't outlive it. And the requirements are this, as long as it remains your primary home, and you maintain it, and you pay the property taxes insurance on time,

You cannot live alone. 150 years.

Justin Stoddart (20:02.19)
Amazing, right? Amazing, like what freedom that could provide for people. I think most people to have hope and back to where we started with this conversation, bringing this all full circle, is that people want to enjoy the golden years of life. And children want their parents to enjoy that. They've worked hard, they've sacrificed so much. And they want them to be joyful years. It's really hard to feel joy when you're stressed and worried about money. And I think what...

you're doing for people, Kevin, in educating them about this important vehicle is essential for people to be able to relieve the stress to say, you know what, I have prepared, I have equity in my home. I don't need to live this way. I don't need to live in fear. There's some options out there for me.

Kevin Guttman (20:53.501)
tell you about the very first lady I helped. She was referred to me by her daughter who was my client. She was 84 years old, five foot nothing, just full of fire, real sharp gal. Her name was Carmen. I said, hey Carmen, why do you want to do this? She said, well my budget's tight. I'm like, okay, a lot of people say that on fixed income. I said, tell me more about that. She goes, well to be honest, I'm using credit cards to buy groceries.

She lived in a duplex, so the rent from one side paid the mortgage, and then she lived in the other side and had social security to live on. So at the closing table, I'm doing the math, right? No more mortgage payment, paying off credit cards, I'm free to almost $1,200 a month. So I know the number. I say, hey, Carm, tell me how this is gonna help you. I know the math, but tell me what this is gonna do for you. She kisses me on the cheek. I had to go home and tell my wife I got kissed at closing. Kisses me on the cheek.

She says, I can sleep at night, I won't have to worry about money. She stayed in her home for 10 more years and she got to the point at 94 she couldn't live independently anymore. Sold her house, Colorado Springs, moved up to Denver. Still had equity, that's a myth people have, there's gonna be no more equity at the end. You we're only loaning 35 to 45%. So most people have equity at the end.

and now she lives with a family member who takes care of her. And it just worked out great. And I have so many stories like that. I can't tell you, Justin, how many people have told me over the years, thank you so much. You don't know what this has done for me. This has changed my life. Which is why I wrote the book, A Reverse Mortgage Changed My Life. It's just stories of my clients, how it's helped them. Because I kept getting these stories. I'm like, well, I should put it in the book. Because people have these misconceptions about reverse mortgages.

like it's so taboo to consider or talk about it. And I tell people, look, whether you do it or not, you should at least learn about it. Just understand how it works, whether you ever do it or not. Know it's a tool, a resource available to you should you ever need it.

Justin Stoddart (23:02.894)
You know, I just want to kind of end with this because I'm obviously touched by the fact that you've accumulated all of these stories and put them into a book. And I just want to put, and my intention wasn't this, but I have to, I'm compelled to say this, is that we have real estate agents who are listening to this right now who are saying like, how do I approach that conversation, right? And I think go back and listen to the question that Kevin gave us. And by the way,

The platform that we built is designed to analyze all of the public property records of your clients and identify those who would qualify for a reverse mortgage and send you an email and say, John Smith at 123 Main Street, your client would qualify, right? At that point, you could reach out to Kevin and have him help you take your clients into that better spot and maybe be that a testimonial in his next book. He's already done four best sellers. You might as well do a fifth. So Kevin, how do people get ahold of you?

Kevin Guttman (24:00.027)
The way is through my website, reversemortgagerevolution.com. There people can download a consumer guide that I've written, but specifically just for realtors, I have a website specifically for realtors. has a calculator on there, it has information about reverse mortgages. It's called helpingseniorsrelocate.com.

HelpingSeniorsRelocate.com. That's a site specifically for realtors. And they can understand and begin to know the power of a reverse mortgage for their clients.

Justin Stoddart (24:32.6)
HelpingSeniorsRetire.com, I love it. Sorry, don't listen to what I said, listen to what Kevin said. HelpingSeniorsReloocate.com. Love it, so good. So many people need this more and more every day, right? 10,000 potentially every day need this. So there's huge opportunity here for every real estate agent that's listening. And again, if you're interested in learning more about the technology we've built to help you find these and refer them to someone like Kevin, go to ProInsight.com.

Kevin Guttman (24:34.759)
relocate.

Kevin Guttman (24:41.159)
Yeah.

Justin Stoddart (25:00.566)
to learn more about that. Kevin, been such a pleasure. Thank you again for what you contributed here today. And I look forward to having additional conversations with you to help more and more seniors have those joy-filled lives and experiences that we want them to have.

Kevin Guttman (25:12.659)
Absolutely. Thank you, Justin.

Justin Stoddart (25:14.38)
My final request of everybody listening here today are these three simple words and they are go think bigger and live both a successful and a significant life. Appreciate it Kevin. Thanks everybody. We'll see you next time.