Austin, Texas
I always believed Equity
in your house can’t do you
any good unless you put it
to work for you”
You can drive for days on the highway through
West Texas looking at land in all directions
as flat as a chessboard for as far as the eyes
can see. And so it’s a relief to the eyes once
you cross the Colorado River in Austin and
hit I-35, the beginning of hill country. These
hills are a popular location for getaway homes from the Texas
capital, a city of 500,000, that refers to itself as the “Third Coast”
due to the location of technological companies such as Samsung,
Motorola and the corporate headquarters of Dell Computers.
It’s in these hills where you can find Barry and Susan
lining up the next shot of an Indian Paintbrush or a Bluebonnet
for their new coffee-table book, Texas Wildflower Vistas and
Hidden Treasures.
The books are a fairly new career for Barry and Susan, both
in their early 60s. Both previously divorced, they met in their
earlier careers: Barry spent 25 years as a marketing executive in
the aerospace industry and Susan managed a printing company.
One of the things they discovered they shared was love of nature
and natural science.
In 2002, Barry's employer at the time, an aerospace company, closed its Austin facility and offered him a buyout. “My Dad once
said to me, as you get older in your job, if they
offer you money to get out, take it and find something else to do," says Barry. At 57, Barry was retired and determined to devote the rest of his
life to the things he loved most—photography and nature. He
began teaching photography classes part-time at the University
of Texas’ informal classes division, the continuing education
program. In 2005, the couple decided to downsize and
move into a 2,000 square foot,
3 bedroom, 2 bath house in
North Central Austin. They were able to buy the home with
cash and without a mortgage.
“I always believed equity in your house can’t do you any good
unless you put it to work for you,” Barry says. “And so we
decided to turn the equity into something that could better our
financial situation.”
Barry and Susan conceived a series of nature books, beginning
with Grasses of Texas Hill Country and Texas Cacti. They were
able to make a publishing deal with Texas A. & M. University
Press. But the deal did not pay an advance, only royalties once
the books were published. “We needed seed money to get our
business going,” Barry says. He had been told about reverse
mortgages by a friend in Oregon. He looked around for a
local loan originator and settled upon John Mitchell of 1st AAA
Reverse in Austin. “The process was smooth and seamless,” adds Barry. “He presented us with all the data in written form
and when we did our counseling session, we had already been
provided all the information by our lender.”
The couples' home was appraised at $200,000 and Mitchell
arranged a reverse mortgage of $105,000. Over time, they
used about 75% of the loan to buy new camera equipment and
get their business rolling. The balance remains in a line of credit.
“The reverse mortgage gave us the cash we were looking for,” Barry says. “Otherwise we would have had to take out some
kind of a commercial loan and we would have been indebted
from the get go.”