Kim and Larry Payne spent their entire lives in California, but after being retired for several years, they decided to move to Idaho. A reverse mortgage helped them achieve that dream.
The Paynes sold their California home to put a sizable down payment on a 2,400-square-foot home they planned to build in the town of Eagle, an affluent community located ten miles northwest of Boise.
They contacted Shana Roach, CRMP, a loan officer with New American Funding (who now works for Mutual of Omaha Mortgage), to apply for a reverse mortgage on the home that was being built. By combining the proceeds from the sale of the old home with the funds from a reverse mortgage, the Paynes purchased the new home outright and avoided a new monthly mortgage payment.
“Shana began working with us when we were preparing to move to our new state and, as we waited five months for our new home to be completed, she had to stay on top of all of our documentation, what needed to be updated, what new information was needed and more,” Kim Payne says. “Never once did we get an exasperated sigh or an impatient reply. Instead, we got a competent and cheerful attitude and a wealth of hands-on knowledge about reverse mortgages.”
This wasn’t the Paynes’ first experience with a reverse mortgage. They got a reverse mortgage from New American Funding in 2012. “We had an enormous amount of equity that we were sitting on. It made zero sense to have that equity while continuing to make a mortgage payment at our age,” she recalls.
The home was appraised at $750,000. The reverse mortgage allowed them to pay off a $200,000 mortgage and establish a term payment plan that provided $1,400 a month for a period of ten years.
“Paying off the mortgage increased our cash flow to do more fun things in retirement,” Kim says. Her husband had always dreamed of owning a motor home, so they bought one and traveled the American West for four months.
The Paynes, who are both in their early 70s, have been married for 38 years. She worked in the mortgage business for 30 years. “I owned a mortgage brokerage business for 21 of those years,” she adds.
“We both worked hard and invested wisely,” Kim says. “We bought and sold rental properties at the right time. We had an adviser assisting us. When I owned my business, there were a lot of years that I was working seven days a week, 12 hours a day, and didn’t take off except for Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
Larry was a millwright, which Kim describes as a “jack of all trades who knows pretty much how to do anything. They tend to build, fix and repair things of a gigantic nature. For the last 15 years of his career, he was working on jets and any machines and equipment needing repairs for Aerojet Corp., which is now called Aerojet Rocketdyne. He also worked on installing a gargantuan solar power plant in Las Vegas and many oil refineries. All kinds of big jobs. Being married to a millwright has its advantages because everything in our house works perfectly.”
The Paynes have now been in their Idaho home for 2 ½ years and couldn’t be happier.
After they moved in, they upgraded their kitchen cabinets, installed an outdoor kitchen with fireplace and added footpaths and raised bed gardens. “Larry is usually in his shop puttering, and I am out working in the yard,” she says.