IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/eurjhp/v8y2008i1p61-79.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unlocking Housing Equity Through Reverse Mortgages: The Case of Elderly Homeowners in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Rachel Ong

Abstract

This paper investigates the extent to which reverse mortgages can improve the economic well-being of elderly Australian homeowners. Reverse mortgages are designed to enable elderly homeowners to unlock illiquid wealth tied up in their housing equity to generate income. The elderly borrow against the value of their homes. However, no repayments are made until the house is sold or the elderly borrower dies. The findings from this paper indicate that the scope for reverse mortgages to improve economic well-being is considerable in Australia. Elderly homeowners who are likely to receive the largest gains from reverse mortgages are very elderly, single, female and have significant housing equity. However, in areas with slow house price appreciation rates elderly homeowners who enter into reverse mortgages face the risk of being left with little housing equity to draw on when needed or to bequeath to their beneficiaries when they pass away.

Suggested Citation

  • Rachel Ong, 2008. "Unlocking Housing Equity Through Reverse Mortgages: The Case of Elderly Homeowners in Australia," European Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 8(1), pages 61-79.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:eurjhp:v:8:y:2008:i:1:p:61-79
    DOI: 10.1080/14616710701817166
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14616710701817166
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/14616710701817166?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Donoso, José & Ruiz, José Luis & Tapia, Pablo, 2019. "The social and economic effects of introducing reverse mortgages in Chile," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), December.
    2. Carole Bonnet & Sandrine Juin & Anne Laferrère, 2019. "Private Financing of Long‑Term Care: Income, Savings and Reverse Mortgages," Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), issue 507-508, pages 5-24.
    3. Yang, Jaehwan & Yuh, Yoonkyung, 2019. "Reverse Mortgages for Managing Longevity Risk in Korea," Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 60(1), pages 21-40, June.
    4. Dillingh, Rik & Prast, Henriette & Rossi, Mariacristina & Urzì Brancati, Cesira, 2017. "Who wants to have their home and eat it too? Interest in reverse mortgages in the Netherlands," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 25-37.
    5. Kyung Jin Choi & Byungkwon Lim & Jaehwan Park, 2020. "Evaluation of the Reverse Mortgage Option in Korea: A Long Straddle Perspective," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-14, September.
    6. Dillingh, Rik, 2016. "Empirical essays on behavioral economics and lifecycle decisions," Other publications TiSEM 0e2143e3-bd86-4302-90eb-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    7. Wei Han & Ping Wang & Hao Xu & June-Sung Choi, 2017. "Evaluation of the Reverse Mortgage Option in Hong Kong," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 187-210, June.
    8. Mohammed Mohammed Ishaq & Sulaiman Noralfishah, 2018. "Determinants of Reverse Mortgage Usage in Malaysia," Real Estate Management and Valuation, Sciendo, vol. 26(3), pages 5-23, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:eurjhp:v:8:y:2008:i:1:p:61-79. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REUJ20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.