Reverse mortgage age requirement

The rule: 62 at closing, for each borrower

The federal rule for the HECM program, 24 CFR 206.33, is one sentence long: the youngest borrower must be 62 years of age or older at the time of loan closing. Since the youngest one has to meet it, everyone on the note does. The test is the closing date, not the day you first call a lender, and it applies to the FHA-insured HECM only. Private reverse mortgages, sold outside the FHA program, set their own terms.

There is no upper age. The HUD table runs to 99, and a borrower of 101 is read on the 99 row. Older borrowers still pass the same steps: counseling, an FHA appraisal and a financial assessment of their credit and income.

A spouse under 62

When one spouse is 62 or older and the other is not, the younger one can stay off the loan as a non-borrowing spouse. If that spouse is named in the loan documents at closing, was married to the borrower at closing and lives in the home, they are an eligible non-borrowing spouse. After the borrower dies, the loan's due date is deferred for them, as long as they establish a legal right to stay in the home within 90 days, keep it as their principal residence and meet the loan's obligations. No new money is paid out during that deferral.

The price of that protection is a lower amount. HUD sizes the loan on the youngest of the borrowers and eligible non-borrowing spouses, which is why the factor table starts at 18. On a $380,000 home at 6.625 %, a borrower of 66 alone gets a principal limit of $135,660; with an eligible non-borrowing spouse of 59, it falls to $113,620, and the room in the first year from $67,996 to $54,772. A spouse who does not meet the conditions is an ineligible non-borrowing spouse: the loan uses the borrower's age, but becomes due when the last borrower dies. The lender must still show what the younger age would have given, so the couple can compare. The non-borrowing spouse page walks through the conditions.

How HUD reads your age

Handbook 4000.1 tells lenders to use the age of the youngest borrower or eligible non-borrowing spouse, rounded up to the next whole year when the next birthday comes less than 183 days after closing. The help pages of HUD's calculator put it as rounding to the nearest year and add that, in the birth month, the birthday is treated as already passed. A borrower who is 64 years and five months old at closing is read on the 64 row, giving $129,960 on our $380,000 home; two months later, the 65 row gives $132,620.

What each year of age is worth

The table below reads HUD's factors at the expected rate of 6.65 % used across this site, the 10-year Treasury rate of 5.15 % for the week ending October 16, 2026 plus an example margin of 1.5 %. The principal limit column applies them to a $380,000 home. The column one point higher shows how much a rise in rates would take back.

Three things stand out. First, the step from 61 to 62, 0.313 to 0.328, is larger than its neighbors; the rows under 62 are used only for non-borrowing spouses. Second, the climb is not perfectly smooth; at this rate the 70 and 71 rows both show 0.386, so a birthday between them adds nothing. Third, from age 97 the factor stops at 0.701. In between, a year of age adds about 0.7 points of the home value on average from 62 to 80, and 1.5 points from 80 to 95.

Other rules that follow your age

Age also sets the length used for lifetime monthly payments. HUD's calculator sizes a tenure payment as if it ran until age 100, 408 months for a 66-year-old, and treats anyone older than 95 as 95. The same age drives the set-aside for taxes and insurance when the lender requires one: it uses a life expectancy table from Regulation Z, 21 years at 62 and 9 at 80, so a younger borrower has more years of taxes held back. Both rules reduce the cash of a younger borrower further, on top of the lower factor. The page for borrowers aged 62 puts all of them together for the youngest eligible age.