How two LOs helped champion proprietary reverse mortgage legislation in Tennessee

Proprietary reverse mortgages have gained a lot of traction over the past year and now account for In an interview this week with HousingWire‘s Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD), Guerrero and Matheson explained how the lobbying effort went and what they hope will happen once senior homeowners in the state have more options for unlocking their He connected with the Tennessee Mortgage Bankers Association (TMBA), where Guerrero — a longtime industry professional — had been laying legislative groundwork for years. Along with lobbyist Chuck Welch and strategic legislative sponsors, they shepherded the bill through the General Assembly.

“I’ll say now, humbly, there was no chance of me doing it by myself without the Mortgage Bankers Association,” Matheson said. “This was a little bit reactive — like 20% reactive. We had to fix it for today, but I think it’s 80% proactive for the future and letting our industry continue to grow.”

“I can tell you from experience, getting anything like this done comes down to relationships and making those investments over time,” Guerrero said. “By doing that … we kind of had the traction and the credibility to be able to facilitate us using our political capital for this year to pursue changing the reverse mortgage law.”

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In February, the National Association of Reverse Mortgage Lenders (Matheson said that while the law in Tennessee is changing, lenders and investors will have to make changes to offer proprietary products before the business sees a boost.

“I’m not sure what that timeline is going to be … but at some point, it’s just going to give us more flexibility and more options to present to borrowers for different solutions, whatever that case may be,” he said. “And I would say the primary one is the jumbo capability, just the higher loan amounts as Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis and Chattanooga have definitely seen huge “It was always a concern of mine that they would come in at a whim, change the FHA product, and we’re sitting out here dangling in the wind with no other options in the state of Tennessee, and then trying to get a bill passed,” Guerrero said. “So by doing that [getting the bill passed], I think it also protects us in a way, to have other options available in the private market, regardless of what the FHA loan is doing.”

Proprietary reverse mortgages are now allowed in about 30 states. They are frequently structured to exceed the HECM limit, but they can also serve borrowers who don’t qualify for FHA products for various reasons.

“The HECM limit for 2026 is $1.25 million, but we’re seeing demand for proprietary all the way down to a couple hundred thousand dollars,” Dan Hultquist of REVERSE plus and Movement Mortgage