Reverse Mortgage : An Empirical Study on Familiarity and Perception of Senior Citizens in Ahmedabad

Reverse mortgage, although new in India, is very popular in countries like United States. In India, this concept of reverse mortgage is oblivious to the majority of prospective users. Besides, this is not much practiced business for the lenders too. In this context, the paper seeks to contribute to scientific understanding of reverse mortgage operations and explore the awareness of target as well as the actual clients for reverse mortgage in Ahmedabad. The study highlights the lenders' perspective based upon the secondary information available regarding reverse mortgage. Besides, as the title suggests, the research also analyses the perception of the borrowers and non-borrowers of reverse mortgage loans in the city. The findings revealed that there is very little awareness regarding this concept among the senior citizens of Ahmedabad. Most of the people did not opt for this scheme due to socio cultural factor of passing on the property to their legal heirs. Although, the market for reverse mortgage is in infancy stage in India, there is a lot of potential for its development if designed properly and offered by empathetic lenders