HUD reopens $454M reverse-mortgage pool for bids Sept. 1

The Department of Housing and Urban Development will begin considering bids in September for the auction of 5,500 units in two separate reverse-mortgage pools where the borrowers are deceased. 

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A sale of 1,500 non-vacant properties, HNVLS 2026-1, which was originally scheduled to take place in February, will now open on Sept. 1. HUD resumed buyer qualification review in late July and opened access to the pool’s data room in early August, allowing eligible parties to perform due diligence. 

Units, which remain occupied, are secured by first-lien Federal Housing Administration Home Equity Conversion Mortgages, where both the original borrower and spouse are deceased. Any heirs to the properties did not declare their intent to buy out the loans within the allowable time frame. 

Total balance on the HECMs is approximately $454 million.  

Participation in HUD loan sales is closed to individual buyers, with bid opportunities typically offered to nonprofits, government entities and institutional investors. Although HUD first announced the HNVLS in January, the agency delayed the auction in order to include mandatory qualification language, ensuring compliance with a Trump directive that sought to blunt the impact of large institutional investors.

Issued on January 20, President Trump’s Stopping Wall Street from Competing with Main Street Homebuyers executive order required the addition of bidder attestation requirements to be signed by participating entities. While sales to institutional buyers are still permitted, their attestations state they will neither use the sale to unfairly lock out local families nor engage in predatory practices detrimental to the community. 

HUD’s new vacant-loan sale

Falcon Asset Sales will manage both the rescheduled offering and a newly announced HVLS 2027-1. 

With a bid date tentatively planned for October, the pool consists of approximately 4,000 now unoccupied HECM-backed single-family properties. No loan balance was included in the latest notification. 

As with the non-vacant sale, institutional buyers will be required to sign attestations to comply with the Trump order. HUD’s last HVLS featuring over 1,000 loans drew 22 buyers and closed in December 2025. 

Terms of the two new sales are also written to maintain compliance with the requirements in Title X of the recently passed 21st Century Road to Housing Act. While the bill adds strict restrictions limiting the activity of institutional buyers with more than 350 properties, exceptions for the types of foreclosure and distressed sales, such as the latest offerings by HUD, make them eligible. 

Excluded from the bidding process are organizations currently barred or suspended from participating in mortgage-related activity with the federal government, including companies that have had their Ginnie Mae issuance rights removed.