A "reverse" mortgage is a loan against your home that you do not have to
pay back for as long as you live there. You can turn the value of your home
into cash without having to move or to repay the loan each month.
The cash you get from a reverse mortgage can be paid to you in several ways:
• all at once, in a single lump sum of cash;
• as a regular monthly cash advance;
• as a "creditline" that lets you decide when and how 
    much of your available cash is paid to you; or
• as a combination of these payment methods.
 
No matter how this loan is paid out to you, you typically don't have to pay
anything back until you die, sell your home, or permanently move out of
your home.

To be eligible for most reverse mortgages, you must own your home
and be 62 years of age or older.

Other Home Loans

For most home loans, the lender checks your income to see how much
you can afford to pay back each month.  With a reverse mortgage,
you don't have to make monthly repayments.

You don't need a minimum amount of income to qualify for a reverse
mortgage. You could have no income and still qualify.

Most reverse mortgages require no repayment for as long as you
—or any co-owner(s)—live in the home. So they differ from other home
loans in these important ways:
• you don't need an income to qualify for a reverse mortgage; and
• you don't have to make monthly repayments on a reverse mortgage.

With a reverse mortgage, the lender sends you cash, and you make
no repayments. So the amount you owe gets larger as you get more and
more cash  and more interest is added to your loan balance.
As your debt grows, your equity shrinks, unless your home's value is
growing at a high rate.

When a reverse mortgage becomes due and payable, you may owe
a lot of money and your equity may be very small. If you have the loan
for a long time, or if your home's value decreases,
there may not be any equity left at the end of the loan.

But that is exactly what informed reverse mortgage borrowers want:
to "spend down" their home equity while they live in their homes,
without having to make monthly loan repayments.