America’s Most Hated Home Loan Is Staging a Comeback

Professor Chris Mayer has a lesson for ­homeowners: Reverse mortgages, which let older Americans tap their home equity without selling or moving, aren’t as risky as some say. In an online video, he brushes aside “common misconceptions,” including fears about losing your home.

Mayer, a real estate professor at Columbia Business School, isn’t an impartial observer. He’s chief executive officer of a company that sells reverse mortgages. He’s trying to rehabilitate one of the U.S.’s most-­reviled financial products—part of a broader push that relies in part on academics with interests in the mortgage industry.