Financial versus Real Assets? No, Thanks! Focusing on Reverse Mortgages

This paper takes inspiration from Italy’s recent legislation about reverse mortgage loans and aims at investigating their role as a strategic tool in financial management, in spite of some criticism and limited adoption so far. Actually, the trend towards increasing globalization has made traditional keys of classification obsolete, including the trade-off between financial and real assets. Therefore, total wealth management should be focused on, rather than paying as much attention as in the past to portfolios consisting of securities alone. At the same time, homeowners are invited to reconsider their residential property as a way not only to satisfy their housing needs, but also to achieve better standards of living, especially after retirement. Conclusions to be drawn request that unprecedented energies are devoted to financial counseling, literacy and education, in order to increase individual investors’ awareness so as to make more informed decisions about their asset allocation, especially in the later stages of their life cycle, not only in the Italian financial framework.