Reverse mortgage as income to qualify for larger loan?

[David Lee]

Hi all,

I've recently been learning more about reverse mortgages, and while I realize it's meant as a product to help retired folks/62+ who need a bit more additional spending, I was thinking of using it a bit creatively and I was wondering if this method is even feasible?:

Basically rather than using the reverse mortgage as an extra security for retirement, can you use the reverse mortgage as extra 'income' to show lenders & potentially qualify for a larger loan? The thought is that with current monthly income levels I would not be able to qualify for as large a loan as I would like (trying to purchase a mutli-family property), so maybe the promise of subsidizing this with monthly payments from reverse mortgage would give banks/lenders a bit more peace of mind to qualify for a larger mortgage?

I know that some variation of this is done when people include projected monthly rent to increase their income (i.e., rent coming in from other units in a multi-family)...is this a similar situation?