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HECM Lenders – February 2019

HECM endorsements rocketed 142.7% higher to 4,002 loans, but it’s hard to feel too excited about it given part of that might be catch-up from January’s government shutdown. Regardless, it’s a good test of who in our industry is an eternal optimist vs. a more stoic realist approach – we already know the pessimists left the building years ago. In any event, it’s good to bring the average up for the last 3 months in total (2,467 loans) to something closer to the new normal rather than nuclear winter levels of the last 2 months in isolation.

As you can imagine, just about every part of the industry looks good when volume grows that much:

  • Several areas jumped well over 100%, with Great Plains leading the way but Rocky Mountain and Southwest also putting in crazy gains
  • Averaging the past 3 months compared to the prior 3, the industry overall declined -13.2% while Rocky Mountain dropped just -7.9%
  • Rocky Mountain volume is led by Colorado and Utah, as show in our breakdown on page 4

The top ten lenders also benefited tremendously:

  • High Tech has actually increased their 3 month average 2.6% compared to Sep-Nov, the best performance in the top 10
  • 6 of the top 10 outperformed the industry decline of -13.2% on the 3 month average

If your company is FHA approved check out the rankings on page 5 of the report below. If your company is not FHA approved, watch out for our next edition of HECM Originators to find your ranking!

Click the image below for the full report.