April’s Industry Trends report is finally out, a bit later than normal, but still chock full of interesting statistics. Two record months in a row of endorsements has moved the reverse mortgage industry from a negative 1% relative performance to a +4.5% increase over YTD volume last year. While it’s not a large increase, we should see some more strong endorsement months in May, June, and perhaps July as record HECM applications work through the system.
If you’re not familiar with the report itself, refer back to the initial Industy Trends post for a quick overview of what’s included and how to read the report.
Florida and California are virtually tied for the top spot for endorsments YTD, with Florida eeking out a 13 unit advantage to retake the lead.
Sounding like a broken record from last month, but Illinois continues to impress us — of the top 10 states, it has the strongest growth (+41%), has the second largest city in terms of volume and growth (Chicago at 642 units and 46.6% YoY growth), and has the top zip code in volume (60628 at 76 units YTD). It appears as though lenders are flocking to this area, as there are currently 223 lenders active in Chicago, second only to Miami, FL.
Higher value communities continue to work well with the new lending limits. In New York (Brooklyn and Staten Island) and in California (San Jose and San Francisco), cities with higher average home values have large increases in the total MCA dollar amounts. (shameless self-promotion: You can find areas that have higher average home values using our Market Opportunity Report.)
California has the dubious distinction of having 7 of the top 10 highest penetrated cities in the nation.
We hope you find some good nuggets of information in this month’s report. Keep the feedback coming – we really enjoy the questions and comments we receive from our readers. If you have a question and don’t know where to find the answer, give us a shout!
