Fall is just around the corner in most parts of the country, but thankfully the reverse mortgage business is still heating up after an unseasonable chill in the early summer. We’re hearing from a few clients that they’re seeing some of the best volumes they’ve seen since the principal limit reductions 10/1/2009, so we’re pretty excited to see how things are developing.
In case you’re wondering, there are actually a few cities growing their HECM volume this year (okay, only 3) in spite of the industry being down 39% year to date:
- Santa Barbara leads the way with 45% growth in total dollar volume (MCA), with New Orleans just behind.
- Tulsa is also slightly positive, up 14%
- Check out our table on the bottom left corner of page 2 if you’re curious who else is down less than the rest of the industry. Here’s a hint: Cleveland may have lost its entire NBA team this year but it has only lost a small fraction of its HECM business… (cue the tomatoes for our rotten joke)
We normally like to leave our newsletter on a high note, but we just can’t help mentioning the heat map on page 3 this month. Usually we see some bright spots of green denoting industry growth for at least a few states, but this year has been such a washout thus far that I’m afraid your rose colored glasses might only make the chart worse.
Alaska, Louisiana and West Virginia are yellow (meaning moderate declines), while Florida, Nevada and Arizona are decidedly dark red (large declines). About the best thing we can say is that we know it can only get better from here. Thankfully we already know that August was another positive month that might bring somebody, anybody to a nicer shade in our chart.
Click on the image below to view the full Industry Trends report for this month.
