Category Archives: HECM Lenders

HECM endorsements dropped -35.7% to 2,573 loans. That is certainly a lot, but is actually very close to the average for Dec-Feb we discussed last month as a way of reducing the noise of the government shutdown shifting volume between those months. Now that we finally have a clean month it looks like the last […]

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 […]

HECM endorsements dropped -5.8% to 1,649 loans, but it’s hard to honestly know what to make of that given the noise introduced by the government shutdown. HECM loans were not endorsed during the shutdown, so from December 22-January 27 we have a big gap in activity.

The January total surely represents more loans that we’d normally […]

HECM endorsements dropped -31.4% to 1,751 loans in December, establishing a second consecutive low point after the FHA product changes took effect in October 2017.

• Last month we wondered if November’s decline was just some volume shifting from HECMs to proprietary, calling that the best case scenario
• This month’s drop looks a lot more like our worst […]
  

New lows, here we are. HECM endorsements dropped -17.4% to 2,553 loans in November, setting a new low after the October 2017 product changes.

• Just one region out of the ten tracked rose and that was the smallest, Great Plains, up 3.2% to 65 loans
• A good example of how far the industry has fallen is Pacific/Hawaii, […]
  

HECM endorsement volume crept back above 3,000 loans in October, rising 7.3% to 3,091.

• 8 of 10 regions were up, with New England leading the way – growing 34% to 126 loans (and a World Series title for extra umph)
• Southwest also fared well, increasing 29% to 360 loans in its highest month since May

Lenders also struck […]

HECM endorsement volume fell -9.9% to 2,880 loans in September, re-visiting the lows from June but not making new ones (yet?).

• 9 of 10 regions were down, with the lone exception in New York/New Jersey which managed to grow 6.6% to 94 loans
• Southeast/Caribbean was the best of the rest, dropping -2.5% to 585 loans

Lenders fared a […]

HECM endorsement volume grew 9.9% to 3,197 loans in August. That’s the third lowest total in the past 12 months but importantly, it’s also the second month of growth since the June total of 2,838.

• All 10 regions were up on the month, with Mid Atlantic leading at 28.2%
• Southeast/Caribbean and Pacific/Hawaii are the two largest regions […]
  

HECM endorsement volume gained fractionally in July, up 0.4% to 2,908 loans. This is the biggest sign yet that HECM volume may have bottomed following the substantial program changes that took effect Oct 2, 2017.

We usually profile different geographies and lenders in this space, but we have enough distance from the most recent principal limit […]