Category Archives: HECM Originators

We’ve known for months that Wells Fargo’s exit would have a major impact on HECM endorsement totals, with the expectation that all else being equal Wells’ huge retail market share would impact that side of the industry more directly.

October gave us reason to doubt that expectation, with the first half of Wells volume decline coinciding […]

Now that we know November’s endorsement totals weren’t as scary as they could have been, it puts October’s reports in a different light. We reported in last month’s HECM Lenders that October endorsements were down -16.8%, owing primarily to Wells Fargo’s first big monthly decline.

Now that we have […]

October HECM endorsement totals were spooky as Wells Fargo’s volume slid down the exit ramp, but what more can we learn about September now that we have detailed figures available? HECM Originators shows us the balance between retail/direct and TPO/wholesale channels, and gives us our first picture of individual TPO companies for the month since […]

Last month’s HECM Lenders report showed us that industry volume was up 5.3% in August, despite an expectation of lower totals for the rest of the year.  Now that we can see more detailed August data in our HECM Originators report (linked below), we discover that broker/wholesale volumes […]

This is the first issue of the HECM Originators report, which takes the place of “Wholesale Leaders” for rankings of retail and TPO/broker/wholesale business.

July summary

July endorsements showed a continued trend of better results for retail/direct lenders compared to wholesale/brokered volumes, with Retail declining -5.2% while Wholesale shrank -7.0%. We also saw the gap between the […]

This report will be known as “HECM Originators” starting next month to identify it as the best source of rankings of all companies originating HECM loans, regardless of FHA approval status.

While the rest of the world is deciding just how much the rating agencies matter 3 years after the 2008 debacle, volatility in the reverse […]

We promised a closer look at the impact of BofA exiting the industry in our Retail Leaders report earlier this month, so let’s dive in. We’ve heard in many conversations with clients and contacts that the industry has fully absorbed BofA’s volume and didn’t see any decline from the company’s exit. We would love […]

TPO loan volume continued to grow in April, but wasn’t enough to keep wholesale endorsements from declining -13.3%. Retail fell further, down -18%, and the balance between the two channels will be an indication going forward to see if TPO volume is growing the business as non-FHA approved brokers jump in or just migrating FHA […]

As regulation forces the reverse industry to evolve, there are many ways that we’ll eventually see the impacts. We’ve been tracking a declining number of originators for quite some time, which is the expected result of many changes pushing revenue down and costs up for the smallest reverse originators.

The potential offset to that trend is […]

We noticed last month that broker/wholesale channel performed much better than retail/direct in a down month for the industry overall, and now we can remove that last qualifier. Broker/wholesale outperformed again in February, up 16.2% compared to just 0.6% growth for retail/direct.

Of course we don’t […]