Posts Tagged ‘reverse mortgage competition’
Our first look at February HECM endorsements is here and it’s a positive story, although not one we expect to last too long. Endorsements were up 4.9% in February to 5,426 loans and the highest level of the past five months.
Six of the ten regions we track were up from January, with the biggest gainer being New York/New Jersey. Volume there was up 31.5% to 723 loans and the highest since last March. The region is led by New York City itself, up 6.1% from last year, while many of the surrounding areas in NJ and upstate NY are struggling thus far.
The top 8 lenders were evenly split, with four gaining and four declining. Growth was led by the First National Bank of Layton as it hit a new all time high in the month, and Genworth rising 66.6% to 643 loans.
Unfortunately, there is a dark cloud hanging over the growth as January case numbers issued suggest declines in the near future.
Case numbers issued tumbled -4.9% to 5,795, for the first time breaking the lows reached in October 2009 after the first principal limit reduction. To find a month with lower volume we have to go all the way back to May 2005.
Needless to say we can’t expect endorsements to keep going up with case numbers issued headed down, so it looks like tough sledding on the endorsement side for the next couple months at least.
Click on the image below for this month’s report.
If your New Years resolution was to produce more loans in 2012, then you had lots of company along for the ride. January HECM endorsements totaled 5,175 loans, the highest level since September and up 11.6% from last month. On the pessimistic side, Oct-Dec are the only months lower than this total in the past 12, so it’s really a half glass of whatever perspective you’d like to see.
Volume was up all across the nation with the exception of New England dropping -8.8%. Rocky Mountain (28.2%) and Pacific/Hawaii (24.9%) fared particularly well, leading 6 of the 10 regions to double digit percentage growth. Rocky Mountain was also the only region to increase from January 2011, up 1.6% while the industry overall dropped -19.9%.
- Salt Lake City grew 50.7% from last January, powering the Rocky Mountain region totals
- Caribbean, which includes Puerto Rico, grew 26.9%
Among lenders, we saw 6 of the top 8 active lenders increase volume and 4 of those by double digit percentages:
- Security One led the way with a 27.9% increase
- Genworth saw a 26.1% increase
- Both companies posted their highest monthly total on record, although these numbers do include TPO business that wasn’t counted in historical numbers before 2011
- American Advisors (23.4%) and Generation Mortgage (17.2%) rounded out our double digit percentage growers for the month
Active lenders dropped significantly from last year, but that is almost entirely the result of FHA’s move to stop approving brokers which results in those companies not being counted in this total.
Click on the image below for this month’s report.
We’re getting closer and closer to the final reports of 2011, so we’ll preface next month’s numbers by showing one of the biggest trends of the past 3 years: Lender consolidation.
One of the questions we hear a lot is whether having more lenders is good or bad for the industry. Of course, most people dodge by saying that more of the right type of lenders is a good thing, which is much easier to agree with.
We can’t prove that more or fewer lenders is the better way to go, but one thing is becoming evident over time. Whichever comes first, lower active lender totals march in lock-step with lower loan volumes.
It’s no secret that endorsements have been lower the past few years, nor that there are fewer lenders actively originating HECMs. What’s striking about the chart is just how correlated the two trends have been. The endorsements figures are easy enough to find (any of our 3 monthly reports). You can find the active lenders count including TPO (red line in chart) in the top left box on page 2 of HECM Trends each month, and the FHA approved HECM lenders (blue line) in our HECM Lenders reports.
It’s also worth pointing out that as FHA switched from approved brokers to TPOs approved by lenders (gap between red and blue lines on chart), HECM volumes stayed in line with the red line that includes TPOs. This would suggest that the active originators metric including TPOs is more representative of the health of the industry.
Click on the image below to view the full HECM Trends report for this month.
