Posts Tagged ‘reverse mortgage wholesale’
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 to be wrong about our earlier predictions of losing almost 50% of BofA/Wells retail volume, but let’s see what the numbers say thus far.
The chart above shows applications through May which appear to have held mostly steady since BofA stopped taking applications in February. Since then, applications were up 8.5% in March, and down -9.5% and -8.3% in April-May.
This second chart shows applications per business day, which make a clearer statement of decline once we recognize that March and May had 3 and 2 more business days than February, respectively. Of course, there are always many other variables changing in our industry at the same time that make it tough for precise comparisons, but the broad trend seems pretty clear. With BofA comprising 10-11% of retail market share in endorsements before their exit, a case could be made that the industry has lost more than half of that volume since their exit. Keep in mind that remaining lenders have still gained share of the industry since
Our last chart puts the BofA exit in context with Wells and Financial Freedom. We expect that June application numbers will show a boost given that Wells Fargo allowed loan officers to close out their pipelines and take applications through month end. Once that’s behind us, these three will collectively represent 30-35% of recent retail market share and whatever figure you use for the ultimate net loss to the industry after other lenders step in, that’s a hefty headwind for applications in the last six months of the year. Endorsements won’t really show the impact of Wells Fargo’s exit until Q4, but anyway you slice it 2011 looks to be an unlucky third year in a row of declines in HECM endorsements.
Housekeeping: Since the recent change in licensing requirements for HECM lenders, this report is now the most accurate way to understand retail/broker endorsement activity by originating company. Our Retail Leaders report includes TPO business for wholesale lenders as part of their retail volume, whereas it is correctly attributed to wholesale channel on this report. As part of this change, we will be renaming these two reports and making other slight modifications in the near future. Please let us know if you have a suggestion for new names for these reports.
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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 brokers to TPO producers.
Last month we showed a chart that illustrated the impressive growth of TPO loans and the clear lead of a few sponsors in this channel. The updated chart shows continued growth as TPO loans made up 30% of all wholesale loans in April, and also the more competitive nature of the business as many sponsors raced to catch up.
Metlife ran out to a big lead in March but grew slower in April, while Urban, Genworth, Generation, BofA and Security One all grew significantly to more than double TPO business from 360 to 735 loans. We’re hoping in the future to analyze just how much TPO business is coming from originators new to the industry, but for now it’s clear that the sponsor side is becoming a much more competitive market.
This month’s report also raises a point in the discussion about industry consolidation, as the table on top of page 2 illustrates that some of the largest lenders declined much faster than the industry in April. We don’t put too much weight in any one month’s results, but it’s startling to see that 88% of the industry’s decline this month came from just 2 lenders: Wells Fargo and Metlife.
The 2 lenders were 44% of the industry in March, so their decline is far larger than their market share. The smallest originators didn’t catch a break though: top 10 lenders Urban and One Reverse both saw 12 month highs and Security One came in just one loan shy of their recent peak.
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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 just starting to show up, as TPO originations by non-FHA approved originators (working through an approved sponsor) grew dramatically in March. The chart below shows this activity by sponsor for the first three months of 2011:
While this activity wasn’t enough to keep broker/wholesale endorsements from falling -0.7% in March to 2,785, much less keep up with direct/retail endorsements that grew 10.8%, the sheer growth from February is astounding. At the most pessimistic it should ease the declines in the broker/wholesale channel, and an optimist might hope for a rebound given the potential of credit unions and community banks.
From a lender perspective, we saw 4 of the top 10 lenders hit 12 month highs in the month as the industry set its own high water mark for the same period.
- Wells Fargo captured 31.9% of all loans through both retail and wholesale channels, well above their 12 month share average of 26.4%
- Generation was whisper close to breaking double digits in market share at 9.7%
- One Reverse continues to grow their direct lending business, up 22.2% in the past 12 months and showing a 5% market share
- Sun West is on the comeback trail and back in the top 10 this month for the first time since November
One housekeeping note this month: As we noted in our Retail Leaders newsletter last week, we are not yet able to track non-FHA approved TPO originators individually, so you’ll notice a row in our lender listing of “Unknown”. That’s a summary line for all loans in this category for now, until we can track these individually (we’re expecting a few months).
And if you’re in DC for NRMLA’s Policy Conference, we’ll see you at the cocktail reception!
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